WESTRIDGE

Composer: Martin Fallas Shaw

Martin F. Shaw was educated at the Royal College of Music in London and was organist and choirmaster at St. Mary's, Primrose Hill (1908-1920), St. Martin's in the Fields (1920-1924), and the Eccleston Guild House (1924-1935). From 1935 to 1945 he served as music director for the diocese of Chelmsford. He established the Purcell Operatic Society and was a founder of the Plainsong and Medieval Society and what later became the Royal Society of Church Music. Author of The Principles of English Church Music Composition (1921), Shaw was a notable reformer of English church music. He worked with Percy Dearmer (his rector at St. Mary's in Primrose Hill); Ralph Vaughan Williams, and his brother Geoffrey Shaw in publishing hymnals such as Songs… Go to person page >

WESTRIDGE is a charming two-line tune, effective precisely because "small is beautiful." Martin F. Shaw (PHH 49) composed it in 1929 for a children's hymn, “Jesus, Friend of Little Children,” and the tune was published in Songs of Praise for Boys and Girls (1930). Sing it in unison and use light accompaniment, possibly even reducing the texture to three parts. Seerveld suggests a well-trained child's voice with piano accompaniment as a performance option.

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1987