Speaking of copyright disasters (see yesterday), Gio has been fossicking in the bowels of his church and found many treasures from long ago, including a hymn book called Festive People.
He has scanned it for us.
In amongst songs of all sorts and provenances is this one by Paul Keyte and Gerald Crooks, which he has kindly put into sheet music for us.
He also made a MIDI, which is above and beyond…
That didn’t stop me making my own backing:
1 When I behold your works, O Lord,
The moon and stars above.
I wonder why you care for me
And show me all your love.
2 What is this care you show for man
That all these gifts surround him.
You’ve made him little less than God
And with your glory crowned him.
Bridge
And thus we too would come to you
And offer what we can.
Together with this bread and wine
The lowly gifts of man.
3 And as this bread and wine is changed
To make them one with you,
So change our hearts and let your blood
Our very souls bedew.
If a was a crochety, pedantic old cuss, I would rewrite this song thusly:
1 When we behold your works, O Lord,
The moon and stars above.
We wonder why you care for us
And show us all your love.
2 What is this care you show for us
That all these gifts surround us.
You’ve made us little less than God
And with your glory crowned us.
Bridge
And so we too would come to you
And offer everything.
Together with this bread and wine
The lowly gifts we bring.
3 And as this bread and wine is changed
To make them one with you,
So change our hearts and let your blood
Our very lives renew.
I fear I will be indulging in more hymnal archeology with this and other hymnals in Gio’s trove so many thanks.
Oh no, my church would never hold this.
This I found in Clontarf Aboriginal College, which was under the Christian brothers until 2009.
I find the idea of such music anywhere near the Mass is shocking. But it was some of the more tame things that church has seen. (Think of the movie Bran Nue Dae).
As One Voice is regarded as abhorrent in traditional circles, but it was obviously a clear improvement on what we had before.
Seriously! The Beatles?
What was in our thuribles!
But anyway, I’m keen to figure out what in the world got us so far off track and how we can fix it.
Anyone who could give me any leads on the Perth content, I’d love to learn about it!
That book is a fantastic find!
For all it’s a copyright nightmare, at least there’s a section at the front acknowledging sources: Most from that era don’t even manage this.
There was some whacky stuff, for sure. But if you look at some of the saccharine devotional hymns used in the 1950s, the Beatles seem like master-composers. We are moving forward.
Folk Mass Era was definitely problematic in terms of commercial copyright. Looking on Trove for clues, it seems that the whole point of folk music was to be shared by ear and not be sold. It goes against the whole point of ‘people’s music’.
Lots of my attachment to the relics of this bygone era is the fact that people put so much love and work into making all of their resources, writing out music, decorating transparencies, as well as having so much fun messing around. I have some music from composers who personally wrote them out to share.
We also had a similar phase for the Latin Mass. The amount of labour that went into hunting down beautiful music, rescuing statues and liturgical items from the rubbish, making mass reading sheets from old missals, trying to develop a community from people who live hundreds of kilometres apart. It’s the same thing.
I have the Australian SSPX hymnal from 2005 and it also has the really useful index of sources. So much easier to trace the hymns than through copyrights.
The incredibly tacky Catholic devotional hymns annoy me greatly. They literally all sound the same – 19th century. St. Basil’s Hymnal was a really bad offender. The ‘Gregorian Chant’ from around that era is an abomination, too. Somehow they make that sound circusy.
We are moving forward.