Whilst sorting through some old hand-written music scores I came upon the following paraphrase of psalm 46 written by Paul Merchant in 1965, when we were both at Cambridge. I’d already set two of his lyrics,
“Lord, Make Me Love” and
“Father In Heaven” to music so I had to try my hand at these.
This was only my second year into writing Christian music, and I was fascinated by the links between early Beach Boys harmonies and the Tudor church music I was singing in college chapel. So I decided to write a five-part harmony setting to an appropriate rhythmic backing, and you should now be hearing a MIDI of the result I was aiming for.
I used it at Cambridge and a couple of other times over the next few years, but didn’t think it had had any other use - there really wasn't much call (then or now) for five-part settings requiring strong male voices! So I was surprised to find that it had survived at Cambridge, but sung a capella and rather faster, because they only had a vocal score without chords to work from! That would sound something like this.
However, the basic melody (which in the original verses moves around between voices) still seems quite strong, and could perhaps be used today as a simpler unison hymn/song (with optional harmonies for the chorus).
I've nearly created a manageable score, but for the moment there's just the intro and chorus below. I'll post the rest as soon as it’s ready.