If you have a sound card and Real Audio on your browser, Click for sound to hear the recording. If you have a sound card and Real Audio on your browser, Click for sound to hear the recording.
As a Church of England School, Archbishop Holgate’s had a school hymn, rather than a school song. "Servants of the Great Adventure" is a rousing example of the type, and its confidently striding tune is better than most. Anyone who was at school as a junior will remember the descant, and music teachers blenched at the running octaves in the accompaniment’s left hand. The words were by Canon Percy Dearmer; the music was by Reginald Rose, for many years the school's music teacher. The hymn was given an outing half a dozen times a year, at the beginning and end of term and at Speech Day and the Founder’s Service.
It was recorded - in the 1940s(?) - as a 78 r.p.m. gramophone record by Radio Services Ltd of York, Private Recording WBS0015. (The reverse side is a performance of Good King Wenceslas!) Radio Services, or "RRR", chiefly made off-air recordings for individuals, under licence, in those days before tape recorders were common. This performance is distinctly slow; perhaps caution was needed when cutting directly to wax!