Firmly I Believe and Truly

[oopsorganist]

Can anyone advise?

Today I thought it would be a good choice to sing "Firmly I Believe and Truly" as we have not sung it for a while (maybe years as it turns out), so launched into it on the organ and was met by silence. Only one person I talked to after admitted to knowing it. A Brother said he knew a different tune and thought the tune I played was Protestant! I thought it was so standard a Catholic Hymn and now I am not sure.

Have we spent to much time singing "Amazing Grace" and "Oh Lord My God When I in Awesome etc", not to mention that new one, "Bind us and Fill us to All that I am Colours...."

What is going on? Shall I leave it to die or teach it over the next few weeks?

[gwyn]

There's no question Oops, teach it. It's one of a corpus of hymns that encapsulate aspects of our Faith clearly and in beautiful simplicity.

In the C of E it's usually sung to Shipston, sometimes it's sung to that tune that appeared in the 70's in a book called "Thirty 20th Century Hymn Tunes" quite a nice setting. The favoured tune for RC churches is Omni Dei.

Newman had a way with poetry - more often than not.

[mcb]

The favoured tune for RC churches is Omni Dei.

Horrid tune it is too. In school we sang it to a different tune - don't know the name but it goes E C G C D-E F F E. Can anyone put a name to it?

Anyway, as Gwyn says, there's no doubting the credentials of the words as a pithy encapsulation of profound central truths of our faith. In (Arch)bishop Kelly's time here he had us sing it sometimes in place of the Creed. Not sure I wholly approve - the Holy Spirit doesn't get much of a look in.

The words come from Newman's The Dream of Gerontius - Gerontius sings it on his death bed.

M.

[contrabordun]

Tune is Halton Holgate. Nice flowing tune, the set tune in AMR.

[mcb]

Yes, that's the one. Thanks!

I worked out what AMR means!

M.