Tang, Agnes

Composer

b Malaysia 1945. She lived for some years in New Cross, SE London; worked in the Law Courts as a court reporter, and as a speech-to-text reporter for deaf people. She has studied at RSCM and is a widely-travelled linguist; organist/pianist at Christ Church Old Kent Rd in the 1990s, then at St Mark’s Kennington, also in SE London, 2001–2003. She lives in active retirement in Pafos (Paphos) in W Cyprus. Having composed some 16 hymn tunes, mainly 1995–96 for texts by Christopher Idle, she made this total up to 20 by 2006. These she recorded on a CD, ‘Yes, Hymns!’, in which she played and sang her music to traditional hymns including 7 of Charles Wesley’s. Suspecting that often ‘for the under-50s … the glories of hymns, except for a few Christmas carols, are a closed book’, she sets out to bridge the gap between older words and contemporary music. Much is lost, she writes, in the trend to limit congregations to choruses and songs: ‘the poetry and richness of language used by hymnwriters still have the power, even after centuries, to edify spiritually.’ Nos.333, 551.