Originally a figure in the symphonic suite The Planets, by Gustav Holst, located in the middle of Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity, THAXTED was later arranged by the composer as a hymn tune. He gave it the name Thaxted, after the English village where he lived for many years, and where he was founder of an annual music festival. (As Pluto had not yet been discovered, the symphony is an eight-movement composition. And given Pluto's subsequent 'undiscovery,' The Planets remains very much a wonder.)

Michael Perry (1942-1996) was canon at Rochester Cathedral, and editor of Jubilate Hymns. As THAXTED is usually associated with the English patriotic hymn I vow to thee my country, Perry wrote this hymn to provide a text "more appropriate for Christian worship." Originally two verses, a middle verse was added later at the request of Richard Proulx in reference to the Pauline discourse connecting the passing of earthly splendor with future glory, a verse appropriate to some occasions such as a requiem or memorial. But Perry's own preference was that the additional verse should in most cases be omitted. The hymn was written in 1982 specifically for this tune, and a license from the copyright holder, Hope Publishing Company, is required for use.

For my daughter, Emily.

Version 8.8.11 SE8H

• Score in 8½x11 portrait
• Some edits to harp
• Reimagined first violin in the first three bars
• Revised string articulations to conventional practice
• Minor page layout improvements

8.7.10 x7x

• Dozens of voice leading cues improved
• Added passing note in descant
• Score and parts re-configured for legibility
• Full score in both 10x13 and US Letter (86% of 10x13)
• Organ Score US Letter landscape
    - includes vocal parts
    - optimized for page turns

Version 8.7.9.6

• First publication with this voicing
• Choral score includes a version for duplex printing on tabloid printer

An original, smaller version was in print from 2007-2014

• Harp, Violin, Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Timp (original 2007, matching small ensemble Rutter Requiem)

Michael Perry © Hope Publishing Company

Though we can't publish them here due to copyrights, you can view on the Hope Publishing Company website (link will open a new tab)
"O God beyond all praising"

This cost $10 at Staples (2023)

Choir booklet prep

If you have access to a printer that can print both sides of an 11x17 sheet, you can create a four-page booklet of the choir part. Fold the front (pages 4 and 1) over the inside spread (pages 2 and 3). A file for this as well as single 8½ x 11 sheets are included.

Originally a figure in the symphonic suite The Planets, by Gustav Holst, located in the middle of Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity, THAXTED was later arranged by the composer as a hymn tune. He gave it the name Thaxted, after the English village where he lived for many years, and where he was founder of an annual music festival. (As Pluto had not yet been discovered, the symphony is an eight-movement composition. And given Pluto's subsequent 'undiscovery,' The Planets remains very much a wonder.)

Michael Perry (1942-1996) was canon at Rochester Cathedral, and editor of Jubilate Hymns. As THAXTED is usually associated with the English patriotic hymn I vow to thee my country, Perry wrote this hymn to provide a text "more appropriate for Christian worship." Originally two verses, a middle verse was added later at the request of Richard Proulx in reference to the Pauline discourse connecting the passing of earthly splendor with future glory, a verse appropriate to some occasions such as a requiem or memorial. But Perry's own preference was that the additional verse should in most cases be omitted. The hymn was written in 1982 specifically for this tune, and a license from the copyright holder, Hope Publishing Company, is required for use.

References

Thaxted (tune) Wikipedia entry about the tune

Thaxted Parish Church official Thaxted wesbsite

History of Hymns (UMC Discipleship Ministries): "O God beyond all praising."

Version 8.8.11 x7x

• Reimagined first violin in the first three bars
• Revised string articulations to conventional practice
• Minor page layout improvements
• The sibling arrangement of Sine Nomine was similarly updated

8.7.10 x7x

• More prominent role for the string quartet
• Without harp

Includes these changes made to the eight-piece version with harp

• Dozens of voice leading cues improved
• Added passing note in descant
• Score and parts re-configured for legibility
• Full score in both 10x13 and US Letter (86% of 10x13)
• Organ Score US Letter landscape
    - includes vocal parts
    - optimized for page turns

Version 8.7.9.6

• First publication with this voicing
• Choral score includes a version for duplex printing on tabloid printer

Previous versions were released in different voices

• Strings 4-4-1-1-1, Horn, Trumpet, and Timp (available through Oratorio Society of Minnesota)
• Harp, Violin, Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Timp (original 2007, matches small ensemble Rutter Requiem)

Michael Perry © Hope Publishing Company

Though we can't publish them here due to copyrights, you can view on the Hope Publishing Company website (link will open a new tab)
"O God beyond all praising"

This cost $10 at Staples (2023)

Choir booklet prep

If you have access to a printer that can print both sides of an 11x17 sheet, you can create a four-page booklet of the choir part. Fold the front (pages 4 and 1) over the inside spread (pages 2 and 3). A file for this as well as single 8½ x 11 sheets are included.

The author of the text "God of our fathers," Daniel Crane Roberts, rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Brandon, Vermont, wrote this hymn (ie, the text) for his town's US Centennial celebration - sung to the tune (irony alert) RUSSIAN HYMN, which at the time was in use as the national anthem of czarist Russia.  Some years later, with the Episcopal Church preparing a new hymnal, Roberts submitted the work, anonymously, to the commission overseeing the project. To his surprise and delight, it was selected. With the observance of another centennial pending - that of the US Constitution - it would simply not do that this text be sung to another country's national anthem. George William Warren of St. Thomas Church in New York wrote the setting NATIONAL HYMN for this text, and it was used at the Constitutional observance, and published in the Hymnal 1892; this has been an inseparable pair ever since.

But who are these 'fathers?' Despite the patriotic character of the music and the poet's teleological shading ('Thy word our law'), the hymn preempts secular considerations by first venerating the God of creation - the 'starry band' is a cosmological reference to the Milky Way. Even at this date in modernity, these 'shining worlds' were thought to be the entire observable universe, wonders observed from the beginning by our biblical fathers. The Creator who is before and above all creation, of time itself, is the first consideration. In the second stanza, a form of American exceptionalism is explicit, 'Thy word our law', voicing an expectation that an America now spanning the continent was emerging to a future place as a leader of nations, hinting at a manifest purpose to facilitate God's millennial peace, a project more difficult than imagined. In his commentary on the UM Hymnal, C. Michael Hawn notes that the hymn's arc is that "God will lead us from the war and pestilence of our earlier captivity to the freedom and light of peace." The most common alteration (for inclusive language) is to translate 'our fathers' into 'the ages,' but this is unsatisfying - 'creation' would be more in keeping with the cosmological impulse of the first stanza.

Version 2.12.8.2 (2025)

• changed one note in Trumpet I
• completely reformatted the score and parts
• alternate harmony added (scored for SATB)

Previous (since forever)

• Version 2.12.8.1

Daniel Crane Roberts (1876)

The tune HELMSLEY, though usually attributed to mid-1700's figures Augustine Arne or Thomas Olivers, was actually in established use prior to either writer, already with one of several variants of the hymn "Lo, he comes with clouds descending." Martin Madan, the chaplain of Lock Hospital, published it with this text in Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes Never Published Before (1763). It circulated in nonconformist (ie, non-liturgical) use until the setting was 'discovered' and reharmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the 1906 English Hymnal, which has become the canonical pairing of this tune and text, providing it with the majesty the text demands.

In its current form, the text is an ideal Advent hymn as it recalls Christ's incarnation and passion, before turning to the second coming. The text originates in a 1750 hymn/poem by John Cennick, a land surveyor who became a Moravian preacher. The text was adapted (and largely rewritten) by Charles Wesley and subsumed into the Methodist movement, the first Wesleyan version appearing in 1758. Several revisions and iterations of the text were undertaken, some by Wesley, some by others which have merged back in some of Cennick's original language. The exact phrase "Lo he comes with clouds descending" comes from a poem by Olivers, as Cennick's original began, in a different meter, "Lo! He cometh, countless trumpets blow." Because it was not an observed season in reformation churches, it would not have been seen in its time as an Advent hymn.

Version 10-B-D

• Verse 4 -
  • Choir cadential descant only
  • Edits to brass and organ

Version 9.4.1-D

• Verse 4 - reduced descant exposure
• Lowered tessitura of trumpets in some places

Version 8.4.5-D

• Production edition

Version 8.4.0 Pre-order

• First audition

1 Instrumental
Lo! he comes with clouds descending,
once for our salvation slain;
thousand, thousand saints attending
swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Christ the Lord returns to reign.

2 Organ
Every eye shall now behold him,
robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at nought and sold him,
pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
shall the true Messiah see.

3 SATB alt harmony
Those dear tokens of his passion
still his dazzling body bears,
cause of endless exultation
to his ransomed worshipers;
with what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture,
gaze we on those glorious scars!

4 Instrumental
Yea, amen! let all adore thee,
high on thine eternal throne;
Savior, take the power and glory;
claim the kingdom for thine own:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thou shalt reign, and thou alone.

a letter-size coil bound score of 15 pages will cost less than $10 at Staples. You can order online and upload the files with out an account - check out as guest. Paper handling for the included eight-page choir part pictured further below.

The eight-page signature version of the choir part is laid out ready to print in duplex mode short edge priority on 11x17 Ledger paper. This is a common feature of most office-grade printer copiers, but Staples can also do this for you as well.