THE TUNE.
Of all the different composers to whose music Moore's “sacred songs” were sung—Beethoven, 377 / 327 Mozart, Stevenson, and the rest—Avison seems to be the only one whose name and tune have clung to the poet's words; and we have the man and the melody sent to us, as it were, by the lyrist himself. The tune is now rarely sung except at church festivals and village entertainments, but the life and clamor of the scene at the Red Sea are in it, and it is something more than a mere musical curiosity. Its style, however, is antiquated—with its timbrel beat and its canorous harmony and “coda fortis”—and modern choirs have little use in religious service for the sonata written for viols and horns.
It was Moore's splendid hymn that gave it vogue in England and Ireland, and sent it across the sea to find itself in the house of its friends with the psalmody of Billings and Swan. Moore was the man of all men to take a fancy to it and make language to its string-and-trumpet concert. He was a musician himself, and equally able to adapt a tune and to create one. As a festival performance, replete with patriotic noise, let Avison's old “Sound the Timbrel” live.
Charles Avison was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1710. He studied in Italy, wrote works on music, and composed sonatas and concertos for stringed orchestras. For many years he was organist of St. Nicholas' Kirk in his native town.
The tune to “Sound the Loud Timbrel” is a chorus from one of his longer compositions. He died in 1770.