All my hope on God is founded

Those reading the hymnal through in their private devotions (a Methodist habit much to be imitated) will be conscious of striking a richly traditional seam at this point—with yet more to follow. Robert Bridges’ hymn enjoyed increasing popularity in the 20th c, again helped by its music, and while very different from its 4 18th-c near-neighbours is not unworthy to stand in their company. The text is one of the abiding fruits of its author’s The Yattendon Hymnal of 1899, though this book had appeared in instalments from 1896 as Hymns in Four Parts with English Words for Singing in Churches. It was a very free paraphrase, with additions, of Joachim Neander’s Meine Hoffnung stehet feste, a ‘Grace after meat’ based on 1 Timothy 6:17 and published in 1680. Some put that more strongly: ‘it bears little resemblance to the original … using Neander’s verses as a starting point’ etc. Like many of Bridges’ texts and versions, it deliberately leant towards quaintness (cf Woodward’s Ding dong merrily and This joyful Eastertide); J R Watson speaks rather of its ‘rhythmical firmness’ and ‘elaborate Miltonic syntax’; ‘the text is about as removed from ordinary speech as it is possible to get, and yet it works magnificently …’ However we interpret the author’s antiquarian approach, changes have been made, as by others, to most of the verses; in stz 1, from ‘he doth still my trust renew./ Me through change and chance he guideth …’; 2, from ‘Pride of man … / he buildeth’; 3, from ‘… aye endureth/ … new-born worlds …’; 4, from ‘Daily doth … / bounteous gifts on us bestow;/ his desire our soul delighteth,/ pleasure leads us where we go’. It remains ‘a hymn of celebratory splendour’ (Watson).

The hymn was at first normally sung to the Neander’s own tune MEINE HOFFNUNG, which he claimed was also borrowed or adapted. Words and music went together in YH, but the latter had appeared in an earlier form in A&M. But since Herbert Howells composed MICHAEL c1930—allegedly at the breakfast table where he had been opening his mail—this tune has effectively replaced the earlier one. His letters that day included one from Dr Thos Fielden, Charterhouse School’s Director of Music, asking for a new tune for Bridges’ words. So this was first played and sung in the school chapel, and first printed in The Clarendon Hymn Book (compiled primarily for Charterhouse, in Surrey) of 1936. It is named after the composer’s son, 1926–35, who had died of meningitis; and it gained wider currency through Hymns for Church and School, 1964. The Methodist Hymns and Psalms of 1983 includes both these tunes and also GROESWEN by John A Lloyd, from c1848; CH has an alternative in John Roberts’ RHEIDOL. But MICHAEL has featured regularly in the countless broadcasts of the hymn which both reflect and help to sustain its current popularity.

b Walmer, Kent 1844, d Boars Hill, nr Oxford 1930. After his country squire father died when Robert was 10, his mother remarried and the family moved to Rochdale, from where RSB was sent to Eton Coll; then Corpus Christi Coll Oxford where his friendship with Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) began. He trained as a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hosp, London (MB 1874, and for a time its casualty physician), and while holding various hospital appointments he wrote much verse, the first of many published vols appearing in 1873 as Shorter Poems. In 1882 he changed course to concentrate on literature and music, in both of which he excelled. He lived at Yattendon (where from 1885 he trained the choirboys), a village nr Newbury, Berks, from 1882 to 1904, and at Boars Hill, Oxford, from 1907 until his death. His early ‘catholic’ leanings merged in later life to a broader view, combining an emphasis on beauty and excellence in the arts with a deep affection for what was historic, even archaic. Contemporaries noted his ‘extraordinary personal charm’ and called him one of the most remarkable figures of his time; ‘there is no company in which he would not have been distinguished’. Others point to the audacity, ‘opinionated brusqueness’ and worldly substance without which his achievements would have been impossible.

In 1913 he was appointed Poet Laureate, co-founding The Society for Pure English, and for many years advised the Oxford Univ Press on style, spelling, typography etc. The Testament of Beauty (1929) was a philosophical poem wedding contemporary science and Christian faith, a kind of mature credo published a year before his death and widely acclaimed. The 100 hymns and tunes in the 4 parts of The Yattendon Hymnal, which he compiled between 1895 and 1899 with the artist and musician Prof Harry Ellis Wooldridge, (who also helped to compile the ill-fated 1904 A&M at around the same time), were not intended as a commercial best-seller. Most of the texts were his own; most of the music pre-1750. But the ideals the book embodied both in its selection of words and tunes and by its editorial comments had a profound influence on the EH of 1906 and the Oxford Hymn Book of 1908; ‘good melody is never out of fashion’. In 1979 Erik Routley chose 5 of these texts for his A Panorama of Christian Hymnody. Bridges’ wife Monica provided many of the harmonies. He had, however, resigned from his post as precentor at Yattendon in 1894 because of his growing dislike of the vicar’s sermons.

Among other publications were plays, essays such as A Practical Discourse on some Principles of Hymn-Singing, further lyrics, and the first collected edn (in 1918) of the poems of Hopkins. His prose was collected and reissued between 1927 and 1936. Some of his work was consciously archaic even in its time; hymn-book editors differ in recent approaches to his language. 19 of his hymns are found in Songs of Praise (1931 edn); 13 appeared in EH (whose committee he declined to join); 10 in the 1950 Congregational Praise, the same number in the New English Hymnal of 1986, and 8 in Common Praise (the 2000 A&M). He is represented by two 4-line poems in the current (1999) Oxford Book of English Verse (a ration reflecting changes in literary taste), but is treated more generously in many other anthologies. As well as the hymns included here, other favourites include Happy are they, they that love God; Rejoice, O land, in God thy might; and The duteous day now closeth. See also Hymnwriters 3 by Bernard Braley, 1991, and Robert Bridges: a biography by Catherine Phillips, 1992. Bridges was also responsible for the preservation and later publication of the ground-breaking poems of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins. Nos.412, 775.

b Bremen, N Germany 1650, d Bremen 1680. His pastor-grandfather adapted the family name ‘Neumann’ to its Gk form. He attended the Paedagogium and Academic Gymnasium, Bremen; after his dissolute teenage years, Calvinist in name only, he was converted through the preaching of Theodore Under-Eyck, the new pietist pastor of St Martin’s Church in Bremen where he had gone intending to mock. He became tutor to 5 students at Heidelberg until 1673, when he visited Frankfurt and made the acquaintance of Philipp Spener and the Quietists. In 1674 he became Rector of the Latin School, Düsseldorf, run by the Reformed church. His pastoral work there became individualistic enough to earn him brief suspension before resuming a more traditional role. In 1679 he returned to Bremen as Under-Eyck’s assistant at St Martin’s, but pressure of work and opposition to his preaching may have hastened his death from TB in his 30th year. He was a student of nature who loved exploring the Düssel valleys, one of which was named after him and gained later notoriety from the ‘Neanderthal Man’. He may have written some hymns in a cave, but did not (as legend claims) live there. Shortly before his death he published several texts and tunes at Bremen, and his most influential prose item about singing; all or part of this was included in the hymnals of several church groups. Many fuller posthumous edns appeared and his work was included in the 1722 Reformed Gesangbuch at Marburg, from which more books have quarried. He wrote some 60 texts, the effect of which was partly to enrich Reformed praise with more personal qualities; see Julian’s very detailed notes. Nos.196, 775. Tunes published at 156, 297=356.