This hymn is a vigorous meditation on Matthew 11.2-11. ‘We have been expecting the Messiah’, John the Baptist said. Addressing Jesus, he asked: ‘Are you he? (We have reason to doubt it.)’ The heart of the story, and of the Read More …
When Günter Schlechter, a friend who conducts a choir in Schleswig, asked me for a hymn for St Martin’s Day 2018, I was moved, not least because I had been wondering how Germans would keep the centenary of the end Read More …
In 2018 there was a search for a hymn to be sung at the national commemoration of the centenary of the end of the 1914-18 war. This was my submission. Judge of all peoples
* This was my second attempt at a hymn to respond to the drowning of Aylan Kurdi
An unfolding of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus, as you travelled (midi)
I wrote this to be part of a Lenten sermon for the congregation of St Anne’s Calmore near Southampton. When in the wastes of wild regret.midi
* This hymn-song was composed to be part of a Lenten sermon for St Anne’s Calmore, near Southampton. In verse 2 ‘… people kill the thing they love’ comes from Oscar Wilde: ‘for each man kills the thing he loves’ (Ballad Read More …
*** The background to this hymn is in the story of the rejection by Sarah and Abraham, after the birth of their son, Isaac, of both Hagar, Sarah’s slave and Abraham’s concubine, and Ishmael, Hagar’s son by Abraham. COMMENTARY In the same way as Read More …
* This text from 2002 was my offering to a ‘hymnsearch’ promoted by a church in the USA, who asked for ‘A hymn to call the Church to affirm gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, and to celebrate their gifts and ministries’. During the course Read More …
*** I composed this three weeks after the destruction on 11th September 2001 of the World Trade Centre in New York, and consciously tried to work the sound of emergency services sirens into the music. When terror strikes.midi