O Valiant Hearts

[Angela Barber]

Does anyone in the R.C. church sing "O Valiant Hearts" on Remembrance Sunday? For that matter do we make much of Remembrance Sunday? Apart from the customary wreath and lists of our deceased family members nothing else seems to happen in our church. O Valiant Hearts is such an evocative hymn in the Harris/Arkwright version but i can't find it any hymnbooks - too old fashioned I suppose! The Anglo Catholics round here put on a splendid show with banners, this hymn and a trumpeter (if they can find one). O Valiant Hearts seems doubly appropriate now in view of the conflict in Afghanistan. Does anyone agree with me? I'm getting my choir practising it and we'll sing it on the 14th November come what may.














arkwright
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[Lakelark]

Dear Angela, You will find the text and tunes by googling "cyber hymnal". I was an anglo-catholic for many years. Our Remembrance Sunday was observed with a Requiem Mass at five minutes to eleven. Personally I cannot share your enthusiasm for this hymn. It idealises and sanitises war, and theologises death on the battlefield beyond where I think we should go. I will say no more: these are purely personal views.

[HallamPhil]

I don't know 'O valiant hearts' but the wisdom of the previous correspondent suggests that I am not the worse for this. Our remembrance is celebrated with a Mass for the Dead of all wars. We have to time things so that we coincide with the rest of the City's 2 minutes silence starting and finishing with cannon shots! Musically excerpts from Missa pro defunctis and the Iona Community's 'What shall we pray?' or 'To be a soldier' have featured in the past.

[gwyn]

The tune - which I think is called "(The) Supreme Sacrifice" is quite a good one.

[keitha]

I echo Gwyn's views about the tune and I agree with Lakelark about the text - so we won't be singing it! I live in Coventry, and every November we not only commemorate those who have died in war generally, but we also commemorate the air raids on Coventry on 14/15 November 1940 - so the City's annual Remembrance Day parade is followed, later, by a memorial service at the mass grave for the 600 'ish people killed that night (the precise total has never been established). We used to have a Requiem Mass for the fallen at 11.00 on Remembrance Sunday - and even had a catafalque on the sanctuary to represent the dead. In more recent years we gathered outside church for a short memorial service at a shrine next to the church with the laying of a wreath. Nowadays, we tend to have a period of silence and special prayers during mass. As for a suitable hymn, I usually choose O God, our help in ages past. This year will be the 70th anniversary of the bombing (which the Pope mentioned at Cofton Park in his homily), so we will probably make a special effort.