The Wings of Faith

Hymn-anthems from the Nonconformist tradition, to texts by Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley

Mansfield College Chapel, Mansfield Road, Oxford

Tickets

Between them, the two towering figures of English hymnody, Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, produced some of the most famous and memorable hymn texts in the English language.

Although Wesley remained an Anglican cleric, he is most closely associated nowadays with the birth of the Methodist church, while Watts was a Congregationalist minister and theologian.

It seems fitting therefore in Mansfield College Chapel (which boasts its own statue of Watts, as well as one of Wesley’s brother, John) as Oxford’s grandest shrine of Nonconformity, to sing the words of these two men, not just as hymns, but instead elevated as anthems, in richer and more colourful textures, by English speaking composers of later times.

We do hope you enjoy hearing these great words matched to some familiar and not so familiar musical settings.

Conductor James Brown

Organist Dónal McCann

Tickets £12 (students £8)

To include music by Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Howells, and Whitbourn.