New essay by lecturer in music Jo Hicks on a globetrotting psalm tune.
Jo's essay features in a new book on Scripture and Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain edited by James Grande and Brian Murray. The essay tracks the movements of the Old Hundredth psalm tune -- most often associated with the words 'All people that on Earth do dwell' -- via its appearances in a range of musical arrangements dating from the nineteenth century as well as in journalism, travel writing, and missionary texts from the period. While the Old Hundredth may not have been _the_ most popular tune in Victorian Britain, it was certainly one of the best known and most performed. The essay asks how we might tell the history of such a ubiquitous piece of music and what it suggests about the broader significance of the Bible in popular Victorian musical culture.