New every morning is the love

John Keble (1792-1866) placed his poem “Morning” first in his collection The Christian Year (1827).  This hymn is a selection from that poem’s 16 quatrains.  Keble and his younger brother were educated at home by their father, the Vicar of Coln St Aldwyn’s, near Fairford, Gloucestershire.  At age 14 Keble won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and graduated at age 18 with a double first, the second person to do so in the history of the University.   Keble became a Fellow of Oriel College in his graduating year and was ordained to the priesthood in 1816.  Seven years later he was elected Professor of Poetry in the University.  In 1833, invited to preach the Assize sermon in the University church for the opening of a court term, Keble gave the sermon entitled “National Apostasy,” denouncing the Nation for “becoming alienated from God and Christ,” for disregarding the Church as the voice of God.  It was that sermon that led to the first publication of the Tractarian Movement and thus the “Oxford Movement.”  Keble continued as Professor of Poetry until 1841, and he himself wrote eight of the “Tracts for the Times.”   In 1835 he became Rector of All Saints’ Church in the village of Hursley, near Winchester.  Keble remained in Hursley and wrote widely until stricken with paralysis in 1864; he died 16 months later.  Keble is commemorated in The Book of Common Prayer on March 29th, the day of his death.

 

The editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) selected five quatrains from the poem for the hymn book, altering one line and pairing the hymn with the tune “Melcombe”, composed by Samuel Webbe the Elder (1740-1816).  Webbe’s father died when the boy was an infant, leaving him and his mother without financial support.  At age 11, Samuel was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker, and his mother died while he served.  After completing his apprenticeship Webbe found work as a music copyist and began teaching himself rudiments of music.  In the music shop he met Charles Barbandt, German organist of the Bavarian Embassy Chapel, and became his pupil.  (Roman Catholic worship, otherwise forbidden in England, was permitted in foreign embassy chapels.)  Under Barbandt’s tutelage Webbe, who converted to Roman Catholicism, learned quickly and began composing church music and, especially, glees, for which he won many prizes.  He had, along the way, learned Latin, Italian, French, German and elementary Hebrew.  Later Webbe became organist of the Sardinian Embassy Chapel and the Portuguese Embassy Chapel.  He wrote the tune now known as Melcombe as a setting for the Latin hymn O salutaris hostia, sung at the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament; he published it in his An Essay on the Church Plain Chant (1782). The title Melcombe is the name of a popular eighteenth-century seaside resort (Melcombe Regis) in Dorset.  It was used for Webbe’s tune by Ralph Harrison (1748-1810), a non-conformist minister, in his collection Sacred Harmony, the first Protestant hymnal to include the tune.