“Choose life.”
That phrase from the book of Deuteronomy has been popping into my mind recently. It has stayed with me since the year I tried to wade through the Bible cover-to-cover. (I was nine: I barely made it through Leviticus.) It hit me this past May at the Emmaus Project conference at the Nottawasaga Inn when, at the communion service, Presbyterians started a spontaneous conga line. It came to me last Sunday morning at Trafalgar Presbyterian as 15 or so kids sang and jumped to the Malawian song Jump with Joy, (#406 in The Book of Praise, if you want to look it up).
It keeps popping into my mind now as I listen to Paradise Found, a companion to Sing Lustily and with Good Courage, the CD that I wrote about a few columns back. This celebration of some of the hymns of Charles Wesley again features the vocals of Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior, again accompanied by the Carnival Band.
This CD is a treasure trove of hymns by Wesley, sung to intriguing melodies, and accompanied by interesting instrumental combinations. Like the earlier collection, Prior’s ringing and earthy vocal lines are accompanied by an eclectic assortment of strings, winds, lutes and percussion, and, although hearty declamation is what lingers in my ears after a few listenings, poignancy and quiet reverence also have a place. Many of the tune and word matches are less familiar to contemporary listeners. Others, such as Jesus, Lover of my Soul, sung to ABERYSTWYTH, and Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise (LLANFAIR) use tunes that are often sung today.
Come On, My Partners in Distress, with its rough-hewn harmony and seemingly unstudied vocal technique is followed by the wrenching Dead! Dead! The Child I Lov’d so Well. That hymn features a interpolation of John Dowland’s famous pavan, Lachrimae Antiquae. Arranger Andrew Watts preserves the call-and-response structure of Hail the Day and Soldiers of Christ Arise, (a feature usually passed over on a regular Sunday morning), offers a folk-picking accompaniment in the song Come Away to the Skies, and presents a number of other hymns in a gallery band style so effectively used in Sing Lustily and with Good Courage. But it’s My God, I Am Thine that is running on Repeat Play in my brain. Combining elements of full band (including military drum), a capella, solo, and call-and-response, it makes me feel that this is the kind of life and vitality that we can experience when we sing hymns together.
Of course, sometimes to “choose life” means to choose a classic hymn and present it in familiar musical garb. But sometimes to renew and revitalize the way we experience a hymn means to consider it in a different light—and that might mean playing it as it might have been originally been played. Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band’s Paradise Found succeeds in doing just that.
Looking ahead to Christmas (it’s never too soon for church musicians and Christmas gift buyers) Prior and company have also recorded several CDs of Christmas carols, all with a similar eclectic mix: A Tapestry of Carols and Carols and Capers.
Some websites:
