Please turn to number 54 (First Tune) and join with the clarinets in, “O Thou, Who By A Star”.
Number: 54 (First Tune)
First Line: O Thou, Who By A Star
Name: CREDITON.
Meter: C.M.
Tempo: In moderate time
Music: Thomas Clark, 1775-1859
Text: John Mason Neale, 1818-66
I still find it kind of weird that so much information about these hymns is up for grabs on the Wikipedia. I also, growing up in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, did not notice how many of our hymns were Anglican.
In any case, John Mason Neale, from the wikipedia:
Neale was born in London, his parents being the Revd Cornelius Neale and Susanna Neale, daughter of John Mason Good. He was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where (despite being said to be the best classical scholar in his year) his lack of ability in mathematics prevented him taking an honours degree.[1] Neale was named after the Puritan cleric and hymn writer John Mason (1645–94), of whom his mother Susanna was a descendant.[2]
The interesting thing, though, about Neale, was that he was a scholar of religious traditions, which didn’t exactly endear him to the Anglican church.
In 1854 Neale co-founded the Society of Saint Margaret, an order of women in the Church of England dedicated to nursing the sick. Many Anglicans in his day, however, were very suspicious of anything suggestive of Roman Catholicism. Only nine years earlier, John Henry Newman had encouraged Catholic practices in Anglican churches and had ended up becoming a Roman Catholic. This encouraged the suspicion that anyone such as Neale was an agent of the Vatican, assigned to destroy Anglicanism by subverting it from within. Once, Neale was attacked and mauled at a funeral of one of the Sisters. From time to time unruly crowds threatened to stone him or to burn his house. He received no honour or preferment in England, and his doctorate was bestowed by Trinity College (Connecticut). However, his basic goodness eventually won the confidence of many who had fiercely opposed him, and the Sisterhood of St Margaret survived and prospered.
“O Thou, Who by a Star (dids’t guide the wise men on their way)” is a very short hymn, only 8 measures, however it is slightly annoying in that untransposed, for choir, it is written with 5 sharps. This means, once transposed for clarinets, it ends up with 7 sharps, aka ALL YOUR SHARPS ARE BELONG TO US. It is, fortunately, not an over complicated hymn.
Clarinet arrangement: 054a-othouwhobyastar
Doubled each part, arranging them across the sound stage. Applied the Audacity, “Medium Room” Reverb Effect.
