Prelude on “Brother James’ Air” – Searle Wright | Piping Up: Selects (Richard Elliott)

Richard Elliott performs Searle Wright’s “Prelude on ‘Brother James’ Air’” at the Aeolian-Skinner Organ in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square (Salt Lake City, Utah).

James Leith Macbeth Bain (1860-1925) was a Scottish hymnwriter, healer, and Theosophical author recognized more widely in his lifetime as a poet, not a musician. Devoted from an early age to a life of spiritual thought and service, Bain was known simply as “Brother James” to his friends and associates.

In his 1915 tract titled “The Great Peace,” Bain included a printing of his own musical setting of the beloved 23rd Psalm, using as text the paraphrase by Francis Rouse that was published in the Scottish Psalter of 1650. The pastoral imagery and simple faith of this particular psalm (which Bain described as “the old classic Shepherd-psalm” and the most beautiful hymn of love he knew) inspired a melody that is a model of simplicity, emulating the psalm’s comforting message.

Publishing a tract about “Great Peace” during the Great War, Bain hoped his setting of Psalm 23, sung slowly, could serve as a potent memorial for all those who had fallen in the war. He also expressed his conviction that this psalm had conveyed through all the ages (and would continue to convey) “the whole of the Christ-blessedness, and all the strength of the great Body of Christ, even the One Holy Catholic Church of Heaven and Earth.” Bain’s faith-filled setting of Psalm 23 became known simply as “Brother James’ Air.”

In 1934, English composer Gordon Jacob harmonized “Brother James’ Air,” and it was published by Oxford University Press. It then began to be included in hymnals in the mid-1950s. The American organist, teacher, and composer Searle Wright wrote his “Prelude on ‘Brother James’ Air’” for solo organ in 1958 when the hymn was still relatively unfamiliar. At the time, Wright was director of music at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University. He would later serve as President of the American Guild of Organists.

This “Prelude on ‘Brother James’s Air’” is perhaps Searle Wright’s best-known organ work today.

Piping Up! is an online series of concerts and performances by the organists on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, sponsored and presented by The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.

Organ and Organists on Temple Square: https://www.thetabernaclechoir.org/about/organs.html

The Salt Lake Tabernacle Organ: https://www.thetabernaclechoir.org/about/organs/organ-information/tabernacle.html

The Conference Center Organ: https://www.thetabernaclechoir.org/about/organs/organ-information/conference-center.html

#pipingup 2023 Organ Concert Series.

Видео Prelude on “Brother James’ Air” – Searle Wright | Piping Up: Selects (Richard Elliott) канала The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square