The work must count as one of the finest English anthems from the mid-19th century, with strong harmonic progressions and a well-balanced handling of counterpoint. Editor Peter Horton, one of the leading scholars of British music of this period, has produced an exemplary edition that is also beautifully set out on the page. * Geoffrey Webber, Church Music Quarterly, May 2017 * . . . this is a substantial and important anthem. Bennett was a major figure in the mid-19th-century, early Romantic movement in Britain. As a young man he was acclaimed by Mendelssohn and Schumann. His output includes five symphonies and four piano concertos, but remarkably little church music given that he had been a chorister at King's College, Cambridge. The present work was unpublished and apparently unperformed in the composer's lifetime. Its choral writing for
two SATB choirs is skilful: the flowing counterpoint, antiphonal effects between the choirs, dramatic contrasts and variety of treatment of the text make this a satisfying anthem that deserves to be sung by any church choirs that can muster double-choir forces. * James L. Montgomery, www.rscm.com, June 2017 * Bennett's musical style also bears resemblance to Mendelssohn in its finely wrought polyphonic lines, seemingly derived from German eighteenth-century models, and its unmistakable, yet essentially conservative, Romantic harmonic bent. The work is cast in two large movements, each with fugal conventions if not proper fugues. The only significant technical challenge for the voices is the eight-part texture. Otherwise, the music is of moderate difficulty. * The Journal of the Assoc. of Anglican Musicians, May 2017 *