Molimo Ke Moea

‘Molimo Ke Moea’ is the most hymn-like of the eight pieces by Mohapeloa in the multi-authored collection of church anthems called Hosanna, published in IMorija, Lesotho, in 1955. It was already published in the 1939 version of the Sesotho hymnal Lifela tsa Sione (Songs of Zion) as hymn No. 445 (Morija Sesuto Book Depot 2011: 490-491). The 1939 and 1955 versions are almost the same, but not quite. Repetitions that occur in the text, which is adapted from the New Testament Gospel According to St John chapter 4 verse 24, are echoed in sequences in Mohapeloa’s music, that show his mastery of the language of mid-nineteenth-century Western hymnody, and these are most likely the result of music courses that he took part-time at Wits University in the late 1940s.