When I started seminary back in 1974 in Rome, one of the students in my year was Sebastian Temple. Does the name mean anything to you? It may do, as he was a composer. His most famous piece is "Make me a channel of your peace", one of the most popular hymns since Vatican II. He was already something of a star in his adopted home in the USA, and he found it a bit hard that in 1974 hardly anyone had heard of him in Britain. Sadly, he didn't complete the course. I learned later that he died in 1997.
My memory of him is his slot at the end of our otherwise often tedious music practice on Saturday mornings. If you put a guitar in his hands and he sang one of his songs he'd light up the whole chapel. I remember him telling the guys "Smile when you sing my songs!" It still grates on me when I hear "Channel of my peace" dragged...
Here he sings his hymn to the Holy Trinity "Sing praises to the living God". It's hard to capture the effect that songs like his had on Catholic music. Some may sound dated now, but they helped open the window...
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