Share Your Favourite Hymns! :musical_note:

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Here is the opening hymn, Your harps and cymbals sound/To great Jehovah’s praise, from the oratorio Solomon by Händel.

 
Here is Waft her, angels, through the skies, from Händel’s final oratorio Jephtha. Due to a rash, unthinking vow, the Israelite general Jephtha finds himself in the position of having to offer his young daughter as a burnt offering to God. Before the sacrifice he sings this prayer, begging the heavenly host to take her soul to Heaven.

 
Here are Comfort ye my people, and Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, from the oratorio Messiah by Georg Friedrich Händel.

 


These are good songs for Christmas and Advent.
 
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Here is the Christe eleison, for two sopranos and strings, from the Mass in B Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach.

 

It changes the melody every few minutes. I really love the second and third one.
 
What a marvelous work! The second movement was quite affecting. Parts of the rest reminded me of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. Thank you!
 
Here is the final scene from Act II of the opera Hansel and Gretel. This is not actually a hymn per se, but I couldn’t resist posting it, so unearthly is its beauty. Lost in the forest at night, the children say their evening prayers and fall asleep. Fourteen angels descend from Heaven to magnificent strains of music, and guard the children throughout the night. To say this music gives me chills is a vast understatement. The fact is that I weep every time I hear it. This video clip is taken from a performance filmed at the Metropolitan Opera on Christmas Day, 1982.

 
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Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is one of my favorites. The Fac Ut Portem and Vidit Suum stand out to me.
 
Haydn also wrote a Stabat Mater, but I’ve not heard it.

The wealth of melody and invention in Pergolesi’s music astounds me, not least because the composer died at the age of twenty-six. Like Mozart, who knows what further miracles he might have wrought had he lived a full lifespan. Tragic.
 
Here is the introit from the requiem by seventeenth-century composer Jean Gilles.

 
Here is the Dies irae, from the unfinished requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The conductor is the late, great, devoutly Catholic Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

 
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