My efforts to avoid music from GIA or OCP wherever possible has led to a fruitful look at Australian hymn music. I think I can stretch my search to New Zealand, since we Australians have a terrible habit of claiming the best of NZ culture as own own.
I found a copy of Alleluia Aotearoa some years ago at a Lifeline Booksale in Brisbane. While well known across the dutch it was unknown to me. It was released in 1993, a year after As One Voice and was meant for all churches in New Zealand. It was published by the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust which comprised the Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and the Associated Churches of Christ. There was Catholic involvement on the editorial board.
Within in its pages is a treasure trove of Shirley Erena Murray texts that I hadn’t seen before, and I plan to go through the volume and cherry pick her texts. She only died in early 2020, and we lost the poet laureate of social justice and the most expert writer of uncomfortable texts this side of John Bell. She has been set by many tunesmiths over the years and there is a tendency away from NZ to forget her contribution – I have seen her words unacknowledged, or worse attributed to anonymous, on the internet.
She is published by the marvellous Hope Publishing Company and her lyrics are all there.
This is an Easter song full of “resurrection power”. I love the metaphor of the caged bird of the Spirit being freed in the second verse. She also successfully rhymes “flying” with “self-denying”, a bit of a poetic trapeze act.
The text and sheet music are at Hope, where it is set to VRUECHTEN, known for another Easter hymn, “This Joyful Eastertide”.
Whenever we are told that secular music must never pollute out liturgies, it is worth reminding ourselves that venerable tunes such as these were once secular love songs. In other words all the things the Church says are immutable, are in fact completely relative. This is good corrective to the idolatry of unconsidered tradition.
VRUECHTEN has a fearful range and is best for a rollicking choir. In AA it is set to CRAWSHAW by Roy Tankersley, which, while it hits a held E, would stand being dropped a few semitones without straining the lower range. I had to make up chords to make my backing. I can’t find the sheet music on the web, nor can I find copies of Alleluia Aotearoa, but I suspect they inhabit the back cupboards of many churches in New Zealand if you get a chance to look. You may be able to access it through this site.
*STOP PRESS – Alleluia Aotearoa can be purchased here.
Youtube only has the VRUECHTEN setting.