15/06/2026
For the anthem at Sunday's Choral Evensong for RSCM Music Sunday, our choir sang Let all the world by Vaughan Williams.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) should need no introduction to English audiences – he is regarded as the Grand Old Man of English music. Born the son of a vicar in rural Gloucestershire, he studied at the Royal College of Music (under Parry and Stanford) and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in WWI, and was deeply affected by the loss of friends in war (including the young composer George Butterworth). He composed music on a huge scale for orchestras and choirs, as well as miniatures for all varieties of ensembles, sacred and secular. He was passionate about English folk music and the Tudor legacy, musical education, hymnody and much more.
Vaughan Williams wrote his Five Mystical Songs between 1906 and 1911. The work sets four poems by the 17th-century Welsh poet and Anglican priest George Herbert (1593–1633). It was first performed on 14 September 1911 at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, with Vaughan Williams conducting.
For Sunday evening's anthem, our choir sang the last movement, Antiphon, an exuberant song of praise to God. Another setting of Herbert’s text for congregational singing can be found in the New English Hymnal (no. 394), to a tune by Basil Harwood, but Vaughan Williams’ choral version stands out as an exultant performance piece, and one of the best loved works in the Anglican repertoire.
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing:
My God and King!
The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither flie;
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing:
My God and King!
The Church with psalms must shout,
No doore can keep them out;
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing:
My God and King!
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and king!The heavens are not too high, His praise may thither fly,The earth is not too low, His praises there ...
