O Love, I Give Myself to You by John Bacchus Dykes 4-Part - Digital Sheet Music

This rather obscure text (originally "O Love Who Formest Me to Wear") is here updated and set to MELITA (the tune perhaps most commonly associated with "Eternal Father, Strong to Save"), with the addition of a dramatic "B section" newly-composed for the occasion.

Duration: 3:10.

The demo (which begins where the ladies first enter) has an organ supporting the choir; however, the printed accompaniment is obviously more idiomatic for piano.

The anthem is best suited for Lent or Communion, though it can also be used at other times as the theme of the service may allow, e.g., an emphasis on Consecration.

Here are some detailed notes about the composition, for inclusion in a printed program or just general information:

Johann Scheffler (1624-1677) was born into a Lutheran home in Breslau, Silesia, a small country in what is now southwestern Poland and northern Czech Republic. After studying medicine in Strassburg, Germany, he returned home at the age of 25, where he became the private physician for a duke. While studying abroad, however, he had been exposed to the teachings of various mystics, and gradually he began to assimilate their ideas. Finally he broke fellowship with the church of his father, resigned his medical post, and joined a Jesuit monastery in Breslau (Wroclaw), Silesia. There he pursued his study of the medieval mystics of the Roman Catholic Church. At the age of 29 he converted to that communion, at which time he changed his name to Angelus Silesius. After his subsequent ordination as a priest, he became a prolific writer and poet–with all of his work tinged by the spirit of mysticism that so fascinated him. His hymns were very popular among both Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and were greatly admired by Count von Zinzendorf, who included 79 of them in his Moravian collection.

Lyndell Leatherman (b. 1953) was born into a Nazarene parsonage in southeast Kansas. After studying church music and
composition at Olivet Nazarene University (Kankakee, Illinois) and Illinois State University (Bloomington-Normal, Illinois), he was named Music Editor at a denominational publishing company in Kansas City, Missouri, where he served from 1977 to 1997. He has enjoyed a diverse career as church musician, composer, and music editor. In 1983 he discovered the two-stanza Scheffler text, "O Love Who Formest Me to Wear." Peering past the archaic language, he was intrigued by its strong imagery and poetic beauty. Altering the original stanzas to more contemporary parlance and adding a third, he set the text to the well-loved MELITA tune, wrote original music for the B section, and introduced it in a choral arrangement first published by Beckenhorst Press in 1983.

John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876), is primarily remembered for three tunes still found in hymnals today–most notably the
melodies for "Holy, Holy, Holy" (NICAEA), "Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee" (ST. AGNES) and "Eternal Father, Strong to
Save" (MELITA). The latter is a derivation of "Malta"–the sun-baked island in the Mediterranean where the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked during a violent storm. It was originally written specifically as a setting for "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," a prayer for sailors and sea-travelers–hence the significance of its name.