For the post within the octave of All Saints’ Day I have been thinking about Ernest Bullock’s setting of Isaac Watts’ text Give us the wings of faith to rise:

Give us the wings of faith to rise
within the veil, and see
the saints above, how great their joys,
how bright their glories be.

We ask them whence their victory came:
they, with one united breath,
ascribe the conquest to the Lamb,
their triumph to his death.

They marked the footsteps that he trod,
his zeal inspired their breast,
and, following their incarnate God,
they reached the promised rest.

Watts’ precocious text says much, of course, but what is added by the music to which Bullock (at the time organist of Exeter Cathedral, later of Westminster Abbey)? The anthem begins and ends in a very calm D major, initially indicated ‘slowly and smoothly’, with the promised rest of the end of the text echoed musically with the instruction sempre dim. tranquillo.

The first verse is essentially a crescendo, gentle counterpoint in the voices building in dynamic to the homophonic fortissimo on the word ‘glories’; the final verse a piano trending towards pianissimo and again in the same smooth and calm style. The middle verse is rather more interesting, both rhythmically and harmonically: the marking is Animato and the organ introduces the (‘well declaimed’) ‘ask’ with a little rising fanfare, met by soprano and tenor in octaves; sharps, both in the key signature and accidentals give way to flats at ‘they, with one united breath’, the four voices here in thirds octaves and tenths and the organ taking up and continuing the thought, in effect extending the ‘breath’ beyond what could be expected of the singers alone. These parallel lines become simple octaves and unisons, fortissimo and allargando, to ascribe the conquest to the Lamb, with an additional sforzando to add a sting to His death.

Not, perhaps, the most original music ever, but certainly effective and memorable; in my experience once sung never forgotten. Although, maybe that is because I first sang it in the context of multiple choirs usually independent singing together, itself an illustration of the communion of saints about which we were singing. Given that the lesson of All Saints Day is that we in earth join in communion with all those who have gone before us and might come after us, that very unity, beauty and simplicity, might be thought part of the theological point of the anthem.