At the lamb’s high feast we sing 

Robert Campbell, sometimes called “Campbell of Skerrington” (1814-1868), translated this hymn from Ad regias Agni dapes (At the Lamb’s royal feast; sung in the monastic tradition from the Saturday after Easter until the day of the Ascension).  The Latin hymn, in the 1632 revision of the Roman Breviary, is very loosely based on a pre-8th century hymn in the Frankish hymnal tradition, Ad cenam Agni providi (At the feast of the provident lamb).  Pope Urban VIII initiated the revision of the Counter Reformation breviary of Pius V partly to bring primitive hymns of the church into conformity with classical Latin poetry.  Fully 90% of the earlier hymns were revised; their colloquial language was purged and their metre regularized. Thus, only three lines of Ad cenam Agni providi remain in the 1632 version.  (John Mason Neale translated the earlier hymn as “The Lamb’s high banquet we await.”)

 

Born into a Church of Scotland family, Campbell became a Scottish Episcopalian early in his life and in 1852 converted to Roman Catholicism.  He was a student in the University of Glasgow when quite young and then studied law in the University of Edinburgh.  He practiced as an Advocate in Edinburgh and from 1848 he translated Latin hymns into English "for relaxation."  Campbell translated 66 early hymns, publishing them in Hymns and Anthems for the Use of Holy Services of the Church within the United Diocese of Saint Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane,1850, known as the St Andrews Hymnal.  This translation was made in 1849.  It reached a wider audience in the English publication The Church Hymnal (1853) of William Cooke and William Denton and then appeared in the first edition of A&M (1861).  Campbell also translated the Easter hymn of Fulbert of Chartres, Chorus novae Jerusalem, as “Ye choirs of new Jerusalem.”  

 

The music for this hymn is a melody by Jakob Hintz or Hintze (1623-1702), contributed to Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica after Hintz began to edit that work; he edited it for thirty-two years after Crüger’s death.  Hintz added the tune in 1678.  The son of the town musician in a small town near Berlin, Hintz was himself a town musician in several places before becoming Court Musician to the Elector of Brandenburg in 1666, where he remained until 1695.   The tune appeared in a version harmonized by Pachelbel in 1683 (“Alle Menschen müssen sterben”), now commonly but erroneously attributed to Bach.  It was first called "Salzburg" by the editors of A&M in the first edition of 1861, presumably because they tended to name German tunes for “German” cities.