Love Bade Me Welcome
An a cappella setting for mixed chorus of a poem by George Herbert.
Duration: 5’ 20”
Difficulty: 4/5 (Difficulty Rating Overview)
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Mixed Chorus (a cappella, divisi, no solos)
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Love (III)
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here.
Love said, You shall be he.
I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not,” says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.
So I did sit and eat.
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Program Notes
J.A.C. Redford
I believe (and will ever believe) that Ralph Vaughan-Williams composed the definitive setting of George Herbert’s impossibly beautiful and transformative poem, Love Bade Me Welcome. So when John Dickson asked me to write a new setting for this year’s CSLF Summer Institute, I was filled with doubts. How could I illuminate Herbert’s profound text in a fresh and fitting way? John supplied part of the answer in suggesting that I consider defining the poem’s “characters” with distinct musical gestures. I took his advice and also asked myself how it might feel to experience the slow bloom of joy after Vaughan-Williams contemplative choral ending, the dawning realization that one has arrived in a place where one is finally truly welcomed and loved, forever and ever, world without end. I tried to capture some hint of that dizzying thought in my closing sets of chords.
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Love Bade Me Welcome was commissioned by John Dickson for the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s Oxbridge 2017 Summer Institute. It was premiered on 26 July 2017 at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford by the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute Chorale, directed by John Dickson. Another Institute performance followed on 1 August in St. John’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The following day, it was sung in King’s College Chapel as the Eucharistic anthem for the Closing Service of the Institute. It was recorded in January 2022 for the album J.A.C. Redford: Dappled Things by London Voices directed by Ben Parry.
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Choral Score - $1.80