JULION

Composer: David Hurd

David Hurd (born 1950) is a composer, concert organist, choral director and educator. He is a Professor of Sacred Music and Director of Chapel Music at the General Theological Seminary, Chelsea, New York City. He is also the Music Director at the Church of the Holy Apostles, also in Chelsea. Dr. Hurd attended the High School of Music and Art, the Juilliard School and Oberlin College. He holds honorary doctorates from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and Church Divinity School of the Pacific, given in recognition of his contributions to Sacred Music. In 1977 he received first prizes in both Organ Performance and in Organ Improvisation from the International Congress of Organists, being the only pe… Go to person page >

David Hurd (b. Brooklyn, NY, 1950) composed JULION in 1974. The harmony is rich (up to six parts with the descant) and well suited to a rich, smooth organ sonority, including strings. The descant is difficult and will need rehearsing, but it can be effectively sung by a choir or played by instruments above the congregational unison on stanza 2.

Hurd was a boy soprano at St. Gabriel's Church in Hollis, Long Island, New York. Educated at Oberlin College and the University of North Carolina, he has been professor of church music and organist at General Theological Seminary in New York since 1976. In 1985 he also became director of music for All Saints Episcopal Church, New York. Hurd is an outstanding recitalist and improvisor and a composer of organ, choral, and instrumental music. He has served on several committees of the Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church, and a number of his tunes were included in The Hymnal 1982. To date two collections of his hymn tunes have been published: The David Hurd Hymnary (1983) and The David Hurd Hymnary Supplement (1985).

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook