Angels of Heaven

Angels of Heaven is an arrangement of a Shaker song by Ephraim Frost. The original tune is categorized as a “slow march.” Frost was born in 1824 and likely joined the Shakers as a young man in the mid 1840s. A skilled farmer who also wrote songs and poetry, Frost was active at two southern Ohio Shaker communities: Watervliet, on the Eastern edge of Montgomery County, near Dayton; and White Water, in the Northwest corner of Hamilton County, near Cincinnati. He left the Shakers in 1872.

I first arranged the B section of Angels of Heaven (“Holy, holy, etc.”) in 1997, and titled it “Benediction.” The following year it was used as the closing song in the Shaker Songs suite published by Earthsongs. I created the full arrangement of Angels of Heaven in 2000, in preparation for the Tudor Choir's "Gentle Words" recording.

The angels of heaven are marching around
the borders of Zion’s holy ground.
Their music harmonious how it doth ring,
and this is the heavenly song they sing:

Holy, holy, holiness unto the Lord.
Love ye, love ye, love ye one another.