King's College Choir Cambridge Hymns Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

For exclusive content and commentary please join us on Patreon   / spiritdei   #kingscollegechoir
Please follow us on Facebook   / spiritdeimusic  
Easter from King's is available to download in HD from www.kingscollegerecordings.com
#kingscollegechoir Easter from King's is available to download in HD from www.kingscollegerecordings.com

"Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" is a hymn with words taken from a longer poem, The Brewing of Soma by American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The adaptation was made by Garrett Horder in his 1884 Congregational Hymns.[1]
In the United Kingdom, the hymn is usually sung to the tune "Repton" by C. Hubert H. Parry. In the US, the prevalent tune is "Rest" by Frederick Charles Maker.

The Brewing of Soma is the Whittier poem (1872) from which the hymn is taken. Soma was a sacred ritual drink in Vedic religion, going back to Proto-Indo-Iranian times (ca. 2000 BC), possibly with hallucinogenic properties.

The storyline is of Vedic priests brewing and drinking Soma in an attempt to experience divinity. It describes the whole population getting drunk on Soma. It compares this to some Christians' use of "music, incense, vigils drear, and trance, to bring the skies more near, or lift men up to heaven!" But all in vain - it is mere intoxication.
Whittier ends by describing the true method for contact with the divine, as practised by Quakers: Sober lives dedicated to doing God's will, seeking silence and selflessness in order to hear the "still, small voice", described in I Kings 19:11-13 as the authentic voice of God, rather than earthquake, wind or fire.
The poem opens with a quote from the Rigveda, attributed to Vasishtha:
These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra:
offer Soma to the drinker of Soma. (Rv. vii. 32, trans. Max Müller).

Associated tunes
Hubert Parry originally wrote the music for what became Repton in 1888 for the contralto aria 'Long since in Egypt's plenteous land' in his oratorio Judith. In 1924 Dr George Gilbert Stocks, director of music at Repton School, set it to 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind' in a supplement of tunes for use in the school chapel. Despite the need to repeat the last line of words, Repton provides an inspired matching of lyrics and tune. By this time, Rest, by Frederick Maker (matching the metrical pattern without repetition), was already well established with the lyrics in the United States.
Tunes it can be sung to are
Repton by Hubert Parry
Rest by Frederick Charles Maker
Hammersmith by William Henry Gladstone
Elegy for Dunkirk by Dario Marianelli
Wikipedia