Hymn of the Week: July 20, 2020

Though I May Speak (The Gift of Love)
O WALY WALY

# 693 in Glory to God Hymnal

Text paraphrased from 1 Corinthians 13 by Hal H. Hopson

The Gift of Love
Though I may speak with bravest fire,
And have the gift to all inspire
And have not love, my words are vain,
As sounding brass, and hopeless gain.

Though I may give all I possess,
And striving so my love profess,
But not be given by love within,
The profit soon turns strangely thin.

Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control;
Our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed;
By this we worship and are freed.

The tune that we sing to this timeless hymn is from a Scottish folk tune from the 1600s known officially as O WALY WALY. The text that the tune is most associated with is: The Water is Wide. Hal Hopson (beloved hymn writer and arranger of many many anthems sung by choirs all over the world) took this beloved tune and set it to the paraphrase that we most associate it with, The Gift of Love. Hal H. Hopson (b. Texas, 1933) is a prolific composer, arranger, clinician, teacher, and promoter of congregational song, with more than 1300 published works, especially of hymn and psalm arrangements, choir anthems, and creative ideas for choral and organ music in worship. Born in Texas, with degrees from Baylor University (BA, 1954), and Southern Baptist Seminary (MSM, 1956), he served churches in Nashville, TN, and most recently at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas. He has served on national boards of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and the Choristers Guild and taught numerous workshops at various national conferences. In 2009, a collection of sixty-four of his hymn tunes was published in Hymns for Our Time: The Collected Tunes of Hal H. Hopson.

Enjoy Favius Pena’s beautiful clarinet arrangement of this timeless hymn that comes from as distant a place as Scotland in the 1600s to the paraphrase of text from one of today’s most beloved church musicians