The Book of Psalms for Worship, published in 2009 by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), has provided several of the psalm settings we’ve used for this summer’s series. It’s the source of O Lord Teach Me To Follow You—Psalm 27, which this congregation has sung for many years, along with favorites like O Thank The Lord For He Is Good—Psalm 118 and The Lord Has Spoken To My Lord—Psalm 110 (to the English hymn tune, Jerusalem). The editors chose to set the text of Psalm 30, which we’ll be singing today, to Arthur Henry Mann’s most well-known hymn tune, Angel’s Story. Mann had a long and distinguished career as a composer, conductor, and organist in Victorian and Edwardian England. He was appointed Director of Music at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge in 1876 and would serve there until his death in 1929. Over the fifty years of his career at Cambridge, in addition to greatly increasing the professionalism of the King’s College choir, he helped to edit the 1912 Psalter, published the first modern edition of Thomas Tallis’ renaissance choral masterpiece Spem in alium, assisted in the creation of the first “Service of Nine Lessons and Carols” in 1918, and directed the choir in its first sound recording sessions in 1929, just months before his death. Angel’s Story has many hallmarks of Victorian style (a style we don’t sing very often), but its plaintive quality fits quite well with the humble joy of Psalm 30—“Though through the night tears linger, great joy comes with the dawn.”
—Henry C. Haffner
