How Shall I Sing That Majesty (Coe Fen)

We’re delighted to bring you our first Caritas video recording of 2021, the great hymn ‘How shall I sing that majesty’ set to the wonderful tune ‘Coe Fen’. The author of the text is John Mason a 17th century author, and the tune was composed by Ken Naylor. Naylor was Director of Music at The Leys School in Cambridge which is situated very close to Coe Fen, a small fen on the outskirts of Cambridge. In addition to writing the tune, Naylor also composed the superb descant which is featured here in verse 3. Paul Rothwell, one of our regular tenors in Caritas - and our ‘recording engineer’ for these videos - chose this hymn for his wedding two years ago when some Caritasians sang in the choir for the occasion. This recording comes from St Martin’s Church in Roath where Caritas is currently rehearsing and recording; as you will hear, there is a superb acoustic and fine organ. For our first session back, we involved 10 singers (a slightly smaller group than our usual 15 or so) plus David Butler who plays the organ in this recording. We hope that you enjoy this recording and look forward to sending out more as the term progresses! With all best wishes, Lindsay