Music Notes

Nature's Praise, a Louisiana Hymn

I've known about this hymn ever since I was a small child. I found it printed inside a book I got out at the local library, Louisiana Indian Tales, and memorized it in the form of a poem for the sheer descriptive beauty of the words.

As I grew older I kept those words close. I never thought I'd be able to hear it sung, and often wondered how it sounds. I began looking for the hymn online to listen to and finally hear the melody. But it was impossible to find. I researched the book I had found it in, was able to view it digitally, and discovered the composer's name: Father Dominic Braud, OSB.

After making myself at home on the lyrics annotation site Genius, I had the idea of posting the words there and hoping that someone would find the page and upload a video of the hymn. You can see how that went here.  

The weirdest thing kept happening after I posted Nature's Praise on Genius: several people contacted me through the site, sharing background knowledge of the Louisiana priest who composed the hymn and offering to send me videos of it being sung in a local choir... But each one of them disappeared. A couple of years went by as I waited, irritated that my much-desired audio was so close and yet so far!

Finally I went back to YouTube and looked up the hymn again... And found it almost immediately, perfectly recorded and complete with a beautiful album cover. It's available as one of those automated videos that somehow gets posted via the label that produced the album... Apparently the priests decided to put forth a collection of their hymns. I believe the late Father Dominic wrote many different ones over the years. According to personal accounts he played a major role in his small Louisiana community.

What a delight to finally hear the words I had treasured for so many years, sung and set to music as they should be. The hymn marvels at God's creative power and invites us to appreciate the diverse beauty, and join in the praises, of the natural world.