Adrian Batten: O Sing Joyfully

The St. Matthew's Choir (Hillsborough, NC) will be performing this little ditty coming Sunday, so I thought I'd mention it here.

Not O Sing Joyfully.

We will be performing O Sing Joyfully by Adrian Batten on Sunday. There, I mentioned it. 

This short work comes from the so-called Gostling Part Books at York Minster. These books are actually the Bing-Gostling Part Books, if you want to be pedantic (and I do). These part books were originally compiled by Stephen Bing (1610-1681). Bing was a very prolific music copyist while at his job as lay vicar at Westminster Abbey. He copied out a prodigious amount of music, which runs the gamut of music from this time, as he worked with such composers as George Jeffreys, John Barnard, William Turner, William Tucker, John Blow, and Henry Purcell. Many of the works are located only in this collection, and it has provided a rich source of study for many musicologists.

Where, then, does the Gostling part of the part-book come from?John Gostling was a bass singer, and was famous for his apparently wide vocal range; Henry Purcell wrote him a work or two. Now, the addition of John Gostling to the collection is due to the fact that Mr Gostling came into possession of the part-books after Bing's death, and he added 23 anthems and two services to the empty pages in the books.

The Batten piece comes from Bing's part of the book: a short anthem for SATB choir. Adrian Batten is known for other collections that he helped put together (or did himself) of many works by pre-restoration composers; his own music was apparently well known at the time, but has mostly fallen into obscurity since then. One reason is that much of it has disappeared over time. Strangely enough, although he did copy down some of his own music in his cleverly titled Organbook , he did not include many of his own works. 

Here is a version of O Sing Joyfully on Youtube.