March 9, 2025

There are at least 2 tunes used for Samuel Crossman's wonderful text, "My song is love unknown", and they are both beautiful melodies.  The one in our hymnal with that text is 458, the tune by John Ireland (1879-1962).  The prelude I will be playing uses the tune known as "Rhosymedre", by John Edwards (1806-1885).  It is equally beautiful, and does exist in our hymnal (587) but with a different text, one that we don't sing very often.  The setting that I'll play is one I sometimes play during communion, and is by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), who is very familiar to many of you.

In place of a processional hymn we will be using the Great Litany, appropriate for the First Sunday of Lent.  The Gospel hymn will be "Forty days and forty nights" (150), the well known 17th century tune with the famous 19th century text.

The anthem text is a paraphrase of Isaiah 55: 1-3, and is titled "Come, All Who Thirst". The original melody is by the Italian, Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842), but our clever arrangement is by the contemporary American, Hal H. Hopson.

Communion hymns are the  Afro-American spiritual, "In Christ there is no East nor West" (529), and 120 ("The sinless one to Jordan came"), which, though appropriate for this Sunday, is actually an Epiphany hymn.  

Closing, we will sing "Now let us all with one accord" (147-- note the text dates back to the 7th century).  I think everyone knows this 19th century melody!

The somewhat subdued postlude is a David Lasky (contemporary American) setting of a hymn not in our hymnal, "Christ, the life of all the living".  This is written in the "baroque" style; you might find similarities to J.S. Bach!