I subscribe to the Yahoo email list for lay-clerks\/choral scholars, and the following is adapted from a reply I recently made to a query on the list. There was a request for anthems associated with St. Paul.<\/p>\n
When I last sang Though I speak with the tongues of men<\/i> by Bairstow (which I find pretty tedious), I reflected how few decent settings of words by St Paul there are. I think it’s probably Paul’s own fault for writing in long, rambling sentences (whichever language or translation you use).<\/p>\n
The best settings of Paul I can think of are in the Messiah<\/i>, but even then they aren’t all high points. How often do you hear ‘If God be for us’ done, except in totally uncut performances? And even among the answers [posted to the email list], Ireland’s Greater Love<\/i> is a mishmash of words from various books of the Bible and only partly Paul, and the Christus factus est<\/i> text occurs in Paul’s letters but is probably not his own words.<\/p>\n
(An addition: I was once told of an intriguing setting of 1 Corinthians 13 by someone like Per Norgard, by someone who had performed it, but I’m not sure whether it has been published or recorded.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I subscribe to the Yahoo email list for lay-clerks\/choral scholars, and the following is adapted from a reply I recently made to a query on the list. There was a request for anthems associated with St. Paul. When I last … Continue reading