The traditional Irish melody known as ‘Slane’ is one of my favourite tunes. It is a lovely melody, shapely, largely pentatonic, with four phrases, each different but complementing each other beautifully. It starts relatively low in the compass, gradually climbs to a high point in the third phrase, and descends in the fourth phrase to end where it began. It is named after a village in Ireland’s County Meath. There’s an old legend, to do with St. Patrick, which Wikipedia will tell you about – but today it is a popular tourist spot, with ruins atop the hill, a castle (see images), and a distillery.
In hymn books the tune is found set to two sets of words: the old Irish poem ‘Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart’ and the much-loved twentieth century ‘Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy’, written by Joyce Anstruther (1901-53), under the pen-name Jan Struther, in 1931. Each hymn has a different number of syllables: ‘Be thou my vision’ has a neat 10 syllables in each line, but ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ has a few extra syllables, necessitating some extra notes and starting the last phrase in a different place. This may cause some confusion to congregations, but it does introduce a nice sense of flow to the melody.
I’ve written several pieces based on Slane – and am thinking of more. For church choirs I’ve made arrangements of each hymn in my series of easy-to-learn arrangements for small church choirs, ‘Colne Prayer and Praise’. Although the beginning of these arrangements are similar, they become different later as the mood of the poems, and the number of verses, are different. And, also primarily for use in church services, I have written a prelude/meditation on the tune for organ, and a fantasia for piano. And I’ve also written a piano accompaniment to the tune, to make a solo song.
The flexibility of the tune lends itself to many interpretations, and I have really enjoyed teasing out its possibilities. Here are recordings and details of all versions:
Lord of all Hopefulness – arranged for choir in two or three parts – S(A)Bar with keyboard
scrolling score details: Sheet Music Direct, Sheet Music Plus, JW Pepper,
Be thou my vision – arranged for choir in three parts – SABar with keyboard
scrolling score details: Sheet Music Direct, or Sheet Music Plus
Be thou my vision – arranged for upper voice choir – SA with keyboard
scrolling score details: Sheet Music Direct, or Sheet Music Plus
Prelude on ‘Slane’ – organ solo
video recording Published in ‘Be Still for the Presence, volume 2’ (Church Organ World)
Fantasia on ‘Slane’ – piano solo
video recording audio recording details: Sheet Music Direct, Sheet Music Plus, JW Pepper
Lord of all hopefulness – arranged for voice and piano
Published in Oxford Solo Songs Sacred: high voice, low voice.
And finally, unless I’ve forgotten something, I’ve also set the words of ‘Lord of all Hopefulness’ for choir and keyboard, but to a different tune, and with the title From the break of the day – available here
My definition of ‘Week’ in ‘Piece of the Week’ has become a bit fluid at the moment – but I shall continue to post whenever I can….
