Anonymous German Melody (WINCHESTER NEW)

WINCHESTER NEW is an anonymous German melody whose earliest known form appeared in the Musikalisches Hand-Buch der Geistlichen Melodien, published in Hamburg in 1690. The melody was later expanded by Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen in his Geist-reiches Gesang-buch of 1704 for a different German hymn text. It entered English psalmody during the eighteenth century and acquired the names WINCHESTER and WINCHESTER NEW, the latter distinguishing it from the older tune WINCHESTER OLD.

William Henry Havergal reshaped the melody into the long-meter form familiar in many modern hymnals, simplifying its rhythm and adapting it for 8.8.8.8 texts. His version appeared in Old Church Psalmody in the nineteenth century. Hymns Ancient and Modern paired WINCHESTER NEW with Milman’s Palm Sunday hymn in 1861, with a harmonization by William Henry Monk. The pairing was therefore made about four decades after Milman wrote the text.

The tune has sometimes been called CRASSELIUS because Havergal mistakenly associated its authorship with Bartholomäus Crasselius, who wrote a text once sung to a related form of the melody. Modern hymnology treats the tune as anonymous rather than as a composition by Crasselius.