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Dafydd y Garreg Wen

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Everything posted by Dafydd y Garreg Wen

  1. I suppose one could play the movement manualiter apart from playing the low B on a 16’ pedal stop!
  2. My copy (ordered in October 2020) was finally dispatched at the end of last week and was actually “out for delivery” yesterday … but for some reason the courier decided not to deliver it (didn’t bother to ring the bell). Falling at the final hurdle. Is there a curse on this book?
  3. Are you sure? Can we believe you? After so many false dawns you must excuse scepticism … How was the launch event?
  4. UPDATE NOVEMBER 2023: Thank you so much for your patience and understanding whilst the Revised English Hymnal has been in editorial stages. The full music edition is now at the printer - stock is expected in our warehouse on 5th and 6th December. Of course, all back orders will be despatched first class. We know that many people are looking forward to seeing REH. We share this excitement and look forward to sharing this wonderful new hymnal with you very shortly. Thank you. LAUNCH EVENT: thanks to all who joined us on the 29th November 2023 at St James, Paddington, London. We hope to release a film of the event very shortly. https://reh.hymnsam.co.uk/
  5. 🤣🤣🤣 No sign of my copy either yet, which I ordered over three years ago (not from Amazon). My comfort is that I only paid £23 for it.
  6. He may well do. The hymn is unusual in being famous and well loved but not having a settled tune - it’s sung to several.
  7. Pity they chose the wrong tune for Dyma gariad fel y moroedd 😉😉😉
  8. ??? Sigh. I had the impression that this edition was going to undo some of the unnecessary editorial fidgeting seen in the New English Hymnal. Clive James is good on “fidget”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6368477.stm Ironic that the original English Hymnal made a point (unusually at that date) of restoring authors’ original texts.
  9. Sample available here: https://cloud.3dissue.com/1541/2008/229828/REH/index.html
  10. It may finally be happening: https://reh.hymnsam.co.uk/what-is-being-published/ Revised English Hymnal will be launched on Wednesday 29th November 2023. Come Sing Revised English Hymnal will include congregational singing of a selection from the new hymnal followed by a drinks reception. Wednesday 29th November 2023, 6pm-9pm. St James Church, Sussex Gardens, Paddington London W2 3UD RSVP to Michael Addison michael@hymnsam.co.uk by Wednesday 22nd November 2023. All are welcome but capacity is restricted to the first 250 respondents. The Full Music edition will be available for sale on the night.
  11. Can’t see anything. Incidentally, astonishing prices here for print-on-demand copies: https://www.broekmans.com/en/bladmuziek/choralvorspiele-vol1-orgel-25746 €105.95 per volume, and €127.35 for the fourth.
  12. It’s as well not to rush these things. Reminds me of the Spaniard who asked someone from the Western Isles if there was a Gaelic equivalent for “mañana”. He paused and thought for a while before replying, “Well, there are a few approximate equivalents … but none of them have quite the same sense of urgency.”
  13. Hmmm … that’s a funny one, isn’t it? (I don’t know it but have just had a look at it.) I like the Harris when I’m in the mood for some healthy old-fashioned vulgarity.
  14. Delighted at this revival. Thank you, Martin, for bringing it about.
  15. The modern approach, where (in the absence of a choir) the organist plays over and over, to accompany a congregation singing in unison, a version designed for singing in four-part harmony, is a bastardisation of the two traditions, and might have struck our ancestors as unmusical.
  16. Historically there were two distinct traditions in this country of congregational singing and accompaniment. One was of harmonised singing of (metrical) psalms, and then of hymns, where the whole congregation sang in parts (which survives to some extent in Welsh chapels). The other was of unison singing where the organist was expected to vary on the fly the harmonisation of each verse (but more subtly than in modern last verse accompaniments), often with a proper introduction and with interludes between verses. To quote my own post of 27th January, 2021: “S.S. Wesley's A Selection of Psalm Tunes: Adapted Expressly to the English Organ with Pedals (1842) is a good example, and later in the nineteenth century Stanford was praised for the artistry with which he did this sort of thing in accompanying [unison] undergraduate hymn singing in Trinity College chapel.” There are some Stanford examples of every verse of a hymn reharmonised in this manner in the early twentieth-century volume Varied Harmonies for Organ Accompaniment (and voices ad libitum) of Certain Tunes in Hymns Ancient And Modern. The two versions of Goss’s Praise, my soul, which I mentioned in that post, embody the two different traditions. One was a harmonised version in the key of E (evidently considered more suitable for singing in harmony) - used transposed down for verse 2 in most modern hymn books. The other was a version with varied harmonies for each of the original five verses and in D major (more suitable for unison singing); three of these verse accompaniments of course make it into modern books.
  17. Gloria Patri is not sung after the Gradual psalm (properly before the Gospel, but nowadays often between the Old Testament reading and the Epistle), but it is sung after a psalm sung at the Eucharist as an Introit. The reason is interesting. The Gradual is such a very ancient part of the liturgy (sung to cover the action whilst the deacon climbed the steps (Latin gradus - hence the name “Gradual”) to the platform from which he would sing the Gospel) that it predates the custom of singing Gloria Patri at the end of a psalm. The Introit is not so ancient, post-dating the introduction of Gloria Patri, so the new custom applies (as it does of course in the office). What might seem an arbitrary and meaningless distinction preserves something of the history of how the liturgy has evolved.
  18. I note that the 29th September date has slipped. What a surprise! Amazon is reporting 30th October, but https://reh.hymnsam.co.uk/ is more cautious: “We anticipate REH should be in our warehouse in Norwich in November.”
  19. Beyond ridiculous. Amazon is now displaying this date, but the dedicated Revised English Hymnal website is still saying end of July! The Canterbury Press website says “after 30/06/2023” (well, I suppose that strictly speaking 20th September *is* after 30th June …).
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