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Lift up your hearts - Music From
the St Louis Jesuits Vol 1
Be Not Afraid, Dufford; Behold The Wood, Schutte;
City Of God, Schutte; Come To The Water, Foley; Glory To God, Foley;
Here I Am, Lord , Schutte; Lift Up Your Hearts, O'Connor; Like A Shepherd,
Dufford; One Bread, One Body, Foley; Sing To The Mountains, Dufford;
This Alone, Manion; Though The Mountains My Fall, Schutte. |
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Many of us have been singing these hymns
and scripture based songs for years without realising the debt we owe to
the collective talents of Dan Schutte, John Foley, S.J., Bob Dufford, and
Roc O'Connor, S.J., who collectively were the St Louis Jesuits. The
contrast between how they perform their own material and how we have grown
used to hearing it in our own communities is very marked indeed. To
realise that 'Here I am Lord' was intended by its writer, Daniel Schutte,
to be sung as a dialogue between a single voice, posing God's questions;
"whom shall I send?" and the rest of the community, responding to God with
"Here I am Lord, is it I Lord?" is quite startling when one first
encounters it.
The entire collection draws very strongly on scripture for both
inspiration and expression and the songs vary in style from the soft rock,
complete with tom tom intro, of 'Lift Up Your Hearts' through the
triumphant "Glory to God", possibly the best Gloria for guitar and voices
ever written, to the meditative and extremely powerful 'Behold the Wood'
which has become a standard on Good Friday in many parishes especially
when sung without accompaniment. How many parish music groups would think
to try organ and guitars when singing "One Bread, One Body" which is
popularly thought to be strictly a 'guitar number'. Perhaps we should all
draw on this as inspiration to try to get our organs and guitarists to
play together more often!
The St Louis Jesuits wrote and, as individuals, continue to write, for
contemporary instruments and for untrained voices making their material
eminently suitably for Sunday Mass. But with a little extra work and
thought by singers and instrumentalists the material can also be of great
use outside of a Eucharistic context. To listen to any of these pieces as
they were intended to be played and sung by the writers can deepen our
appreciation of how they might be used in our Churches.
Also available is an Octavo packet of the score for each track containing
as a minimum for each song; keyboard, SATB, chords and very often
descants and harmony parts for a variety of solo instruments as well
as extremely useful 'performance notes'. An interesting aside
is the way that the original writer has, in some instances, e.g. Be
Not Afraid amongst others, reworked the original lyric (which is on
the CD and in nearly all hymn books) to make the language less exclusive
thus 'we may speak our words in foreign lands' rather than 'to foreign
men' or we may be asked to 'Lift up your hearts to the Lord, in praise
of God's mercy' rather than 'in praise of His mercy.' An interesting
point in the inclusive/exclusive language debate; when the actual
hymn writer has changed her/his own lyrics; which version do we respect?
Lift up your hearts is available from Decani Music www.decanimusic.co.uk
or, via the internet direct from the publishers
www.ocp.org also available are Let Heaven Rejoice and Lord of
Light which extend the collection that starts with Lift Up Your Hearts. |
