God's Grandeur
SATB choral/organ score
PEL2080-Choir and Organ
A SETTING OF THE GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS POEM FOR SATB CHOIR AND ORGAN.
in this moving and complex setting of Hopkins' sonnet, 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 splendour of creation and God's love, even in humanity's apparent, self-absorbed disregard of eternal grace. Halley's musical setting is strong, at times angular and difficult, but ultimately redemptive.
Commissioned on behalf of St. James United Church, Montréal to commemorate the restoration of Casavant, opus 1608, 2011-2012.
Video
Notes
Included in the Pelagosmusic recording "In The Wide Awe And Wisdom", with Keramion Singers, directed by Paul Halley (PEL1006).
Texts
God's Grandeur
Words: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1899)
Music: Paul Halley (1952 - )
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.
