Aaron Andrew Hunt

Nettleton

May 31, 2016

In the Episcopal Church, the reading of the Gospel text takes place in the center of the sanctuary. Procession to the center takes place during the last stanza of the Hymn which precedes the reading directly. Last Sunday this was Hymn 686 Nettleton — "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". I wrote a short introduction, and used the B-section of that in my final stanza harmonization. NOTE: This performance is not perfect; there are some finger slips. The recording quality is also pretty bad, but I can't do anything about that at the moment. Thanks for tolerating these issues.

The quarter notes in the melody look a little funny because originally they were half notes. (The actual Hymn is written in 3/2, not 3/4).

1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

2. Here I find my greatest treasure;
hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

3. Oh, to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee;
prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, oh take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

After the reading is finished, there is another solemn procession back to the alter. Often this takes place in silence, but on festival days, the organist should play something, er, festive. In some churches, this brief period is always taken as an opportunity for the organist to improvise some music (not just on the super-special days), and the music played is usually based on the hymn which was just sung prior to the reading. Last Sunday I did the latter, with a simple playful variation on the melody of the tune. What I actually played in the service was very close to this, though it went on a little longer because the priest was not yet in position to deliver the sermon. Improvisation in these situations can be a lot of fun.

Regards,
Aaron