Botolph mentioned this in a thread on Eucharist theology but to me it is a fantastic hymn from Piccardi. Has any one heard it? It of course sounds better with a proper choir and an organ that has the 32 foot pipe with the bone shaking sound.
I think it is very ancient, and has its origins in the Liturgy of St James, and was translated, I suspect by john Mason Neale. I would be up among my favourite hymns.
Especially the Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised version which has an A capella harmonised two middle verses. Imagine it with 20 other singing saints around you, a 4 manual Willis organ, a brilliant organst and the aroma of incense pervading all the chancel and sanctuary. Ah! those were the days. .
Our parish plays and sings this hymn at every holy communion service, during the approach to the altar. You step in there, and kneel, while all around you these words and the music resounds in hushed all-encompassing tones.
Well it seems I've written something that every one agrees with. I had a quick listen to the "mortal fleshes" on youtube and none of them seem to have the deep organ rumble that I find so appealing on my MP3 player version. I tried to download it to this site, but it appears it won't accept the MP3 format. Do you know something about organs Tiffy? I of course wouldn't know my, swell to great, from my ,small diapason eight, but my brother in law would he's an organ builder.
Not personally, but I was friends with the organist(s) at the church where I grew up until my late 50's, and it had an organ built by Willis with three keyboards and a peddle board. Lots of lovely stops. Church got a grant from the National Lottery to restore it back into original condition, (back to being a tracker action), from a poorly executed pneumatic system installed in the 50's - 60's. Organ building is a facinating art, organ tuning a ticklish business. .
This is an interesting hymn also in that it found its way into some non-liturgical church hymnals somehow. There it is usually billed as a Christmas hymn. Trying to pin it down - Christmas, Advent, Communion - is delightfully tricky, as many of the best lyrics defy simple categorization
I don't know much but I suppose you already know the Swell Organ is a whole organ of pipes inside a Box with sound shutters on it to change the volume of the sound. The Great is the range of pipes outside the Swell which have a constant unchanegeable volume, which depends on wind pressure and the number of stops, (ranks of pipes), that are set to sound when the keyboard is pressed. In addition the Choir Organ is also a complete set of ranks of pipes which can be used to accompany the choir and produces a sweeter sound than the Great. All three, Swell, Choir and Great can be linked together or separately controlled from the manuals (keyboards), and pistons, (mecanisms which have set combinations of pipes that can be cosen by pushing pistons just below the keyboards, so that combinations of Great/Choir, Choir/Swell, Swell/Great or Great/Swell/Choir can be chosen by the musician. The Peddle organ is separate again and is played by both feet at the same time as the other three or four manuals. (This is probably why good organists are always in short supply). They are like very advanced, drummers, with ten sticks, two feet and a 600+ 'pipe' drum kit. Some organs even have their own percussion, tremmolo and brass sections.
I understand (possibly wrongly) that the swell to great, and swell to choir stops actually mechanically links different key boards together. So if you press a key on one board a key on another board moves as well. This may be just another way of describing what you said above. My standing joke with my brother in law is, when he mentions an organ I always ask if it has a crumhorn. He recently worked on a big organ in Auckland, New Zealand's largest (and worst) city and before I could ask he said "and yes it has a crumhorn".
No you are absolutely correct. In effect the Keyboards are linked by those stops, which means the separate organs are linked and the stops out on each of them will play together from just one keyboard. .
One of my favourite Eucharistic Hymns, always play this during Communion whenever I get the chance. In our Parish, our Priest selects the Hymns. whenever he hasnt selected one for communion, I always chose either this or Just as I am, to the tune of Safron Walden.