Music for Pentecost 5 — Sunday July 10 2022

King of Glory, King of Peace – Text: George Herbert (1593-1633) / Music: Joseph David Jones (1827-1870)

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“The model of a man, a gentleman, and a clergyman.” So wrote Samuel Coleridge of George Herbert (1593-1633), and well he might, for Herbert ranks among the finest poets of the 17th century. Of Herbert, the English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist and theologian Richard Baxter said, “He speaks to God like one that really believeth in God, and whose business in this world is most with God.” That expresses the direction of faith and trust one finds in the exquisitely beautiful lyric of King of glory, King of peace, our final hymn in church this Sunday, written by one who never considered that he was writing a hymn. The poem was printed posthumously in Herbert’s The Temple 1633 and headed simply “Praise.”

A tune to which this hymn is often set is Gwalchmai, the one with which it is paired in our hymn books. The tune is named for the Welsh bard who flourished c. 1150-90, and who is known chiefly by his spring song, “Gorhoffedd” (boasting). The composer of this tune, Joseph David Jones, was born at Bryngrygog in Montgomery, Wales, in 1827. His parents were so poor that they could only give him one year at school, and this he spent largely in learning all that he could about music. In 1847 some of his psalm tunes were published. The profits from this publication helped him to secure further training in London, and throughout Wales he gained great popularity as a composer, educator, and hymnal editor, until his death in 1870.

King of glory, King of peace,
I will love Thee;
and that love may never cease,
I will move Thee.
Thou hast granted my request,
Thou hast heard me;
Thou didst note my working breast,
Thou hast spared me.

Wherefore with my utmost art
I will sing Thee,
and the cream of all my heart
I will bring Thee.
Though my sins against me cried,
Thou didst clear me;
and alone, when they replied,
Thou didst hear me.

 

Seven whole days, not one in seven,
I will praise Thee;

in my heart, though not in heaven,
I can raise Thee.
Small it is, in this poor sort
to enroll Thee:
even eternity’s too short
to extol Thee.

Gerald Harder

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Music for Pentecost 4 — Sunday July 3 2022

Toccata in B minor – Eugène Gigout (1844-1925)

 

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Eugène Gigout (1844-1925) is a composer you are unlikely to have come across unless you happen to be an organist. For those of us in that particular category, Gigout is the composer of precisely three pieces: a Toccata, a Scherzo and a Grand Choeur Dialogué, the latter much beloved of British organists with loud Tuba stops.

Perhaps more significantly than his compositions, though, Gigout occupies a fascinating place as a pedagogue, most notably as a link between two composers non-organists will have heard of, both of whom nonetheless were organists at the fashionable church of La Madeleine in Paris. Gigout was a student of Saint-Saëns, and a teacher of Fauré. He followed Alexandre Guilmant as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire, as well as being organist at Saint-Augustin in Paris for no fewer than 62 years.

Eugène Gigout’s ever-popular Toccata in B minor, this Sunday’s postlude in church, employs every trick of the trade generally found in the French organ toccata. It is full of flourishes and figurations, deploys the usual powerful pedal part, and builds up to a striking conclusion. It remains one of the most admired and played concert pieces from the French organ repertoire. It is the fourth number of the Dix Pièces published in 1892.

Gerald Harder

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