Not keen on reviving seven year old threads, but it's still here at the top of this subforum so.......
Based on my understanding, around the time this "God is the Lord" came out, then-newish Metropolitan Joseph put in a program of music "reform".
Existing music in the Archdiocese was mostly either choral or pseudo-Byzantine chant.
In the few years prior there was a movement to correctly set English liturgical texts into Byzantine music (ie people who know what they were doing correctly applying the formulae of byzantine chant onto English texts), and Metropolitan Joseph wanted to further encourage this. (a similar movement took place in Lebanon during the 80s and 90s - many Antiochians fled Lebanon to Greece during the civil war, where they were influenced by a "renaissance" of Byzantine chant there that had been going for a number of years, and then started applying this into Arabic*)
Initially, that "correct composition in English" movement often used Holy Transfiguration Monastery's texts (or the often very similar texts in Metropolitan Kallistos' Festal Menaion or Lenten Triodion), indeed HTM was one of the leaders of this movement, especially when they released their metered Menaion. Father Ephraim of St. Anthony's Monastery, probably the person who started this movement, put a number of HTM texts from the Divine Liturgy, Horologion, and Ananstasimatarion into music (see the Divine Liturgies Music Project) circa iirc 2010, so it was really a near no brainer for other folks at the time to build on this, and IMO for the Antiochians to choose this**.
(as an aside, the Antiochian hierarchy and leadership correctly chose to encourage people to use the new texts and settings, rather than make a Latinesque top-down omnibus mandated change. A very informal survey of streamed Antiochian services confirms various clergy statements that implementation varies by parish and even within individual services)
This "God Is the Lord and hast Appeared Unto Us" is HTM's translation, IMO fairly direct for the Greek "Θεὸς Κύριος, καὶ ἐπέφανεν ἡμῖν, εὐλογημένος ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἐν ὀνόματι Κυρίου". HTM's critical text comparison and care in translation are unparalleled IMO compared to anyone (though their choices are certainly not always everyone's cup of tea!). They also left ROCOR, IIRC for being too liberal, to my understanding - so anyway, inclusive language has nothing to do with that particular translation.
- note that, say, Coverdale's "God is the Lord who hath showed us light" and the King James' "...which hath shewed us light". Both of these foundational English translations do not use the arguably extraneous "He" for this psalm verse, though of course theirs are t derived from the Hebrew Masoretic text vs. the Greek Septuagint.
As far as the London Bridge in that Plagal of Fourth Tone... ummm no IMO. London Bridge to my guess is in the western major scale, 4 4/4 phrases composed mostly of 1/8th notes with the "down"'s being quarter notes. If you start with "Lon" as the F on a piano, the key is b flat major and of course ends on said note. The linked Plagal Fourth "God is the Lord" if set with the base note "Ga" at the same pitch as an F is none of those things - even in western notation, to say nothing in its
authoritative Byzantine notation [
ww1.antiochian.org], in terms of rhythm, duration of the notes, base/final note, and the fact that the Byzantine diatonic scale is somewhat differently tuned vs the western major scale, and in this case would not use the e flat required in b flat minor. (and as an aside, if you transposed London Bridge into Byzantine notation and the Byzantine diatonic scale, not only would it not accurately capture London Bridge, but also it would very clearly not be Byzantine chant or conform to its formulae).
*
Fr. John El Messih [
ancientfaith.com], formerly Protospsaltis of the Antiochian Archdiocese, and
Chadi Karam [
ancientfaith.com], a prominent composer, discuss this in these podcast series.
** in subsequent years the Greek Orthdodox Diocese has put out a largely comparable translation online; however there are still several gaps in comparison to HTM. More importantly, IMO the translations are generally inferior in terms of English usage.
