We are honored to have The Sarasota Brass Quintet here with us this morning at the 11am worship, playing in loving remembrance of Virginia Toulmin. Thank you to Gianluca Farina (principal trumpet), Aaron Romm (co-principal trumpet), Andrew Warfield (co-principal horn), Brad Williams (principal trombone), Aaron Tindall (principal tuba) for being with us this morning. This musical memorial is an annual gift from the Sarasota Orchestra and we are sincerely grateful for this tribute. Virginia was a longtime member of SAKLC and loved our congregation deeply.
“Lo! He comes with clouds descending” by Charles Wesley (1707-1788) appears as hymn thirty-nine of forty hymns in John Wesley’s collection, Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind (1758) under the sectional title “Thy Kingdom Come!” in four six-line stanzas. This poem comes as close as poetic verse can in scaling the heights of splendor, majesty, and mystery as described in Revelation.
Whatever the musical source of the hymn (HELMSLEY), it is a magnificent pairing with this majestic text and is certainly fitting for a cathedral. Neil Dixon in the Canterbury Dictionary of
Hymnology suggests that the incipit (opening line) was adapted from “Lo! He Cometh, Countless Trumpets” published by the Moravian John Cennick (1718-1755) in his Collection of Sacred Hymns (1752), a hymn in the same meter as our hymn and on the same theme, even with some phrases in common. Charles Wesley’s borrowing or closely adapting another’s work should not be confused with our twenty-first understanding of plagiarism, but understood as a common eighteenth-century poetic technique of “imitation.”
J. R. Watson notes that this is truly a “sublime” hymn—an eighteenth-century designation reserved only for the finest of artistic works. (For example, “sublime” was used by some critics to describe parts of Handel’s Messiah.)
It is interesting to note that a hymn that suggests Advent in some hymnals today probably would not have been seen in that light in the Wesleys’ day. While the Book of Common Prayer (1662) contained collects for Advent, there were no standard hymnal collections in use by the Church of England; metrical psalm singing rather than hymn singing was dominant at that time. While the shape of the Christian Year was similar, the relative weight given to various seasons differed from what we recognize today, following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). While probably not an Advent hymn in its time, neither is our hymn simply another “Second Coming” hymn in its original context.
