Thaxted - four part choral harmony
  • Tournemire
    Posts: 74
    Any one have a four part choral copy of verse 2 of Thaxted - O God, Beyond All Praising? Verse 2 of the 3 verse version begin as follow: The flow'r of earthly splendor in time must surely die...
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,157
    I think the "hymn concertatus" arrangement by Proulx (GIA) contains that.
  • hartleymartin
    Posts: 1,447
    Is Gustac Holst's original harmonisation available online somewhere? I see lots of variations and I would like to get my hands on his original version.
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    There's a choral arrangement of THAXTED by Paul Hayward on cpdl.org (attached) that looks promising.

    (The text is I vow to thee, my country.)
    Thaxted.pdf
    242K
    Thanked by 2JonathanKK Heath
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    How does one pronounce "Thaxted," anyway? Is it one syllable, "Thax't," or two, "Thax-ted"…?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    If you accent the "Thax," and swallow the "xted," you can make people hear whichever one they think is right, and you always look smart.
    Thanked by 4Mark M. Ally SkirpR tomjaw
  • JonathanKKJonathanKK
    Posts: 542
    I don't know if it will be of use to you, but here (attached below) is the version which I use for the organ accompaniment when we sing this tune.

    When I wrote this, the goal was to do a strict 4 part harmonization which retained the bass line and feel of the original orchestral version ; the reduction to three voices in the middle was then my solution to keeping the bass line and not having excessive overlap of middle voices.

    Note: In the third to last measure, the Bb would have been 8va lower, except that the organ of course does not have this note. With a choir, it would probably also be good to have the bass line hop back to the higher octave for the return of the "A" section.

    Vale in Domino,
    Jonathan
    Chorale - Thaxted.pdf
    13K
    Thanked by 3canadash CHGiffen Joseph Michael
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 756
    Two syllables - probably: cf traditional pronunciation of English place names like 'Daventry' (Daintry) and of surnames like Cholmondeley ('Chumley') and Tucker ('Tribe').
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Worstershire is a classic.
    What I'd like Ian to account for is how "Saint" degraded to "Sunt" with the shortest possible vowel exposition ever, and occasionally with the "t" dentalized almost to silence?
    "Oy, Chollie, off to Mass at Sun(t) Bede's, what?"
    Thanked by 1IanW
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    Is Gustav Holst's original harmonisation available online somewhere? I see lots of variations and I would like to get my hands on his original version.

    I think we've been over this before, but here's the skinny on Thaxted:

    The tune for Thaxted was originally drawn from the stately middle section of the Jupiter movement of Holst's orchestral suite The Planets (1914–1916). Holst himself adapted the melody in 1921 for a setting of "I vow to thee, my country" for unison voices with string orchestra accompaniment, i.e., no SATB harmony. This adapted melody did not appear as the hymn tune Thaxted until Ralph Vaughan Williams (a close friend of Holst) included it in Songs of Praise (no. 188) in 1926.

    The attached three scores are of (1) the Thaxted section of the Jupiter movement from The Planets (full orchestral score), (2) hymn tune Thaxted, with piano reduction, and (3) "I vow to thee, my country." The fourth attachment is of Canon Eric James's notes on "I vow to thee, my country."
    Holst-Jupiter-Thaxted section.pdf
    663K
    Holst-Thaxted.pdf
    46K
    Holst-I vow to thee my country.pdf
    18K
    I vow to thee.pdf
    252K
    Thanked by 3JonathanKK Chris Garton-Zavesky tomjaw
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    If you open the first pdf, here's some audio to go with what you're seeing:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XC3z3KWRvSM#t=195s
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,464
    https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/thaxted-o-god-beyond-all-praising-alternative-harmonization-digital-sheet-music/21728721
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,703
    I see two ways of spelling Spring-Rice in the above files posted by CHGiffen ... Canon Eric James spells it with an R while the third .pdf edited by J.H. Fowler omits the R.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    !

    There is no hyphen, though.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Spring_Rice
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