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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Sunday Afternoon Music Video: I Know that My Redeemer Lives



I’m not sure Charles Wesley or George Frideric Handel imagined this hymn, inspired by Job 19:25, taking quite this form, but the glories of Easter are surely made present. Charles Wesley (who with his brother John) founded the Methodists, composed over 6000 hymns. Wesley might have been more than a bit annoyed with Eaton’s reworking of his piece. The preface to the 1779 Methodist Hymnal carries a warning from John Wesley:
I beg leave to mention a thought which has been long upon my mind, and which I should long ago have inserted in the public papers, had I not been unwilling to stir up a nest of hornets. Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honour to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them, for they are really not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore, I must beg of them these two favours: either to let them stand just as they are, to take things for better or worse, or to add the true reading in the margin, or at the bottom of the page, that we may no longer be accountable either for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men.
We sang yet another setting of Wesley's words to close out the octave of Easter today - what did you community send you forth singing?

7 comments:

  1. We sang one of my favorite Easter hymns today - "Thine be the glory" (youtube vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZz5fO2e1Cc).

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  2. "The nonsense or the doggerel..."

    :-)

    Well said, John.

    He and Charles might not have liked it, but I admit that I do.

    We sang, among other things, "I Will Celebrate."

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  3. thought we mice would be playing while the big cats are away ... but no - we are being so boringly mature in their absence. Mmmm ...must be old age!

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  4. lorna, sigh...in 12 days I will pass one of those age milestones!

    parodie...thanks for sharing both hymn and the video!

    And singing owl, I certainly liked it, John's prescient comments aside.

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  5. Thanks, Michelle--this brought a smile and welcome rest to a busy morning. (Sunday is computer-off Sabbath so I just saw it).

    Yesterday was house mass and we sang "O Fili et Filiae"--Thomas verses instead of women at the tomb ones. Rejoicing in all those alleluias, plus rounds of the Taize Gloria and Celtic Alleluia. (I didn't know the latter could work as a canon, but Nicholas' proposal proved quite successful).

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  6. We rocked...
    - Let God Arise and Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)
    - You Never Let Go and All Over the World (Matt Redman)
    - Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle)

    OK, not Wesley... but God was in the House. :)

    Deb

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  7. However, we did NOT sing...
    "Ken Leeee"

    Deb

    (Lorna's comment made me misbehave, Just a LEETLE!)

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