Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926-  ; see Biographies) wrote this text, on the theme of praise and worship, in 1971 at Ruan Minor, the name of a small village in Cornwall on the south coast of England where his family loved to spend summer holidays. It is a paraphrase of portions of Psalm 98. It was first published in Psalm Praise, 1973. Since then it has been included in many hymnbooks in England, New Zealand, and the United States.

Regarding the writing of the tune, David Wilson writes, “ONSLOW SQUARE is one of my favorites among what I have done. The tune was written in 1970, and was one of those that I wrote more or less in one evening, at the organ at St. Paul’s, Onslow Square [South Kensington, London], where I was a curate. It had a huge organ with a powerful tuba stop that balanced the rest of the organ coupled together. I therefore started playing a marchlike accompaniment of shifting chords, and then the tune from the tuba suggested itself, and this is the result. I do have a strong sense of God’s help and inspiration in composition, because I am not formally trained in that field, so the credit is all His.”

Wilson was born in 1940 and grew up in noisy, wartime Greenwich, London. He studied botany at Manchester University, 1958-1961; theology at Clare College, Cambridge, 1961-1963; and completed his training for the ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, 1963-1965. All the way through school he sang in choirs and played piano and organ; he began composing music about 1963. Some of his music was in Youth Praise, Volume 1, and he was the editor of Youth Praise, Volume 2, in 1969. In 1973 he was involved in Psalm Praise, metrical version of the Psalms in contemporary music style. His most recent project in hymnody was as chairman of the music for Hymns for Today’s Church, a full-scale hymnbook published by Hoddler and Stoughton in 1982.

Ordained to the Anglican ministry in Southwark Cathedral, 1965, he has served as curate (associate pastor) in Battersea, southwest London, and in South Kensington, London. In 1973, with his wife and two children, he made the move to Leicaster, where he became vicar (pastor). Since the summer of 1984 he has been vicar of St. Mary’s, Osterly Road, Isleworth, Middlesex.

This lively tune with a judicious use of syncopation should be pleasing to young worshipers and all those who like a “happy” sound that is a little different.

The name of the tune, ONSLOW SQUARE, was not available at the time of publication of SDAH, so does not appear at the head of the hymn nor in the Index of Tune Names. The meter is one of a kind — 7.7.6.5.8.