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Victorian composers have long been criticised and derided for their practice of repeating words at random, where such repetition serves no purpose other than to fit the square peg of the Canticle into the round hole of the music. The Harwood Magnificat in A-flat is an often-cited example, with its ‘My soul doth magnify, doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded, for He hath regarded the lowliness, the lowliness of His hand maiden’. Stanford is not exempt from criticism, and as C.H. Phillips has observed (The Singing Church: 1979) ‘He could be careless still - he was quite a young man - about his setting of words, giving sometimes the impression that he thought of a tune first and made the words fit afterwards.’ Phillips was writing specifically about Stanford’s Service in B-flat (1879).

But would even Stanford go so far as to omit a ‘Holy’ from a Sanctus, and would he get away with it?

Canon Dirk van Dissel, a CMS member based in South Australia, has drawn attention to a Novello edition of Stanford’s B-flat Morning, Communion and Evening Service in which the Sanctus has only two ‘holies’. What are we to make of this? If it was policy on Stanford’s part, then his influence as a man of twenty-seven must have been overwhelming, for performances must surely have scandalised those present. If on the other hand it was carelessness then it is astonishing that it was not discovered by the experienced readers, engravers and performers through whose hands it subsequently passed. We would be pleased to receive comments and observations from our readers.

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