Havergal, Rev. William Henry

1793-1870

English composer of sacred music. Havergal was born at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, educated at Merchant Taylor's School and St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. Graduated from Oxford of B.A. in 1815 and M.A. in 1819. He was made rector of Astley in 1829. As the result of an accident, which disabled him for the duties of rector, he devoted himself to music. In 1845 he again assumed his ministerial position, becoming rector of St. Nicholas, Worcester, and was also presented to an Honorary Canonry in the Cathedral. From 1860 to 1868 he was rector of Shareshill, near Wolverhampton. Rev. Havergal's first publication was a setting of Heber's hymn, From Greenland's Icy Mountains, as an anthem. Other published compositions are an Evening Service in E; one hundred antiphonal chants; an Evening Service in A, which brought him the Gresham Prize Medal in 1837; a reprint of Ravenscroft's Psalter; the Old Church Psalmody; an excellent History of the Old Hundredth Tune; and a Hundred Psalm and Hymn Tunes, his own compositions. Havergal also wrote many anthems, songs and rounds published separately; hymns, sacred songs and carols for the periodical called Our Own Fireside; his Worcester chant; song, Summer Tide is Coming, and the psalm Evan are perhaps best known of his single compositions. His daughter, Miss Frances Ridley Havergal, a popular writer of religious poems, edited her father's works.

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