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Track(s) taken from CDP12105

Great is thy faithfulness – Faithfulness

First line:
Great is thy faithfulness
composer
author of text

Wells Cathedral Choir, Malcolm Archer (conductor), Rupert Gough (organ)
Recording details: November 2003
Wells Cathedral, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: August 2004
Total duration: 3 minutes 36 seconds
 

Reviews

‘The Wells Cathedral Choir again shows its stuff—and it's glorious … because of this choir's sturdy, full-bodied singing, both exuberant and reverent, and its natural, sensible, unaffected phrasing and enunciation. Hymn lovers need no encouragement or further discussion; these inspiring texts and timeless tunes speak for themselves’ (Classics Today)
This hymn is a meditation on two texts, that of James 1: 17 (‘with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning’) and Lamentations 3: 23 (‘his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness’). It encourages us to think of God as utterly reliable and secure, but not as static. In the seasons on earth and in the skies there is always movement, but always reliability. So too with God’s response to us; it is his ever-faithful response to our ever-changing situation, bringing us pardon, peace and strength.

The author was a teacher and journalist before becoming a Methodist minister in Kentucky. His health was insufficient for the role, and he later worked as an insurance salesman. He wrote over a thousand hymns. In 1923 he sent this and other hymns to the composer. Runyan was an important composer of sacred music. At the age of twenty-one he entered the Methodist ministry, and worked as a pastor and then an evangelist. He also served on the editorial staff of the Moody Bible Institute that took this hymn as their unofficial anthem.

from notes by Alan Luff © 2004

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