Please turn to number 66 and join with the clarinets in “Wide Open Are They Hands”.
Number: 66
First Line: Wide Open Are Thy Hands
Name: LEOMINSTER
Meter: S.M.D.
Tempo: In moderate time
Music: George William Martin, 1828-1881
Arranged by Arthur S. Sullivan, 1842-1900
Text: Ascribed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1091-1153
Tr. Charles Porterfield Krauth, 1823-83
Clarinet Arrangement: 066-wideopenarethyhands
Another one where when I was transcribing it, it seemed like it was going to be not all that exciting to play, but in execution I think it turned out pretty cool.
St. Bernard of Clarivaux was a very important guy in the Middle Ages.
Bernard of Clairvaux (Latin: Bernardus Claraevallensis), O.Cist (1090 – 20 August 1153) was a Frenchabbot and the primary reformer of the Cistercian order.
After the death of his mother, Bernard sought admission into the Cistercian order. “Three years later, he was sent to found a new abbey at an isolated clearing in a glen known as the Val d’Absinthe, about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southeast of Bar-sur-Aube. According to tradition, Bernard founded the monastery on 25 June 1115, naming it Claire Vallée, which evolved into Clairvaux. There Bernard would preach an immediate faith, in which the intercessor was the Virgin Mary.”[1] In the year 1128, Bernard attended the Council of Troyes, at which he traced the outlines of the Rule of the Knights Templar,[a] which soon became the ideal of Christian nobility.
…
After the Christian defeat at the Siege of Edessa, the pope commissioned Bernard to preach the Second Crusade. The last years of Bernard’s life were saddened by the failure of the crusaders, the entire responsibility for which was thrown upon him. Bernard died at the age of 63, after 40 years as a monk. He was the first Cistercian placed on the calendar of saints, and was canonized by Pope Alexander III on 18 January 1174. In 1830 Pope Pius VIII bestowed upon Bernard the title “Doctor of the Church“.
The text is pretty moving, as well.
1 Wide open are Thy hands,
Paying with more than gold
The awful debt of guilty men,
Forever and of old.2 Ah, let me grasp those hands,
That we may never part,
And let the power of their blood
Sustain my fainting heart.3 Wide open are Thine arms,
A fallen world t’embrace;
To take to love and endless rest
Our whole forsaken race.4 Lord, I am sad and poor,
But boundless is Thy grace;
Give me the soul transforming joy
For which I seek Thy face.5 Draw all my mind and heart
Up to Thy throne on high,
And let Thy sacred Cross exalt
My spirit to the sky.6 To these, Thy mighty hand,
My spirit I resign;
Living, I live alone to Thee,
And, dying, I am Thine.
