Our hymnals truly have some hidden gems lying within! For quite some time I’ve thought about arranging the hymn “O Thou Who Camest From Above” (#501 in the current Methodist hymnal) for the simple reason that I’ve rarely heard a more beautiful hymn tune that also happens to be coupled with a marvelous text. It’s a very Wesleyan hymn: Samuel wrote the music, Charles wrote the words, and John edited it! You would think it would be a mainstay in worship, but in my slightly more than half century on this planet, I have never heard it sung in any church service I’ve attended. When reading about it, it seems that one impediment is the 6-syllable word “inextinguishable” in the second stanza, an apparent blocker that has prevented its wider use. Indeed, this is what John attempted to fix by substituting the phrase “ever bright, undying” for the original behemoth. So in my arrangement I’ve taken John’s lead and used this rendering.
The choir at Glen Mar church will begin rehearsing the arrangement this week, and we hope to present it in worship on Oct. 20. This is also the first piece I’ve written entirely after attending Joe Martin’s Composer Symposium back in June, so perhaps we’ll all see if I learned anything…