John of Damascus (c. 675-c. 749), a monk and choir leader at the monastery of Mar Saba near the Dead Sea, wrote a canon for the Sunday after Easter, St. Thomas’ Day or Low Sunday. The first ode of this canon was based on the deliverance of the people of God at the Red Sea as recorded in the Song of Moses, Exodus 15:13. The ode was written in the middle of the eighth century and translated from the Greek in 1859 by John Mason Neale (1818-1866; see Biographies). 

The third stanza, which is in the nature of a doxology to the Trinity, was added by the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern, according to the then current custom. 

The tune was composed especially for these words in 1872 by Arthur Seymour Sullivan. Its name, ST. KEVIN, so designated in the composer’s Hymn Tunes, 1902, commemorates a hermit who established a monastery in 

the Vale of Glendalough, Ireland. The hermit died at the monastery about 

A.D. 618, at the reputed age of 120. 

Sullivan was born at Lambeth, London, on May 13, 1842, his father being an Irish bandmaster and teacher of music. He inherited a talent for music; by the time he was 8 years old he could play every wind instrument in his father’s band. In 1854 he was a chorister at the Chapel Royal; he won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in 1856, taking first place above Joseph Barnby. This enabled him to study music on the continent. He spent more than two years in the conservatorium at Leipzig. His voice had now broken, so he studied piano, theory, composition, orchestration, and conducting. He returned to London in 1861. He was church organist at St. Michael’s, Chester Square, London, and a teacher of music, devoting much of his time to composition. In 1867 he became professor of composition at the Royal Academy, and was appointed musical editor of Church Hymns, composing most of his hymn tunes during the period 1867 to 1874. He was principal, from 1876 to 1882, of the National Training School of Music, which later became the Royal College of Music. For his services to music he received the honorary degree of D.Mus. from Cambridge in 1876 and from Oxford in 1879, and a knighthood from the queen in 1883. He is well remembered for his association with W. S. Gilbert and the light music of the Savoy operas, but he composed excellent oratorios, overtures, anthems, secular songs, and church and choral music. He died in Westminster, London, on November 22, 1900, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.  His other tunes and an arrangement in SDAH are No. 568, LEOMIN-STER; No. 582, ST. EDMUND; and No. 612, ST. GERTRUDE.