O Food To Pilgrims Given

Composer
Arranger
Difficulty
Moderately Easy radio_button_checked radio_button_checked radio_button_unchecked radio_button_unchecked radio_button_unchecked
Voicing(s)
Instrumental Only?
No
Description

SATB with organ. And easy early Renaissance setting by the very fellow who wrote the tune! The second verse is in canon and can easily be done by two solo voices or the entire section. Text by John Aethelstan Laurie Riley (1858-1945).

Austrian-Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450-1517) integrated into his own style many characteristics of the music of Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. As a result, his music is more fully international than any other composer of his generation. This setting of Isaac's secular tune, Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen (Innsbruck, I now must leave thee), combines the later homophonic setting (which lo,Oks forward to the texture adopted in the chorale settings arranged for congregational singing) with the earlier polyphonic setting containing the melody in canon. The melody of this Renaissance favorite was later adopted to sacred words and became widely known as the chorale O Welt, ich muss dich lassen (O world, I now must leave thee).

Audio
Lyrics

O food to pilgrims given,
O bread of life from heaven,
O manna from on high!
We hunger; Lord, supply us,
nor thy delights deny us,
whose hearts to thee draw nigh.

O stream of love past telling,
O purest fountain, welling
from out the Savior's side!
We faint with thirst; revive us,
of thine abundance give us,
and all we need provide.

O Jesus, by thee bidden,
we here adore thee, hidden
in forms of bread and wine.
Grant when the veil is risen,
we may behold, in heaven,
thy countenance divine.