Jerry: mea culpa! Here’s how I became confused. The album notes for the CD Hymns of the Forefathers II (ABC 476 1610-0) listed track 10 as
O God, Our Help in Ages Past 5’ 34 [mins:seconds — skb]
Walter Greatorex 1877-1949
Melody: Woodlands
Text: Timothy Dudley-Smith b.1926
Now Greatorex was known to me as the composer of Abide With Me, which is probably the best known hymn to all Brit Soccer fans (sung in honour of George V at FA Cup Finals); so without pausing to ponder, I copy/pasted what I considered ‘gospel!’
Reading your attribution to the ‘greater than Greatorex’ Isaac Watts, my first thought was that there must be two settings to Psalm 90 (not unusual in hymnody where texts and tunes are freely interchanged). But, dashing back to my source, I see I was fooled by the layout, which annoyingly put composers ahead of their compositions:
From Carrell & Clayton’s Virginia Harmony, 1831
Text: John Newton 1725-1807
9 Amazing Grace 5’22
Attributed to William Croft 1678-1727
Melody: St Anne
Text: Isaac Watts 1674-1748
10 O God, Our Help in Ages Past 5’34
Walter Greatorex 1877-1949
Melody: Woodlands
Text: Timothy Dudley-Smith b.1926
11 Tell Out, My Soul 4’27
A very brief footnote: hymns are not a good source for the strict Anglican Creed. The latter is more optimistic than Psalm 90 (and indeed many parts of the Hebrew Testament) regarding the afterlife: believers have a guarantee through Christ’s redeeming blood, compared with “Time bearing all its sons away ... Forgotten as a dream dies at the opening* day.”
(* I misquoted this as ‘ending’ in a prev. post)
PS: Carolyn, in Anti-Terra there’s an Anti-Nabokov chat list that you might enjoy ;=)
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 26/02/2009 11:18, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] new in Zembla (correction)
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:41:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman@yahoo.com> <mailto:jerry_friedman@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: jerry_friedman@yahoo.com
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
If I may go off on a tangent--"O God, Our Help" is by
Isaac Watts, according to everything I can find, and
the imagery is from Psalm 90 (89 in the Vulgate). The
image of time like a river is from verse 5, and I
imagine Derzhavin got it from the same source. Much
as I hate to remove Greatorex from this discussion.
Jerry Friedman