I'm in need to supplementing it with at least one Long Meter hymn tune, obviously in an Early American idiom (something specifically Shaker would be best). I'm only passably familiar with the sources like the Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony, and don't happen to have either to hand at the moment.
Well, you might need to specify trochaic or iambic...
"Chester" by Willam Billings is one of the cornerstones of American song - it was the tune for the first widely known patriotic hymn of the War for Independence - the first (unofficial) national anthem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_St8bsx31A&feature=player_embedded (performed a bit too slow and polished; from what we can tell, New Englanders liked to shake the rafters with a coarser, rougher approach - they were not known for dulcet hymn-singing, more like somewhat musical barking mixed with habits from the sea shanty)
And if you're up to a fuguing tune, "Cowper" is a classic:
I remember being so enamored of Billings as an undergrad, particularly with "Chester." Prob'ly some recalcitrant Protestant gene from my maternal forebears. Even did it once at a Mass, IIRC. Can't remember how I justified that. But I have to say that "Chester" is not only extremely martial in text, but also in a musical context as well. I don't think that would jibe with the rest of AW's Mass. I'd stay with "Southern Harmony" type sources.
Context: For reasons that elude me, Praise God From blah blah blah has essentially become a part of the Ordinary (or "Service Music") 'round these Episcopal parts. Regardless of season or setting, we usually sing it to BORING OLD HUNDREDTH, which i'm super tired of.
(Last Advent, in conjuction with my Mass of St. Elizabeth we sang it to CONDITOR ALME, which the whole setting is based loosely based on).
We are switching to my Blessed Fire for the Season of/after Pentecost (for reasons not having to do with puns) and I thought it would be nice to swap out the Doxology tune.
The Old Hundredth is a classic text because it's *not* emphatically iambic. And "Chester" is a classic tune because, while it looks trochaic, it can easily accommodate a not-too-iambic text. Marriages of that sort are the hymodist's dream.
I don't think Chester is all that martial a tune; being Billings, it's actually got lyrical aspects (unlike Cowper, the only lyrical thing of which is the dotted figure). The text, you betcha!
Adam, at my Anglican/Episcopal work church, we sing the doxology after the offertory to Vigiles et Sancti (Lasst uns erfreuen) and Duke Street, to name a few. I've never tried it to Conditor, but in Lent and Advent we default to "All things come of Thee, O Lord..." set to what I call 'that unknown Em Anglican chant' that I found hand-copied in the bottom of a file cabinet drawer.
[But this is a congregation that sings 'lustily and with a good courage' on all of the seven Ordinaries that we rotate around and the eight-ten Anglican chants likewise, so it doesn't faze them to sing this set of words with that tune. (We always do "O come, Creator Spirit, come" to Duke Street.)
In some funny ways, though, they are hidebound. If the celebrant intones the Gloria in a less-than-accurate way, when the organist plays the chord to get the Gloria back on track, if he or she holds the chord a little bit too long, the whole congregation launches into the Scottish Gloria, 739, even if the chord isn't F major.
(And the newly-minted deacon never did remember that he needs to know what key the recessional hymn was in, in order to find a reasonable starting pitch for the Eastertide Dismissal. If you start on middle C, oy--it gets really interesting. Other than that, he's sterling in liturgy--chants like a dream. I'm trying to pray all the clerics there into the Ordinariate.)]
You might like ALSTONE, UXBRIDGE, or HIGHER GROUND (LMD). I don't know from Shaker, but these all sound like they belong in a little white clapboard Presbyterian church.
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