Blessed Be The God And Father

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

To an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God, through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

But as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. 

Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

Love one another with a pure heart fervently; see that ye love one another.

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God. For all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.

But the word of the Lord endureth for evermore. Amen.

The words of this anthem are taken from various verses of Chapter 1 of the First Epistle of St Peter. 

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810 – 1876) is described by Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians as “the greatest composer in the English church tradition between Purcell and Stanford”, and his sacred choral writing has been compared favourably to that of Mendelssohn. As a boy he sang both in the choir of Chapel Royal at Hampton Court and later as a chorister at St Paul’s. From 1826 he held various posts as organist in the City of London, and also conducted the orchestra at the Lyceum Theatre. During this period he composed much secular music. At the age of 22 Wesley began a colourful career in cathedral music, which was to last until his death. He was successively organist of Hereford Cathedral (1832), Exeter Cathedral (1835), Leeds Parish Church (1842), Winchester Cathedral and Winchester College Chapel (1850), and Gloucester Cathedral (1865). He died in office at Gloucester. At Hereford he took charge of the Three Choirs Festival in 1834. The notoriously deplorable state of English church music during the Victorian period, and the low esteem in which organists and choral singers were held, was a continual source of frustration to Wesley. His diary laments that the anthem Blessed be the God and Father was written for evensong on Easter Day at Hereford in 1835 when only a “handful of raucous trebles and a single bass were available.” (The bass in question is believed to have been the bishop’s butler.) This frustration, coupled with an abrasive personality (Wesley fell out acrimoniously with the Deans and Chapters of Hereford, Exeter, and Winchester cathedrals), accounts for his continual movement around the country. Wesley was perhaps better known during his lifetime as an activist than a composer. At his own expense, and in a somewhat misguided attempt to improve the state of the Anglican choral establishment, he published and distributed two highly critical and controversial leaflets in which the feelings of few significant figures in the ecclesiastical and musical hierarchy were spared. This, along with constant quarrelling in the press with members of the establishment (such as Sir John Stainer), was an unwelcome source of embarrassment to his various cathedral employers. 

This fine anthem, which bears many of the hallmarks of high Victorian church music, is divided into five distinct sections. In only the first and last of these do all voices sing together. It is like a mini cantata. The opening section is a simple homophonic passage for SATB with very straightforward word setting and resembles a chorale. This leads into the first of two passages of dark arioso recitative for the tenors and basses. The middle section, introduced by a solo soprano, is an endearing, and largely antiphonal, duet between the first and second sopranos, which is followed by the second arioso recitative passages, again for the lower voices. The final section is a strident and energetic chorus for SATB with a brief fugal passage in the middle, and a coda at the end. Although the piece does contain brief modulations, and passes across other keys from time to time, the piece is tonally unambitious; the key of E flat major is omnipresent, and Wesley strays from it only tentatively, returning to it at the start of each section.