The Church of England minister wrote “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and “Faithful Vigil Ended.”
Timothy Dudley-Smith, author of “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and more than 400 other hymns, died in Cambridge, England, on August 12. He was 97.
Dudley-Smith was a Church of England bishop, serving as the suffragan, or assistant bishop, of Thetford in Norwich for 12 years before he retired in 1991. Prior to taking a position in leadership, he served as director of the Church Pastoral Aid Society.
He was always more widely known, however, for his hymns. Many Anglicans deeply cherished his words.
“These hymns restore our faith, not only in the gospel, but also in the action of singing that gospel together, with heart, and soul, and voice,” a retired English professor at the University of Durham wrote in 2006. “Dudley-Smith never lets us down. There are no weak lines, no approximate rhymes, no distortions of syntax, no fumbled metres … no bad hymns.”
Dudley-Smith’s most popular hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul,” has been published 190 times in Great Britain and is also popular in the US and elsewhere. It was first written in 1961, and by 1985, appeared in 42 percent of all contemporary hymnals, according to hymnary.org.
Ten of Dudley-Smith’s other songs have been published more than two dozen times. “Faithful Vigil Ended”—“Faithful vigil ended / watching waiting cease / Master, grant thy servant / his discharge in peace”—has appeared in 28 different hymnals. “Name of All Majesty,” written in 1979, appears in more than 70, including translations in French, Korean, and Chinese.
Dudley-Smith …