It has been a year and a half since St. Andrew’s moved from its building on St. Mary’s Road in Winnipeg. Early in 2012, I was busy sorting through and packing up the music library and wrote about some of my interesting finds in this post. There is still one more file folder I’d like to comment on – the one in the featured photo.
As often happens with me, this post has been simmering for awhile. I remember thinking when I first found this choir piece that it was so out of date, we’d never sing it again. So why didn’t I just toss it into the blue box for recycling? A little history: St. Andrew’s is an amalgamation of 2 previous congregations – Norwood Presbyterian (founded in 1904) and St. Vital Presbyterian (begun in 1956). Well, I realized this music was too old to have been part of the St. Vital choir music. That meant that it came from Norwood’s library and as such, I felt it was impo
rtant to keep it as a link back to our history. You can see the choir director’s writing on the folder, and inside, a very common error we’ve likely all made – putting the previous year in the date early in January.
The historical connection is important but in addition, this piece made me think about something else. The copyright date is 1938; the piece was sung twice in early 1939. What was happening in Canada back then? The Great Depression still held people in its dreadful grip. When I realized the words may have been (probably were) written in response to that, the piece became very dated to me. Does it seem like that to you? Here are the words, written by Rev. B. V. Tippett:
Father of All Eternal love, show me my task, I pray;
Help me, O Lord, to do the things that should be done today,
The plan of life for me unfold, Thy will I wish to do,
To follow Thee each hour I live, and stand forever, forever true.
O Father, hear my humble cry, help me to gladly give
My service, love and sacrifice, and praise Thee while I live.
Help me to build within my soul for all eternity,
The temple of the living God, and there to worship Thee!
In all fairness to Tippett, there are no real references to the Depression, or people looking for work, going hungry, etc. Maybe I’m reading more into the text than I should. For me the point is that it’s always good to look at choir pieces and hymns in the context and era in which they were written. Does that context have relevance today? Or would the piece be seen and heard as an outdated expression from another decade or century?
One example I can think of is “I vow to thee, my country” – text written by Cecil Spring-Rice in 1908 and revised in 1918 to reflect Britain’s terrible loss of life in WWI. More recent examples might include pieces written in response to 9/11 and other tragic events. These responses are a natural reaction I think, but do have a limited ‘shelf life’. Can you think of other examples?
