Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

My husband, older daughter and I have just joined our local church choir. Imagine my surprise and delight when at our first evensong we begin to sing Ken Naylor's hymn tune Coe Fen to the words 'How Shall I Sing that Majesty" (that we hadn't practiced on the preceding Friday night!). I remember singing it at school a couple of times but never since. It is a fabulous tune, rousingly old-fashioned in parts but with a couple of modern twists and a superb organ accompaniment. Anyone else sung it outside CH?

I've never heard it outside CH but what a maginificent tune it is...

cj wrote:My husband, older daughter and I have just joined our local church choir. Imagine my surprise and delight when at our first evensong we begin to sing Ken Naylor's hymn tune Coe Fen to the words 'How Shall I Sing that Majesty" (that we hadn't practiced on the preceding Friday night!). I remember singing it at school a couple of times but never since. It is a fabulous tune, rousingly old-fashioned in parts but with a couple of modern twists and a superb organ accompaniment. Anyone else sung it outside CH?

I'll have to look it up, I'm not one of these people that can remember a tune from the name - I need someone to hum it (tough on an internet forum) or dots (equally difficult). I'll go away and do some research. If I remember.

Ruthie-Baby wrote:I need someone to hum it ...

Dum dum dee dum, dum dum dum dee dum ....

Ken Naylor's tune Coe Fen has made it into the latest CofE hymn book, Common Praise, which effectively replaces Hymns A&M. Ken wrote a descant to the tune for a meeting of the Music Masters Assocation hed at CH when Peter Allwood was its president. asik the descant has yet to be published outside CH although it may well be in the new CH Hymn Book. Our choir and congregation at Cartmel Priory in Cumbria sing the tune with great gusto. I always start to choke in verse three. Must be the many funerals at which I have heard it sung - including that for Ken Naylor.

It certainly is a masterful tune - I think that the school choir may have recorded it when I was at CH - I will have to see if it's on one of my CDs...

I heard it on Songs of Praise a year or so ago. (Not that I watch songs of praise you understand - it's just that it's usually on around the time of the News on a Sunday evening when I'm cooking dinner)

cj wrote:

Ruthie-Baby wrote:I need someone to hum it ...

Dum dum dee dum, dum dum dum dee dum ....

thank you so much.

jdshippen wrote:... the latest CofE hymn book, Common Praise, which effectively replaces Hymns A&M.

Is that really true? All the CofE churches I've been to recently use the New English Hymnal, I've never heard of Common Praise.

We use something else, but it is appalling and I think they may change this soon - our choirmaster and organist is threatening to burn all the hymn books!

cj wrote:

Ruthie-Baby wrote:I need someone to hum it ...

Dum dum dee dum, dum dum dum dee dum ....

Ah! Yes! Thanks Catherine - I think I've got it now.

Great Plum wrote:We use something else, but it is appalling and I think they may change this soon - our choirmaster and organist is threatening to burn all the hymn books!

Well the NEH is a bit like A&M revised, but they've brought some of the tunes down a bit so there's only an occasional top E for the poor sops (or even poorer altos if it's unison!)

Ours has 'modern' stuff in it as well - but they reworded all the good hymns to make them useless frankly!

Great Plum wrote:Ours has 'modern' stuff in it as well - but they reworded all the good hymns to make them useless frankly!

in that case you need the NEH. There's only a few reworded hymns that I've noticed...

Why does no one accept that the word 'man' refers to huMANkind...???

Because the PC brigade are there to irritate us!