Hear Us, O Hear Us Lord

This understated setting of a wonderful passage from Donne’s A Litany, by AAM member Tom Cleman, is mostly quiet, slow and contemplative, as the text deserves; the voices are sometimes fairly equal, somtimes paired (SA providing an almost bell-like accompaniment to the men’s melody, at the outset and near the close, or AB singing in octaves elsewhere). An open-spaced C-sharp major triad seems a perfect sound for the text’s most memorable phrase, “panegyric alleluias”. The composer makes a bit free with Donne’s text, which I’m tempted to say, “just isn’t Donne.” (He repeats the words “Thine ear” with each of the indirect objects in the line, “Thine ear to our sighs, tears, thoughts gives voice and word,” and over the closing ‘for thou in us dost pray,” rather undercutting the poet’s point, I think). Happily, the original is always present just beneath the surface – and it’s an original well worth sharing with our flocks.
The Journal of the Association Of Anglican Musician
January 2012