Praise the Lord, you heavens, adore him

Outside the ancient hymns of the church, this can claim to be one of our finest ‘traditional’ hymns below which we have to write ‘Anon’. But the source given as ‘Foundling Hospital Collection 1796’ is not only the nearest we can get to any trace of authorship, but a momentary glimpse into 18thc London and the response of some evangelical Christian agencies to its needs. The Foundling Hospital was established by Captain Thomas Coram, and the chapel became renowned for its music. Its organ was a gift from G F Handel, who often played and conducted there, including for a time an annual Messiah. The choir sang at St Paul’s Cathedral each year, 1782–1877. The first known collection of hymns appeared in 1774; its 16 items were increased to 22, with music, in 1796. To some copies of this 2nd edn, 4 further hymns were added c1801 on a pasted-in leaflet; another leaflet with 5 hymns was entitled Hymns of Praise. For Foundling Apprentices attending Divine Service to return Thanks. These extra pages introduced the present hymn, headed ‘Hymn from Psalm 148. Haydn. Anon.’ The treatment of the Psalm is creative rather than literal, drawing on other OT and NT Scriptures; but the text is unchanged except in replacing ‘laud’ with ‘praise’ in the final line, 3 occurrences of ‘hath’ with ‘has’, and two of ‘ye’ with ‘you’, as in many other books. Erik Routley’s Hymns and the Faith (1955) discusses 49 hymns starting with this one, and begins with this sentence: ‘It cannot be an accident that the word for ‘Praise’ in any language is always a fine word for singing’. He continues, ‘the brevity of the hymn is one of the precious things about it … [It] is perhaps the finest of all children’s hymns … that last verse [of Psalm 148] is the heart of the psalm, and the second verse is the heart of the hymn.’ Some books including GH, however, add a 3rd stz from elsewhere (‘Worship, honour, glory, blessing …’), and PHRW (which like some others prints it as four 4-line stzs) has a quite different version of 1.5–8.

The original heading is the first recorded appearance of Joseph Haydn’s AUSTRIA in a hymnal. It is a rare example of a hymn tune from a classical composer; Haydn had been impressed by the respect paid in Britain to the national anthem, which he tried to emulate in 1797 to honour the German emperor, while also incorporating phrases of Croatian folk-song. Later he used it in his Emperor string quartet. The tune has been given many other names and set to other texts, but it remains the first choice for these words.
Linda Mawson made this arrangement for Praise!

London, 1796 and 1801. Originally Psalms, Hymns and Anthems of the Foundling Hospital, followed by other edns. Musically this London orphanage, famous for its organists and its singing children, amounted to what has been called ‘almost a nonconformist cathedral foundation’. It was established by Capt Thomas Coram in 1738 for the abandoned or unwanted infant children from the poorest families or unknown parentage; ‘for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children’. The first children were admitted in March 1741. Its concerts were staged for both educational and fundraising purposes. Handel played there in 1749 and (like the artist William Hogarth) was a strong supporter of the cause. The ‘Hospital’ closed in 1926; a building on its Brunswick Square site in Bloomsbury houses the eloquently poignant Foundling Museum, while the charity ‘Coram: better chances for children’ continues its founder’s work. The museum has no record of the hymn-book. No.195.