Born in Song
During the enforced leisure of lockdown in 2020 I decided as a personal project to put all my music on to computer using Sibelius music software, and to gather together all the texts and tunes I had written over the years into one place. Although a small number of my hymns had been published in Methodist and other hymnbooks (notably Hymns and Psalms, Partners in Praise, Story Song and Singing the Faith) and I had self-published small collections of some of my earlier work back in the 1980s and 1990s, I discovered quite a lot of material I had written in the intervening years and ended up with a total of over sixty items, many of which had never really seen the light of day.
I decided to try to find a publisher, but that had become increasingly difficult in an age when more and more churches are projecting hymns and far fewer publishers are publishing hymnbooks - especially those by a single author. I therefore decided to self-publish through Morley’s Print, Design and Publishing but they required a payment of £800 for producing and publishing the book, an amount which would have stretched my personal finances too far at that time.
Having previously served as chair of the Pratt Green Trust I was aware that one of the Trust’s aims was to further the cause off hymnody by providing grants for church musicians and hymn writers, so I applied for funding and thankfully my application was positively received, despite Trust funds not being as buoyant as they had been at that particular time. I was grateful to receive the full amount I had applied for, but in two equal instalments, so was able to go ahead with the project. Pam Rhodes, the well-known Songs of Praise presenter whom I had first met when she presented me with an engraved glass goblet as one of the winners of he BBC Festival of New Hymns in 1991 and whom I had subsequently met on various occasions since, very kindly agreed to write a Foreword for me, and Born in Song: Texts and Tunes for Worship was duly published. The Pratt Green Trust funding was the much-appreciated key that unlocked that possibility for me.
Hitherto my hymn texts and tunes had largely circulated only within Methodist circles and my hope was that this new publication would help to reach those in other denominational traditions and provide new material for their worship. How far that has happened is difficult to judge, but my inclusion of some liturgical settings (including the Lord’s Prayer and the Gloria) and settings more suitable for choirs than congregations (such as my choral arrangements of Love divine, all loves excelling, Jesus stand among us and I vow to thee my country) was an attempt to provide music that might prove appropriate more widely beyond Methodism.