Songs of Truth and Glory

First Performance: Elgar Chorale, Donald Hunt, Leeds Parish Church, 9 March 2007.

Composer’s note:
Songs of Truth and Glory were commissioned for the Three Choirs Festival  by The Elgar Chorale for their twenty-fifth anniversary  season with funds provided by The Elgar Foundation and  first performed on August 8th 2005 at The Three Choirs Festival Worcester by The Elgar Chorale and Camerata conducted by Donald Hunt.  George Herbert was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College Cambridge where he was a major  fellow and Reader in Rhetoric. However, despite prestigious beginnings, he abandoned secular ambitions and took holy orders, spending the rest of his life as rector in the village of Bemerton near Salisbury, preaching and writing poetry.  He was a skilled musician, often playing the lute and singing his own verses, for which purpose they seem ideally suited. They appear to be simple, yet the thoughts with which he wrestled are profound and explore and celebrate the ways of God’s love as Herbert discovered them within the fluctuations of his own experience. They are characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility and an ingenious use of imagery. He is sometimes compared with John Donne, who was a close friend of his, yet he is more ecclesiastical than ‘metaphysical’. Some years ago I discussed him with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, who considered George Herbert ‘the greatest of all hymn-writers’.