Watts "Doxology"and "Babylon" tunes

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Fri, 07/15/2011 - 17:52 — Haruo

The tune the Melodious Grace Hymnal calls DOXOLOGY and ascribes to Isaac Watts "Text and Tune: Isaac Watts, 1674-1748, Psalm 47" is not any of the four tunes the Hymnary calls DOXOLOGY,

nor is it STOW (the only tune I can find the text, "O for a shout of sacred joy", set to elsewhere.

MGH calls it "CM", but it actually has a bunch of repeats, so it's more properly 8.6.8.6.8.8.6 than 8.6.8.6...

There is one other tune that MGH ascribes to Watts, #136 BABYLON, with the text beginning "We are a garden wall'd around". When I search for this text in the database, I get a null response, even though it's fairly well attested via Google. The tune is not the one the database calls BABYLON, nor is it the LEIGHTON the text is set to at the Cyber Hymnal™.

Haruo


Comments

Wed, 07/20/2011 - 08:58 — cfenner

Have you checked these tunes against the Hymn Tune Index?

CF

Wed, 07/20/2011 - 22:31 — Haruo

But just in a general way I'm interested to know if any serious scholar has identified Watts as the composer of any tune at all. It seems to me that such attributions usually derive from the inconsistent way hymnal editors especially in the shapenote tradition recorded their attributions.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 11:30 — hutcheson

Search for "we are a garden walled around" or just "we are a garden". (When I did Watts' "Psalms and Hymns", I thought search would be simplified by standardizing (Websterizing) the spelling.)

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