O Little Town

'Hymn-tunes that are named after places' is a bit of a mouthful to say and a handful to type, so I've been trying to think of a single word that I can use instead. 'Toponhymn' suggests itself, but perhaps looks a little like a character from Gulliver's Travels . Do any readers have a suggestion? Assuming, of course, that there are some readers out there... A journey to the places that inspired the tunes is, I suppose, a 'hymnodyssey'. My journey this week must, of course, take in the little towns whose names are enshrined in Passiontide and Easter hymns.  HORSLEY Without thinking I set out (in my imagination, at least) for Horsley in Gloucestershire, hoping to find there some trace of the tune HORSLEY, which is used for C F Alexander's There is a green hill far away . The hill referred to in the hymn is, of course, Calvary, and the city wall is that of Jerusalem; but Mrs Alexander had the hills of Northern Ireland before her when she wrote t...

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog and been encouraged to buy the book. If you have read and enjoyed the book, please could I ask you to write a review on Amazon and/or on Lulu.com . You don't have to write much, just a brief appreciation of the book, and a rating of one to five stars. Of course, in the interests of balance I should mention that you can also write a review if you didn't enjoy the book - but I hope there will be fewer of these! Thank you.

The Leys School is an independent school in Cambridge, founded in the 19th century by the Methodist Church. Its grounds are extensive and its red-brick buildings are handsome. It has an air of being a safe haven of learning, an atmosphere it shares with the colleges of the University. Notable alumni include the author J G Ballard, the journalist Martin Bell, tennis star Jamie Murray and assorted members of the Tongan royal family. Another former pupil was the author James Hilton, whose book Goodbye Mr Chips was made into a film starring Peter O'Toole. It tells the story of a teacher at an independent school in the Fens, presumably based on the Leys. The Leys School, Cambridge From 1953 to 1980 the music master at the Leys School was Kenneth Naylor. Naylor was born in Sunderland but educated in Bath at Kingswood School, before going on to read music at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was the composer of a number of works, but for our purposes the most significant of the...

At long last my book O Little Town is available. To order your copy simply click on the button below. I hope you enjoy it. I would be glad to hear any comments you have.

A while back I started to write about hymn-tunes that are named after Sussex place-names. Having been briefly diverted by an expedition to Suffolk and Essex, I am now back home and ready to think again about the tunes that grew near where I live. The first instalment of my post on Sussex hymn-tunes  focused mainly on tunes that Ralph Vaughan Williams collected from Harriet and Peter Verrall in Monks Gate, just outside Horsham. Vaughan Williams lived not far away, in Surrey, and many of the folk-songs that he adapted for use as hymn-tunes were collected in Sussex. So if you will indulge me, I will stay with RVW in this entry too. I live in Warnham, a village just outside Horsham, diametrically opposite from Monks Gate. There is a hymn-tune called WARNHAM, but only because I wrote it myself. It was my entry for a competition run by the Royal School of Church Music to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Hymns Ancient & Modern . The competition challenged composer...

My last post was entitled Sussex hymn-tunes - Part I , implying that there would at the very least be a Part II. And so there will be, in due course. But today I would like to write about East Anglia. I realise that East Anglia is not in the north, and is notoriously unhilly. But the title of the present entry does have a point, which we will come to by and by. Recently I had the pleasure of attending a concert at Snape Maltings given by the Suffolk Philharmonic Orchestra , who gave a wonderful rendition of the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde , Brahms' Symphony no 4, and Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs (sung by Helena Dix , who stepped in at the last minute to cover for Susan Gritton, and produced a sublime, ravishing performance). This is of course Benjamin Britten country. As far as I'm aware Britten did not contribute to hymnody in any way (unless you count his arrangement of the National Anthem, which is sometimes heard at the Last...

I am not a native of Sussex but I have lived here for about eighteen years now, which is longer than I spent in the town in Kent where I grew up. So for me, Sussex is now very much home. I have been delighted to discover that my researches into hymn-tunes have led me to many 'little towns' that are only a few miles from my doorstep. Many of the tunes named after Sussex places owe their titles to Ralph Vaughan Williams. In December of 1903 Vaughan Williams had heard a Mr Pottipher, of Brentwood in Essex, singing the folk-song Bushes and Briars ; when he heard it, he felt it was something he had known all his life. From then on he became an enthusiastic collector of folk-songs, working with Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood, George Butterworth and others to preserve the musical heritage of the country. Around this time, in 1904, he was approached by the Rev Percy Dearmer and asked to become music editor of a new hymn-book. This eventually became The English Hymnal , now a classic o...