I’ve decided to spend some of my birthday money on some MP3s of English hymns: aside from the fact that I don’t get to hear or sing them at mass since I’m here (though some hymn tunes we know do get used here), even if I did I’d have to deal with a widespread Catholic indifference to congregational singing, something I’ve always found odd.
Anyway, I slightly exceeded a budget of €12 to get the following; I think I did alright!
A bargain that one, considering it’s VW’s one and the sample sounded fine to me.
• Be thou my vision (trad. trans. Hull, Slane: a(n Irish folk) tune we use for Night Prayer with Noemi)
Well represented because Huddersfield also do good value for money.
• Praise to the Lord (Neander trans. Winkworth, Lobe den Herren: another one for Night Prayer, with an Italian version)
• Let all mortal flesh keep silence (from Liturgy of St James insp. Hab 2:20 trans. Moultrie, Picardy - from a French carol arr. Vaughan Williams (– with any luck))
Can’t complain about King's, can you?
Some proper miserable-looking words, by an English Redemptorist priest apparently, but I have a soft spot for this one after singing it in Lent at Sacred Heart.
Backing it up are:
• Now the Green Blade Riseth
• The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended
• Holy Jesu, by thy Passion (another Sacred Heart Lent one, part of Stainer’s ‘The Crucifixion’, which Stainer called “rubbish”)
• Just as I Am, Without One Plea
• Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me
…which I happen to have on CD already. I don’t really know the last two very well actually, called “well-known” and “popular” respectively by Wikipedia, but since they’re there...
