Alleluia, best and sweetest

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Alleluia, best and sweetest

Author: John Chandler
Published in 43 hymnals

Piano/Organ
	The Organist's Library, Vol. 50

Representative Text

1 Alleluia! best and sweetest
Of the hymns of praise above!
Alleluia! thou repeatest,
Angel host, these notes of love.
This ye utter,
While your golden harps ye move.

2 Alleluia! Church victorious,
Join the concert of the sky!
Alleluia! bright and glorious,
Lift, ye saints, this strain on high!
We, poor exiles,
Join not yet your melody.

3 Alleluia! strains of gladness
Suit not souls with anguish torn:
Alleluia! sounds of sadness
Best become our state forlorn:
Our offences
We with bitter tears must mourn.

4 But our earnest supplication
Holy God, we raise to Thee:
Visit us with Thy salvation,
Make us all Thy joys to see!
Alleluia!
Ours at length this strain shall be.

Source: Church Book: for the use of Evangelical Lutheran congregations #20

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Author: John Chandler

John Chandler, one of the most successful translators of hymns, was born at Witley in Surrey, June 16, 1806. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, B.A. 1827, M.A. 1830. Ordained deacon in 1831 and priest in 1832, he succeeded his father as the patron and vicar of Whitley, in 1837. His first volume, entitled The Hymns of the Primitive Church, now first Collected, Translated and Arranged, 1837, contained 100 hymns, for the most part ancient, with a few additions from the Paris Breviary of 1736. Four years later, he republished this volume under the title of hymns of the Church, mostly primitive, collected, translated and arranged for public use, 1841. Other publications include a Life of William of Wykeham, 1842, and Horae s… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Alleluia, best and sweetest
Author:	John Chandler
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Alleluia, dulce carmen. [Week before Septuagesima.] The earliest form in which this hymn is found is in three manuscripts of the 11th century in the British Museum. From a Durham manuscript of the 11th century, it was published in the Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Surtees Society), 1851, p. 55. The text is in Daniel, i. No. 263, and with further readings in iv. p. 152; and in the Hymnarium Sarisuriense, 1851, p. 59. [Rev. W. A. Shoults, B.D.]

Translations in common use:—
1. Alleluia! best and sweetest. Of the hymns of praise above. By J. Chandler, first published in his Hymns of the Primitive Church, 1837, No. 59, in 4 stanzas of 6 lines, as the first of two renderings of the hymn. This translation is found in a great number of collections with the first two lines complete, but usually with a few alterations in the rest of the hymn.

--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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