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Track(s) taken from CDP12101

Thy hand, O God, has guided – Thornbury

First line:
Thy hand, O God, has guided
composer
NEH 485
author of text
NEH 485

Wells Cathedral Choir, Malcolm Archer (conductor), Rupert Gough (organ)
Recording details: June 1999
Wells Cathedral, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: November 1999
Total duration: 3 minutes 33 seconds
 

Reviews

‘The time spent listening to it has been delightful. Tone, enunciation, resourcefulness of arrangement and accompaniment, all are exemplary’ (Gramophone)
Towards the end of the nineteenth century many Christians thought the Church to be in great danger, from without—from the acts of politicians, the development of science, especially Darwin’s Theory of Evolution—and from within as new ideas were put forward on the nature of the biblical record of the faith and as changes in worship were introduced. Such hymns as this one by E H Plumptre and ‘The Church’s one foundation’ were intended to bolster up the faithful. It is unlikely that this hymn would have been such a success had it not been given in 1898 this tune, ‘Thornbury’, written for a choirs’ festival at St Paul’s Cathedral. It is a fine confident melody, with the final ‘One Church, one Faith, one Lord’ sung emphatically on the most important notes of the scale (the fifth and the tonic). Basil Harwood was a church-music composer of some importance at the turn of the century, being organist of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. He was brought up in south Gloucestershire and most of his tunes have names from those parts. He went to school for a short time in Thornbury, a town some twelve miles north of Bristol.

from notes by Alan Luff © 1999

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