NEW 113TH (Hayes)

William Hayes (b. Gloucester, England, 1708; d. Oxford, England, 1777) first published NEW 113TH in his Sixteen Metrical Psalms . . . for Use in Magdalen College Chapel (1774) as a setting for a versification of Psalm 134. (Any relationship with Psalm 113, as indicated by the tune name, has never been discovered.) NEW 113TH requires solid harmony singing and a sense of one broad beat per bar to support its somewhat meandering melody. The suggested alternate tune, ST. PETERSBURG (50), may be better known and more accessible to some congregations.

As a boy Hayes was a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral. He served as organist of St. Mary Church in Shrewsbury and at Worcester Cathedral but spent most of his career as organist, choirmaster, and professor of music at Magdalen College, Oxford (1734-1777). He received his doctorate at Oxford in 1749, a time when the opening of the Radcliffe Library was being celebrated. That celebration included the first performance of George Frederic Handel's Messiah in Oxford–Hayes introduced Handel's works to many areas of England. Hayes composed mostly choral music, some of which is light-hearted, and his publications include various canons and psalm tunes.

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988