Fleetwood Mac’s Hold Me – Vale Christine McVie

Gary Ware

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December 1, 2022

Growing older means that you reach a point in life where those who created the pop-culture fabric of childhood and adolescence – for me the late sixties and seventies and early eighties – are departing this life.
They’ve grown older, and we grow older a step or two behind them.

Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac has died. She was 79.

Fleetwood Mac, a band composed of very talented and distinctive personalities, created a pop music catalogue full of lyrical and melodic hooks.

Looking on the internet the song Hold Me was written by McVie, who contributed co-lead vocals, and this was the band’s most successful charting single (in contrast to Dreams, which charted higher but for a shorter time).

Behold The Lamb Of God – Christmas Songs 2022 Day 1

Gary Ware

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December 1, 2022

It’s December 1.
Each year Christmas songs start with Andrew Peterson’s Behold The Lamb Of God.
It’s worth repeating each year because it’s good to listen to, and it always seems to be someone’s first year hearing it.

Here’s a YouTube playlist of all the tracks. You could doubtless find it on your favourite streaming service as well.

Queen Elizabeth And Psalm 23 (by Donald Keddie at Heidelblog)

Gary Ware

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November 29, 2022

As someone who has an interest in the various tunes to which hymns are set, particularly regional variations within countries and differences from country to country, this article by Donald Keddie, published at Heidelblog, on the tune CRIMOND and the metrical setting of Psalm 23 as used the wedding of the then Princess Elizabeth’s wedding caught my attention.

The article weaves some North American hymn history among the social history the royal wedding, and reveals how this particular setting of The Lord’s My Shepherd became a widely used traditional element in Christian Services of various types.

The Royal Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten in 1947 would be a worldwide event followed by an international audience. It seemed to offer hope of a new era of happiness in the aftermath of World War II.
The music director of the Royal Wedding, William McKie (1901–1984), visited Balmoral in Scotland and heard one of Princess Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, Lady Margaret Egerton, singing a descant of Psalm 23 to CRIMOND, accompanied by Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. McKie wanted to include something Scottish in the Royal Wedding, and Psalm 23’s pastoral imagery fit the bill perfectly.
Unable to find the music for the descant and with two days to go to the wedding, McKie wrote down the music himself shorthand and taught it to the Abbey Choir.
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The fame of the Royal Wedding made Psalm 23 to CRIMOND a Christian pop song of its era. The brighter, more joyful tune gave new life to the psalm. As a result, American Protestants of all denominations began singing Psalm 23 to this tune, and American Presbyterians embraced a metrical psalm from their own tradition again.

Read the whole post here.

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