Title: | PENTECOST (Boyd) |
Composer: | William Boyd (1868) |
Meter: | 8.8.8.8 |
Incipit: | 33333 21433 33221 |
Key: | G Major |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
William Boyd (b. Montego Bay, Jamaica, 1847; d. Paddington, England, 1928) composed PENTECOST in 1864 for the hymn text "Come, Holy Ghost, Our Souls Inspire"; it was published in 1868 in Thirty-Two Hymn Tunes Composed by Members of the University of Oxford. The name PENTECOST derives from the subject matter of that hymn text. Boyd was educated at Hurstpierpoint, where the hymn writer Sabine Baring-Gould (PHH 522) was one of his teachers, and at Worcester College, Oxford. He was ordained in the Church of England and served the Church of All Saints, Norfolk Square, London, from 1893-1918.
The tune PENTECOST was retained from the 1959 Psalter Hymnal, though Dewey Westra originally versified Mary's song for the tune DUKE STREET (412). The humble, meditative character of PENTECOST stands in contrast to the spirit of rejoicing found in DUKE STREET and the settings at 478 and 622. The text can also be sung to PUER NOBIS (327). A simple chant-like tune with a range of only five tones in the melody, PENTECOST is one of the "generic" Victorian tunes of its time (see also QUEBEC, 141, 307; ST. CRISPIN, 276; MORECAMBE 419; and MARYTON, 573). Sing it in harmony, perhaps unaccompanied, but with a firm pulse and not too slowly.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988
Harmonizations, Introductions, Descants, Intonations
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Organ Solo
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Piano Solo
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