"O God beyond all praising" and "Holy God" were about the best of it. This is lowbrow, even by the standards of the typical Cathedral mixed-style "keep everyone happy" program. I have to wonder what Abp. Sample thought of what he heard.
Well, but a congregation can wrong the melody. I would not use it as a congregational hymn at a liturgy where you have a mix of non-British congregants from all over who are not familiar with the tune; it's not exactly OLD HUNDREDTH or GROSSER GOTT.
Every time I hear a hymn set THAXTED, I think of "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity." As the hymn ends, I feel thrown back into the music that follows it in the orchestral movement. But I come from an age long before "O God beyond all Praising" or even "I vow to thee my country" ... fossil that I am.
" . . . seems like people want it at every wedding I do"
Then it would appear you have more than enough congregants at those weddings who are familiar with it. (I am familiar with it, and can sing the tune happily, but I am quite aware that the majority of people appear not so to be. Maybe the issue is so many fewer people have nuptial Masses than was formerly the case.) To be clear, I am not someone who argues in any way against programming unfamiliar music at Sunday Masses - the only way people become familiar with music is through such programming, after all - but I am mindful that congregations gathering From Away (as one might have described it in parts of New England in generations past) for ritual Masses can dilute such local familiarity as may happily exist otherwise.
But of course as a text written during WW1 by the UK Ambassador to the USA, and a tune by Holst, it's certainly stamped emphatically British. I am fond of the apt subtitle for the text that included in that 1925 hymnal: "The Two Fatherlands".
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