Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Tuesday 27 May 2008

LOVELY

I have been wanting for some time to cobble together an arrangement of RVW's prelude on Rhosymedre (surely the most sublime gloss on a pedestrian hymn tune ever conceived,) with and SATB setting of the tune, to use as a choir anthem. (I should add, I don't play the piece itself competently, my brain still tells my left hand to play that dang pedal line, the default to which piano-trained-late-in-life-organists are often, IME, wont to default.)
But none of the texts I had encountered seemed both worthy of the effort and versatile enough to give me a return on teaching it to the choir.
Eureka!
And it's been under my nose for a while, in the New English Hymnal -- Charles Wesley's "Author of Life Divine," (Cyber Hymnal says it's John's.)
Gentle Readers, if any there be, what say ye?
Is this an appropriate text for a Catholic to use during a liturgy?

Author of life divine,
Who hast a table spread,
Furnished with mystic wine
And everlasting bread,
Preserve the life Thyself hast given,
And feed and train us up for Heav’n.

Our needy souls sustain
With fresh supplies of love,
Till all Thy life we gain,
And all Thy fullness prove,
And, strengthened by Thy perfect grace,
Behold without a veil Thy face.

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