The first song was our only Hymn,

written by Isaac Watts in 1707 Come Ye That Love the Lord and we sang it to the wonderful West Gallery-type tune Birmingham.

Psalms comprised the rest of the singing, starting with Psalm 24 set by William East to a tune he named Stonesby, after a hamlet 26 miles from Aslackby, near Melton Mowbray. The harmonies for this Psalm come from William Wyan’s copy of The Voice of Melody.

The words of Psalm 72, O for a thousand tongues to sing were written by Charles Wesley in about 1739, but the tune Lyngham, which features fuguing of parts coming in one by one,  was written by Thomas Jarman of Clipston near Market Harborough. A tailor and Baptist lay-preacher, Thomas’s taste for music often interfered with his tailoring, and frequently reduced him to ‘dire straits and soured temper’. He published a large amount of music including The Northamptonshire Harmony. There existed in Clipston a healthy rivalry between church and chapel quires, until the arrival in 1820 of Revd John Bull, Anglican curate and Schoolmaster. The curate abolished the Anglican quire and installed instead a barrel organ. Thomas at the Baptist Chapel expressed his exception to this with scurrilous verses against the curate, set to music, that led to several Clipston youths being fined for singing within earshot of the Rectory. The curate retaliated with verses of his own that he published in the Northampton Mercury.

Although Psalm 100: All People That on Earth Do Dwell is probably the most well-known of all Christian melodies, the version we used came from the 1790s manuscript book of William Seal  discovered in the Leicestershire Records Office. It has what West Gallery singers call a symphony, an elaborate instrumental piece between each verse for the musicians.

Psalm 136 sung to the Isleworth tune was the only piece we sang in a minor key, and was also from William East’s Voice of Melody 1st Edition.

Psalm 8 came from the 2nd Edition, about 1752. It is delightfully strange, beginning in 3/2 time, continuing in 4/4 time, with added fuguing!

Our finale, Psalm 47, was to what is known as a cock and hen tune, with the men’s and women’s parts following each other. This version was published in 1820 by John Broderip.

                                                               READINGS               

‘The end of the Mellstock Quire is foretold’

from Under the Greenwood Tree   

By Thomas Hardy1872

‘The Longpuddle Quire brings about its own demise’

from Absentmindedness in a Parish Quire-

A short story by Thomas Hardy, published in Life’s little Ironies 1894

‘The late William Dewey’

from Tess of the D”Urbevilles

By Thomas Hardy1891

‘Romance in the West Gallery…

From Country Congregations

By William Cowper1731-1800

…leading to a long marriage.’

A Church Romance

Thomas Hardy1835