God's Grandeur

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God's Grandeur - by Paul Halley
Publication Details

Catalogue Number -
PEL2080 SATB

Voicing/Instrumentation -
SATB Choir with
Organ accompaniment

Level of Difficulty - Difficult

Uses/Season -
Concert, Service Anthem

Duration -
6:30 mins

Pages Music -
16 pages music - 24 page booklet

Format -
SATB/organ
choral octavo

Copyright Year - 2012

SATB perusal - pages 1-3 of 16

Description/Remarks

A moving and complex setting of the immortal poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Halley conveys the rigour and depth of the text with musical word painting that moves through descriptions of the harshness of the industrial age to the sublimity of heaven. The text reveals Hopkins' powerful witness to the spendour of creation and God's love, even in humanity's apparent, self-abosrbed disregard of eternal grace. Halley's musical setting is strong, at times angular and difficult, but ultimately redemptive.

This setting continues the theme of forward planetary movement that is evident in many of the other texts of compositions on the recording In The Wide Awe And Wisdom CD (2017)

Excerpt:
"And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -"

Commissioned on behalf of St. James United Church, Montréal to commemorate the resoratioin of Casavant, opus 1608, 2011-2012

__________________________________________________

Recorded for the
Pelagos double CD set

In The Wide Awe And Wisdom
PEL1006 CD

Youtube
8. 6:21
God's Grandeur
Words: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Music: P. Halley

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CHORAL SCORES SATB - PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ARE ORDERING THE CORRECT SCORE
PEL2080 SATB-PDF DOWNLOAD	Choral score SATB/organ Digital download with license for 24 reprints. Please order multiple bundles if you require more than 24 reprints.	$48.00 license per 24 reprints	Add to cart: SATB Choral PDF Digital download NO DEALERS, PLEASE.
PEL2080 SATB-PUB PUBLISHED	Choral score SATB/organ Minimum Order 40 scores. This is a custom order printed item. Takes two weeks. Ships to U.S. addresses only.	$4.60/unit price	Add to cart: SATB Choral Published Minimum order: 40

Text

God's Grandeur

Words:
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-99)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.