Te Deum at St Ebbe's Church in Oxford, 1949 or 50
  • Melissa Wiley
    Posts: 1
    Hello! I'm on a quest to track down a particular musical setting for the Te Deum. In Sheldon Vanauken's book, A Severe Mercy, Vanauken writes:

    "St. Ebbe's sang the Te Deum to a setting that made a triumphant proclamation of the line: "'Thou art the King of Glory, O-O-O-O-O Christ!'---the O's ascending to the mighty 'Christ!'"


    St. Ebbe's is a church in Oxford, described by Vanauken as "evangelical and Church of England." He attended St Ebbe's in the early 1950s. I would be very grateful for any information about which setting of the Te Deum he might have been referring to. I've looked at many (Stanford in C, Elgar, Boyce, and others, and none of them quite match Vanauken's description of the O-O-Os.

    Many thanks,
    Melissa Wiley
  • Daniel Bennett PageDaniel Bennett Page
    Posts: 834
    One of the two Te Deum settings by Benjamin Britten sticks in my head--Festal, I think.
  • Patricia Cecilia
    Posts: 397
    I also thought immediately of Britten's Festival Te Deum, the one in E major with the mixed meters. Splendid or over-the-top piece in English, depending on one's taste. Your singers must be absolute counting gurus (and your organist likewise) to do this piece well.
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