After his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, and a year at Leipzig, Basil Harwood pursued a career as an organist at St Barnabas’ Pimlico (1883-87), Ely Cathedral (1887-92), and at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (1892-1909). There, he threw himself into the thriving musical life of the city and university as the conductor of the Oxford Orchestral Association, the Oxford Bach Choir (its first director) and as the University Choragus (throughout Parry’s professorship); he was also editor of The Oxford Hymn Book. In 1909, somewhat unexpectedly, he inherited his father’s Gloucestershire estate and lived the life of a country gentleman for the next forty years. Though perhaps best known today for his two sturdy hymn tunes Luckington (‘Let all the world in every corner sing’) and Thornbury (‘Thy hand, O God, has guided’), he composed a good deal of music, including a body of organ works which, by dint of his brilliance as a pianist, is well known for its technical difficulty. This instrumental attribute is reflected in the substantial and highly florid organ introduction of O how glorious is the kingdom, composed in 1899, which subsequently underpins the chorale-like first subject of the anthem’s sonata structure. There follows a gentler, more lyrical second subject, initiated by the sopranos (‘Clothed with white robes, they follow the lamb’), which develops more contrapuntally throughout the full choir. Harwood’s recapitulation then restates both ideas, this time in the tonic key (D major), before the anthem concludes with a triumphal coda supported by a powerful tonic pedal.

from notes by Jeremy Dibble © 2025