ABSTRACT
Victorian composers excelled at crafting tunes to fit the mood and message of a text and Victorian hymn book editors, led by those responsible for Hymns Ancient and Modern, excelled at finding the right tune for each item in their collection. The dedicated hymn tune, specially written or chosen for particular text and firmly and exclusively wedded to it, was as much a Victorian invention as penny postage stamp or railway system. Given this close attention to words, their meaning and mood; one would expect Victorian hymn tunes to express the full gamut of Victorian theology. The Tractarian leanings of so many of their composers did, perhaps, often make Victorian hymn tunes spiritual more than theological statements and gave them an individualistic bias which, as they shall see, was well suited to Evangelical hymns as well as to those of Catholic piety and devotion. Both these aspects are certainly evident in some of the tunes of most self-consciously Tractarian composers.
