Corinthians 13

You get a pdf of the score, an mp3 of the recording and rehearsal track mp3s of each of the vocal parts. In the Amidons book & CD ‘Fifty-five Anthems for the Small Church Choir‘. This was composed for the Guilford (VT) Community Church, UCC Choir, and performed here by the Starry Mountain Singers.  The most challenging moment in this composition is the two-part-harmony “Hallelujah” over the final chord; if your group is not secure in this, the piece works fine just leaving it off. It also works to omit all of the “Hallelujah”s.

Starry Mountain Singers

First Boston UU

LYRICS

Corinthians 13
adapted from I Corinthians 13: 1-13 by Peter Amidon

If I speak in the tongues of men or angels,
but have not love,
I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic pow’rs and all understanding,
and all faith to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.

And if I give what I have and I give what I am
but have not love, I gain nothing.

Bears all things, Believes all things.
Hopes all things, endures all things.

Love is patient, love is kind, Love’s not proud or boastful,
Love does not delight in wrong; rejoices in the truth.

Love never ends, but prophecies will end
and as for tongues, they will cease, and knowledge it will end.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;
when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.
Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
And now faith, hope, and love abide.

Faith, hope, love, faith, hope, love,
Faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is love.