From the depths of shame and sorrow

‘De profundis—Out of the depths’: any list of the greatest songs which cry to God for help must surely feature the 130th Psalm. It is a further penitential item (see 6, 32 etc, also called ‘Pauline’ as they anticipate the apostle’s distinctive doctrines); not surprisingly it proved precious to those like Luther, Bunyan, Hooker and the Wesleys, who through these brief but powerful verses have found conviction of sin, valued its hope in the word of God and trusted in his redemption. Matthew 1:21 and Luke 2:38 are surely conscious echoes, making the same gospel point at different moments and in different ways. Like these texts, the Psalm does not leave us in the depths but brings us from them; if the misery is profound, so is the remedy. The choice of an adequate modern version proved challenging; Emma Turl has experienced her own low points, and her version captures the personal anguish of its opening as well as the confident assurance in the atonement provided. It came together, she says, ‘during a cold, wet walk with my dog’. She was ‘struggling, not too successfully, to make a bond with a very excitable guide-dog who particularly disliked the rain. The tune I had in mind was John Sweney’s REVIVE THE HEARTS OF ALL, with its repeated line, ‘Let the shower of blessing fall’. The unspecified individual ‘depths’ lead us to an outward-looking invitation to all ‘the Israel of God’ (Galatians 6:16), to welcome a mercy as sure as the morning. A more radical approach is Fred Kaan’s Out of our failure to create, the first of 7 versions in Psalms for Today/Songs from the Psalms (1990) which also has Bill Batstone’s I call to you from out of the deep. From an earlier wealth of versions we may note From the deeps of grief and fear by Phineas Fletcher (early 17th c) and Tate and Brady’s 1696 text From lowest depths of woe – both included in The Oxford Hymn Book of 1908. A fine CM version ascribed to ‘G’ in Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody (1841) begins Out of the depths of guilt and fear. Phinehas Fletcher wrote an 18th-c text. Gill Berry’s tune ABERGLASLYN, published here for the first time, was composed for these words at Shrewsbury in 1990. The music, as she was later advised, ‘quotes’ unintentionally from John Stainer’s Crucifixion, which she was not conscious of hearing before. ‘Let’s just say it could be regarded as a tribute to Stainer.’ The composer and her husband spent their honeymoon in Beddgelert in N Wales, ‘one of the most beautiful parts of Snowdonia’, near which is the Aberglaslyn Pass which gives the tune its name.

b Shrewsbury 1946. Stamford High Sch (Lincs) and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (MA English and Cert Ed). Born into a literary household, she loved poetry from childhood, and was converted aged 13 at a Scripture Union camp. She worked as VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) for two years in Ugandan ‘revival country’. Following this she married John and spent the next ten years (1971-81) in Ghana, afterwards returning to live in Waltham Abbey, Essex, where she and her family joined Goldings Hill Evangelical Free Ch, Loughton (1982–2002). She now attends the Abbey Church. While enjoying chanted Psalms as a student she longed for more congregationally accessible ways of singing them, and attributes her first desire to write ‘Bible oriented verse’ to a literary household, and Anglican services (St Ebbe’s Oxford) with readings and canticles. Her first metrical versions were written between 1983 and 1985, during which time she had paraphrased the entire Psalter. A few of these Psalm texts were printed with other verses in Treasures Old and New, 1989, followed by Time to Celebrate 1999, with suggested tunes from her husband John and friend Gill Berry, qv. Some of these are specially needed to accompany a number of unusual metres. Subsequently she has revised many of her original texts in the light of further comments and computer assisted discoveries, and has also added some new versions.
The monthly Evangelicals Now (see under Benton J) published her work occasionally from 1993; Praise! is the first hymnal to include her texts and one of these features in the 2004 edn of CH. Her sight began to deteriorate early; by the age of 13 she could read only with a strong magnifying glass, reading became increasingly difficult and slow, and by her mid 20s she was completely blind. This made her unaware of ‘the oustanding new hymns and Psalm versions which others were already producing, which could have inspired me but could well have put me off’. See her comments on some ‘blindness/sight’ hymns, with practical pastoral considerations, in ‘Singing without seeing’ in HSB234 (Jan 2003). In an earlier Bulletin review (no.225, Oct 2000), Basil E Bridge calls her hymns ‘thoroughly biblical…well – sometimes ingeniously – crafted…I am sure we shall be hearing more of Emma Turl in the future’. Her own choice of 15 of them appears in the collection of contemporary hymns, Emma now attends the abbey church in Waltham Abbey. More of her hymns can be found on the website of The Jubilate Group: www.jubilate.org
Come Celebrate (2009). Nos.30C, 53, 84A, 106, 107, 110, 119G, 123, 130, 168, 825, 1011, 1014, 1034, 1038, 1041, 1045, 1053, 1054, 1058, 1059, 1062, 1063, 1069, 1087, 1088, 1089, 1091, 1092, 1096, 1101, 1103, 1107, 1108, 1110, 1134, 1137, 1195, 1213, 1216, 1239, 1246.