Horn Trio Based on Hymn Text by Wm. Maclagan (“Be Still, My Soul, For God Is Near”)
In 2021, I was home alone near the holidays and feeling quite low. Without rhyme or reason, I sat down at the piano and, over about 15 minutes, plunked out a new Christmas carol based on the text of “Thy Will O Lord Be Done.”
Negative emotions can make for great creative energy, even if they are emotions we aren’t always prepared to welcome. The little carol sat for a few years, only ever being heard by my children when I would play at the piano.
A few years later, St Paul’s Cathedral, London, was sponsoring a Composition contest with some unique requirements: a three-voice hymn set to an Anglican text appropriate for the Eucharist. I realized that, with slight modifications, my little Christmas carol could easily be adapted to fit the words of a beautiful hymn text by Archbishop William Maclagan of Yorkminster Cathedral, “Be Still, My Soul, For God is Near.”
1 Be still, my soul! For God is near!
The great High Priest is with thee now;
the Lord of Life himself is near,
before whose face the angels bow.
2 To make thy heart his lowly throne
thy Saviour God in love draws nigh;
he gives himself unto his own,
for whom he once came down to die.
3 He pleads before the mercy-seat;
he pleads with God [and] for thee;
“he gives thee bread from heaven to eat,”
his flesh and blood in mystery.
4 I come, O Lord! For thou dost call –
to blend my pleading prayer with thine;
to thee I give myself – my all,
and feed on thee and make thee mine.
I didn’t win the contest, but this setting became one of my favorite ways to hear the piece.
Years later, I rearranged the piece for six paired French horns, to breathe some life and volume into what had been a fairly meditative reflection. The album art is a photo I took of St. Paul’s at sunset, when the light was just right.