Sunday, August 06, 2006

Be thou my vision

Sorry to go all religious on you but.... I took Richard's phone to church this morning & recorded our choir singing an exerpt from "Be thou my vision" an ancient & beautiful Celtic hymn found in an Irish eighth century manuscript
translated by Mary Byrne 1880 - 1931
verse by Eleanor Hull 1860 - 1935.
Unfortunately the file type isn't supported, so you can't hear us doing it... but you can go here to this link to hear a different version from this website still lovely.........

Be though my vision, O Lord of my heart,
be all else but naught to me, save that thou art,
be thou my best thought in the day and the night,
both waking and sleeping, thy presence my light.

Ours was "...a beautiful setting by Bob Chilcott, one of the most active composers in Britain today.
He was both a chorister & choral scholar in the choir of Kings College, Cambridge where he sang the Pie Jesu on the reknowned 1967 recording of the Faure Requiem conducted by Sir David Willcocks.
Between 1985 & 1997 he was one of the famous King's singers and now conducts his music throughout the world."
These words written by our learned Organist David Uden

Gorgeous stuff.

7 comments:

kelly said...

I'm sooo jealous. I am a sucker for high church Anglican choral music. On related note, I spent some time in Pennsylvania attending a Mennonite church and the harmonies are imprinted on their souls, I think ... listening to an entire congregation of 200 singing "When Peace Like a River" acapella in 4-part-harmony from memory sends chills down my spine.

JoeyJoJo said...

I'm going to put in a request at Church for "Peace like a river". You've sent shivers down my spine too.
I'd love to know more about the time in the Mennonite Church.
Maybe a blog post???

Andy Rogers said...

Just stumbled across this post - i'm always on the look out for different versions of Be Thou My Vision.

Cheers - Andy

JoeyJoJo said...

Hi Andy, nice to see you here. It is indeed a beautiful song.

be thou my vision said...

I really love be thou my vision song.. It is my favorite praise song.

Anonymous said...

Change the file extension to an acceptable file (like .doc) and upload it that way. Then just blog it and tell people to change it back.

Would love to hear it, maybe send it to me? -- mybaylive@live.co.uk

Thanks for the post though :)

JoeyJoJo said...

Thanks mybaylive it's been a while since I recorded it and I've lost the recording now. There are still some beautiful versions on youtube though