“O God, Our Help in Ages Past” is Isaac Watts at his finest. Here he is paraphrasing the first part of Psalm 90. His original had nine stanzas and was published in his Psalms of David (London, 1719), where it was headed “Man frail, and God eternal” – which aptly summarizes it. Stanzas 4, 6, and 8 have regularly been omitted. Julian said “it would be difficult to write too highly” of this hymn, then added that the omitted stanzas “are unequal to the rest, and impede the otherwise grandly sustained flow of thought.” John Wesley changed Watts’s opening line from “Our God, our help in ages past” to “O God, our help in ages past” in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns (London, 1738). The change has stuck, probably because it avoids the repetition of “our,” though it makes no improvement.
The tune ST. ANNE was probably composed by William Croft. It is the best-known of his tunes and first appeared in Tate and Brady’s A Supplement to the New Version (1682) for Psalm 42, “As pants the hart for cooling streams” (Lutheran Book of Worship #452). Erik Routley calls it “the most celebrated of all English tunes.” It is through-composed without repeats, modulates to the dominant at its midpoint, and is almost always paired with this hymn.
William Croft was born near Statford-on-Avon in England. He was a chorister at the Chapel Royal under John Blow and from 1700-1711 probably the organist at St. Anne’s Soho – the church that in 1685 was dedicated to the mother of the Virgin Mary with Princess Anne in mind, gives its name to this tune, and two centuries later was addled with the dubious distinction of Joseph Barnby and his non congregational “Sunday operas.” Croft and Jeremiah Clarke together became organists at the Chapel Royale in 1704. When Clarke committee suicide in 1707, Croft held the position alone. In 1708, when John Blow died, Croft succeeded him as master of the Children of the Chapel Royale and as the organist at Westminster Abbey. He held those positions until the end of his life.
“Oh Sing to the Lord” (Cantad al Señor) is a Brazilian folk song, somewhat like Spanish fiesta; but Gláucia Vasconcelos-Wilkey, retired assistant professor at the School of Theology and Ministry, Seattle University, remind us that it is “doleful, from a poor people.” Praise here is slower than we tend to think, rich with meaning, and not superficial or slick.
In November 1982 Gerhard Cartford and his wife went to a meeting of Brazilian Lutheran pastors in Itupuranga, Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. The new hymnal Hinos do Povo Deus (1981) they were using contained this hymn, and they sang it. Cartford says that “the song was well known in Brazil and sung frequently. I was strongly attracted to it, so when we got back to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where we were living then, I translated it from Portuguese to Spanish, and we began to sing it in Argentine Lutheran churches. Later, I translated it also to English and introduced it in the U.S. when we were home on furlough.” It was published in Songs of the People (Minneapolis, 1986).
