I performed Tchaikovsky’s Hymn to the Trinity during an ordination service on Sunday night. There was more choral music at the first mass the following night: I sang Byrd’s Tu es Petrus for the first time and also a rare chance to sing And can it be?, one of the few evangelical hymns I miss.
My second dose of Tchaikovsky was WNO’s Mazeppa at the Bristol Hippodrome on Saturday night, but I’ll save that for another post.
I used to love the ‘Hymn to the Trinity’ and I guess I still would if I heard it sung really well. Sadly it is performed so often by Parish Churches in a rather indifferent way that it has lost its appeal. I suppose this makes me a bit of a musical snob. 😉
What speed did you take it? I’ve heard it Adagio and Presto and shades in between.
I haven’t heard or sung this piece often enough to have tired of it yet. This performance was fairly fast (the conductor favours fast tempi in general). It was done from an internet edition with slightly different words and underlay from what I’m used to so I had to be careful. I expect it would have sounded very English to a Russian (and not just from being sung in translation!); I would be interested to hear a Russian choir singing it.
…a rare chance to sing And can it be?
This, and a number of other favourites, have been given new currency by their inclusion in New English Praise, the supplement to the New English Hymnal published in May this year. It’s good to see Lift high the Cross (to Sydney Nicholson’s tune Crucifer) and also to have Kenneth Naylor’s stupendous Coe Fen for How shall I sing that Majesty?
I’ve sung And can it be? only once (at a confirmation at LSM some years back, where it had been requested by a candidate from a Methodist background, and on that occasion we sourced the words and tune (Sagina) from the Methodist Hymn Book.
i was wondering if you could send me a score with chords of the “hymn to the trinity” by tsaichovsky. we would like to sing it at our parish concert (Holy trinity parish, MAnila, Philippines) this coming may 5, 2007. This concert is for the preparation of our parish’s jubillee anniversary. we have only acquired of the score with 4 voices but without the chords. hope you could help us. thanks!
We used the CPDL edition which doesn’t have a piano reduction. When we needed accompaniment during rehearsal, our conductor would have score-read the vocal parts. Like all music written for the Orthodox Church, this piece is intended to be performed by voices alone.
As for Coe Fen, it’s a perfectly good tune but I feel a lot of the fuss about it is really saying ‘Look!! A good hymn tune’s been written in the last half century!’ Shouldn’t we be asking ‘Why aren’t there more?’