Our music today takes its cue from Psalm 90. In 1708, Isaac Watts wrote both text and music for “Our God Whose Help in Ages Past,” paraphrasing the words of the Psalm, in celebration of his wife’s recovery from illness. So, the Psalm’s famous opening lines:
Lord, you have been our refuge
from one generation to another.
became, in Watts’s hymn:
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come.
This sturdy, expressive hymn of thankfulness has been adapted and folded into dozens of sacred works, including those by Handel, Bach, Sullivan, and many others where it quickly became known as the St Anne’s Chorale.
The anthem is a straightforward treatment of the melody by the admired British composer John Rutter, in an uncharacteristically bombastic and extroverted style. Rutter, known more for graceful, restrained and elegant writing, here changes his tune significantly, creating a fanfare to precede the first verse of the hymn, powerful interjections between each verse, and a full-throated conclusion. Such a muscular, full-bodied setting seems deeply appropriate, however, for this time-honored hymn honoring God’s steadfastness and eternal strength.