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Monday 14 September 2009

Hymns by Father Faber

The, (occasionally more rancorous than I would wish,) discussion of the proper contents of a truly "Catholic" English language hymnal over at the CMAA fora piqued my curiosity.
Well, initially, it shamed me -- Noel & c. listed so many text and tunes of which I had never heard!
And for quite a while, really ever since I found the Britt book, cheap on eBay, I'd been interested in the Office Hymns, and then I thought this year being potentially a very great one for Cardinal Newman I really ought to introduce the choir to some of his, and then there was talk of Chesterton whom I was unaware had written hymns, (though it only makes sense, him being a poet and all, duh...) and I began to think of other converts, and frankly, WOW.
I had no idea Fr Faber was so prolific. Charming self-deprecation:
The do­mes­tic wants of the Or­a­to­ry kept alive the feel­ing that[English Catholic hymns were] needed; though at the same time the Au­thor’s ig­nor­ance of mu­sic ap­peared in some mea­sure to dis­qual­i­fy him for the work of sup­ply­ing the de­fect. Ele­ven, how­e­ver, of the hymns were writ­ten, most of them, for par­tic­u­lar tunes and on par­tic­u­lar oc­ca­sions, and be­came ve­ry pop­u­lar with a coun­try con­gre­ga­tion. They were af­ter­wards print­ed for the schools at St. Wil­frid’s, and the ve­ry num­er­ous ap­pli­ca­tions to the print­er for them seemed to show that, in spite of ve­ry glar­ing lit­er­ary de­fects, such as care­less gram­mar or slip­shod me­tre, peo­ple were anx­ious to have Cath­o­lic hymns of any sort. The MS. of the pre­sent vol­ume was sub­mit­ted to a mu­sic­al friend, who re­plied that cer­tain verses of all or near­ly all the hymns would do for sing­ing; and this en­cour­age­ment has led to the pub­li­ca­tion

Did you know there were so many? I didn't.
  1. Blood Is the Price of Hea­ven
  2. By the Archangel’s Word of Love
  3. Dear God of Orphans, Hear Our Pray­er
  4. Dear Je­sus, Ev­er at My Side
  5. Exceeding Sor­rowful to Death
  6. Faith of Our Fa­thers
  7. From Pain to Pain, from Woe to Woe
  8. Hark! Hark, My Soul!
  9. Have Mercy on Us, God Most High
  10. Ho­ly Ghost, Come Down upon Thy Child­ren
  11. I Wish to Have No Wishes Left
  12. I Wor­ship Thee, Sweet Will of God
  13. Jesu, Gentl­est Sav­ior
  14. Jesus Is God!
  15. Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All!
  16. My God! My God! And Can It Be
  17. My God, How Won­der­ful Thou Art
  18. O Come and Mourn with Me
  19. O Gift of Gifts!
  20. O Je­sus, Je­sus
  21. O God, Thy Pow­er Is Won­der­ful
  22. O How the Thought of God Attracts
  23. O Paradise!
  24. O Soul of Je­sus, Sick to Death
  25. Oh! Come to the Mer­ci­ful Sav­ior
  26. Pilgrims of the Night, The
  27. Sleep, Sleep My Beau­ti­ful Babe
  28. Souls of Men! Why Will Ye Scatter
  29. Sweet Sav­ior, Bless Us Ere We Go
  30. Thy Home Is with the Humble, Lord
  31. True Shep­herd, The
  32. Why Is Thy Face So Lit with Smiles?
  33. Workman of God

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