Hail the day that sees him rise  

Charles Wesley wrote this hymn in 10 4-line stanzas without alleluias, publishing it in that form, without music, in his 1739 Hymns and Sacred Poems.  Seven years later he printed a revised version of the hymn, making a few small verbal changes and merging the 10 stanzas into 5 of 8 lines (Hymns on the Great Festivals, 1746); John Wesley published that version in his Select Hymns with Tunes Annext: Designed Chiefly for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1761).  Wesley paired it with a tune named “Ascension,”  composed for the Wesleys by their friend John Frederick Lampe (17O3-1751).  Later Thomas Cotterill, a priest and hymn writer (1779-1823), published five of Wesley’s stanzas, again with minor verbal alterations, partly the work of the poet James Montgomery.  (Cotterill’s A Collection of Psalms and Hymns . . . adapted to the Services of the Church of England was a pivotal work in the 19th century controversy about hymn singing.)  But it was not until George Cosby White’s  Hymns and Introits (1852) that the alleluias were introduced.  White, a leading Anglo-Catholic and a founder of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, was also one of the “Proprietors” of A&M.

 

William Henry Monk wrote the tune “Ascension” for Wesley’s hymn to be used in the 1861 A&M.   But the most common tune for this hymn is Llanfair, which has long been attributed to Robert Williams (1782-1818).  Williams, born on the Isle of Anglesey, off the North coast of Wales, was blind from birth.  He worked in adulthood as a basket weaver, but apparently had a very good ear for music and was known as a singer.  Williams is said to have written the tune in a manuscript dated 1817, and to have named it “Bethel,” but the claim was made almost 80 years later and the alleged manuscript was seen only by the claimant.  The tune was printed with the name “Bethel,” but without attribution, and harmonized by John Roberts (1807-1876), in Peroriaeth Hyfryd (Lovely Music) by John Parry in 1837.  It was first paired with Wesley’s words by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the 1906 English Hymnal.  “Llanfair,” which means “Church of Mary,” is an abbreviation of the Welsh place name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, meaning “St Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool of Llandysilio of the red cave.”