What is it?

Song Of The Saviour is an original poem, set to the melody of a 17th century Cornish folk song ('Sweet Nightingale'). I have published two arrangements, both with sheet music available upon request free of charge:

• Solo singer (ideally soprano) and brass band, as a tribute to my friend and mentor the late Kenneth Pelmear
• Solo singer, keyboard and bass guitar, which is probably more suitable for the majority of use-cases

Both arrangements are relatively straightforward.

Arrangement for soprano and brass band

Arrangement for soprano, keyboard(s) and bass guitar

1/ Dear child, come along!
And I’ll sing you a song,
The story of all that I’ve done!
For you I’ll explain
The love that you’ll gain
And it’s thanks to the victory I’ve won.

2/ God’s heavenly dove
Could have filled them with love,
And saved them from all that they’d lost.
But instead of love’s flood
They demanded my blood,
I was sentenced to hang on a cross.

3/ My God turned away,
On that last awful day;
I was left there to die all alone.
I suffered such loss
By my death on that cross,
In a darkness unlit by God’s throne.

4/ My Father reached out,
There was never a doubt
And he raised me to life once again.
I conquered the grave
By the blood that I gave
And one day over all I shall reign.

5/ So children take heart,
I will never depart,
I will be by your side every day.
Be no more afraid
For I’ve banished the shade,
And I’ll light every step of your way.

Song Of The Saviour is unique, for me at least. For one thing, it's the only one of my works for which I chose to use a traditional folk song melody; in this case the Cornish song 'Sweet Nightingale'. For another, it's my only work that is inspired directly by the work of one of my schoolteachers. Kenneth Pelmear (1923 - 1995) taught religious education and music at Truro School. He never taught me directly but he must have been quite impressed by my abilities as a musician because he went out of his way to encourage me. His 'Cornish Extravaganza' was a collection of traditional Cornish songs set for baritone soloist, male voice choir and brass band. It was first performed by Alan Opie and the Holman Climax Male Voice Choir, with the Camborne Town Band, and recorded by Job Morris, one of my father's friends. It included the song 'Sweet Nightingale'. I was listening to that in May 2025 when suddenly it dawned on me that I could write some really meaningful lyrics to the same tune. That was how Song Of The Saviour came about.

I was struggling to process the fact that a friend of mine, six months younger than me, had just died from cancer. The words came to me almost as if God himself were speaking to me, which makes them very special.

To start with, I took Ken Pelmear's original track and stripped away the baritone solo. A bit of playing around with the result convinced me that the song could work, but I couldn't ethically use the Camborne Town Band for a public video; so I re-scored it and made my own recording, sticking pretty much to Ken's original harmonic structure. Then I made an alternative, somewhat slower arrangement intended for churches that don't have a Salvation Army style brass band available.