This morning’s middle hymn text is reprinted under onelicense.net #A-717945. The Gift of Love – words by Hal Hopson, © 1972 Hope Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

♪ Music notes ♪

LOVE NEVER ENDS was commissioned by Fairlawn congregant Ron Nickle for his wife Sharon, in celebration of their 10th wedding anniversary, August 29, 2002. This morning’s recording is from a concert given by the Fairlawn Avenue Chamber Choir at FESTIVAL 500 in St. John’s, NFLD, July 2005.

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958) was an English composer and some-time organist and choir director. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believing in making music as available as possible to everybody, he wrote many works for amateur and student performance. Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and both small and large-scale choral pieces. Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams’ personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman (Ursula Wood), who, by all accounts, seems to have been adopted by his wife Adeline in the most amicable way, to be her successor, and who did indeed become his second wife when Adeline passed away at the age of eighty. Vaughan Williams composed his last symphony just months before his death at the age of eighty-five.

BIANCO DA SIENA (c.1350-1434) was an Italian mystic poet. He wrote many religiously-inspired poems that were widely read in the Middle Ages. Over one hundred and twenty-two of his poems were published, spanning more than twenty thousand lines of verse. The Irish born curate Richard F. Littledale translated many of these poems into English that have since come into common use in the church, including “Come Down, O Love Divine” (known as “Discendi, Amor Sante” in Italian.)

RICHARD F. LITTLEDALE (1833-1891) was born in Dublin. He graduated first class in classics and divinity at Trinity College Dublin, and then continued his studies at Oxford. Although he was curate of two churches in England, he suffered from chronic ill-health for much of his life, and so took little part in any parochial duties, devoting himself mainly to writing and translating.

O YE WHO TASTE THAT LOVE IS SWEET was composed for the wedding of Laura Pedersen and Christopher Bowman, July 8, 2006.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894) was born in London, the youngest child in an extraordinarily gifted family. Her father was the Italian poet Gabriele Rossetti, and her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti also became a poet and a painter. Rossetti’s first poems were written in 1842 and printed in her grandfather’s private press. In 1850, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she contributed seven poems to the Pre-Raphaelite journal “The Germ”, which had been founded by her brother William Michael and his friends. Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic religious lyrics, and her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling. Her collection of poetry called “Goblin Market and Other Poems” was published in 1862, and it established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry.

HAL HOPSON (b. 1933) is a full time composer and church musician residing in Cedar Park, Texas. He has over 3000 published works, which comprise almost every musical form in church music, including anthems for children, youth, and adult choir, as well as compositions for organ, piano, harpsichord and handbells. He is also active as a conductor and clinician, having conducted choral festivals and workshops in the United States, Europe and Asia. Hopson’s cantata, God with Us, was one of the few compositions chosen to be placed in a capsule during the American Bicentennial in 1976. The capsule will be opened at the Tercentennial in 2076, and will be heard again as a representative piece of American choral composition of this century.

UPON YOUR HEART was commissioned by Dr. Thomas Porter and dedicated to his wife Doreen on the occasion of their 45th wedding anniversary, September 4, 1999.

ROWLAND H. PRICHARD (1811-1887) was a Welsh musician, born near Bala in North Wales. Well known for his gifted voice and for his work as a choir director, he wrote a number of hymn tunes, many of which were included in Welsh periodicals of the time. After living most of his life in his home town, Prichard moved to Holywell, where he became a loom-tender’s assistant at the Welsh Flannel Manufacturing Company’s mill. He is best remembered today as the composer of the hymn tune Hyfrydol , to which the hymn text “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” is generally sung.

CHARLES WESLEY (1707-1788) was an English leader of the Methodist movement, most widely known for writing about 6,500 hymn texts. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and after graduating with a master’s degree in classical languages and literature, Charles followed his father and brother into Anglican orders in 1735. He was a younger brother of Methodist founder John Wesley, and Anglican cleric Samuel Wesley the Younger, the father of musician Samuel Wesley, and the grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley.