Let all in heaven and earth unite

Basil Bridge’s version of this vivid and verbally echoing Psalm was written at Stamford in 1989 in response to a request from ‘Jubilate’ editors, and published the following year in Psalms for Today—though not subsequently again until Praise!, which retains the tune set to it there. We miss only the conclusion of the biblical text (v11) where ‘whirlwind, tempest and thunder give way in the last verse to a still, small voice’; cf also Michael Perry’s echoing The God of heaven thunders and Martin Leckebusch’s The voice which shakes the earth till mountains heave and quake (1972, 2001). The Psalm holds both earthly and heavenly perspectives in view, as in Keble’s fine text in 888: Bring to the Lord, ye sons of light, where the closing note of peace ‘spans it like a rainbow’ (W Alexander). The tune, variously known as LUTHER or LUTHER’S HYMN, or by one or more German titles, has been set to several English texts. It may have begun life as a 14th-c love-song; as a hymn tune it has been traced as far back as a 1533 Wittenberg edition where it accompanies Martin Luther’s Nun freut euch lieben Christen g’mein (‘Rejoice now, Christian people’). Arriving in England in 1768, it became linked with the early version of Great God, what do I see and hear (at that time thought to be by Luther; see 962)—hence yet another name, JUDGEMENT HYMN. It is found with varying melody, rhythm, and harmony; some have felt that its authentic context is thanksgiving, as (eg) 578; see also 456.

b Norwich, Norfolk 1927. City of Norwich School and Cheshunt Coll, Cambridge (BA/MA). In 1951 he was ordained to the pastorate at Knowle (Warwicks), then Abbot’s Rd Congregational (now URC) Leicester from 1955, Stamford and Bourne (Lincs) and Bedford; he retired to Norwich. For many years, together with his wife Muriel, he has been active in the Hymn Society. His earlier hymn texts were collected in The Son of God proclaim, and other hymns (1986), which took its title from his 1962 prizewinning communion hymn, and his first. 30 texts and 8 tunes are in print in several Free Church and Jubilate collections; among them, Jesus, Lord, we pray, written in 1977 for his younger daughter’s wedding in the following January. The 2005 edn of A Panorama of Christian Hymnody carries a different pair of texts from those in Praise!, including This is the truth we hold, (for which he composed the tune HARROLD) while Hymns and Psalms (1983) also has 2, Rejoice and Sing (1991) 3, and NewStart (for the Millennium, 1999) has 5 in a total of 71. His self-selected share in Come Celebrate: contemporary hymns>/i> (2009) is 10; this does not include The prophet had a vision, set to his own tune MICAH in 1975,which expresses the biblical (and late-20th-c) longing for a global peace. Nos.29, 937.