Brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and with a father who for many years was the organist at St George's Church in Worcester, it is unsurprising that Elgar wrote a number of religious works intended to be performed in church services. True, Elgar's father, like Fauré, was not a pious man and had little difficulty in separating the musical from the religious aspects of his post. And Elgar also increasingly lost his faith as he grew older.

But the church played an important part in his musical development. From the age of twenty, he composed short religious pieces for performance at St George's. And when, in 1885, he succeeded to the post of organist there, the move gave him a regular platform for such compositions. It was in this role that he produced the charming trio of works Pie Jesu, Ave Maria and Ave Maris Stella - works which held such a lasting appeal for Elgar that some twenty years later he orchestrated them, giving them the opus number 2, with Pie Jesu becoming Ave Verum Corpus in the process.

Against this background, what many will find surprising is that each of his four most substantive compositions of church music were first performed in Anglican churches, two of them being specially commissioned for the occasion.

The first of these, the Te Deum and Benedictus of 1897, was commissioned for that year's Three Choirs' Festival at Hereford. Elgar set about the work immediately after completing The Banner of St George. Apart from purely musical considerations, the work is significant in that it brought Elgar into contact with two individuals who were later to become friends pictured in the Enigma Variations: George R Sinclair, organist at Hereford Cathedral to whom Elgar dedicated the work, and August Jaeger, publishing office manager at Novello's who was to champion Elgar's work at Novello's and whose efforts Elgar was to recognise in Nimrod, the greatest of the variations. At the time of the commission, Elgar's reputation was far from established and it is somewhat surprising that he had been chosen to write a work intended to be the centrepiece of the 1897 festival. There was, however, a safeguard : Elgar had to run through the piece for Sinclair's approval for it to be accepted for the festival. Sinclair found the work surprisingly modern but somewhat hesitantly gave his consent.

The remaining three works - O Hearken Thou (1911), Great is the Lord (1912) and Give Unto the Lord (1914) - followed each other in quick succession some fifteen years later, by which time Elgar had already written most of his great masterpieces. Each is a setting of verses from the Psalms.

Of the three, Great is the Lord has the earliest origins, dating from Elgar's holiday to Alassio in 1903, shortly following the first performance of The Apostles. It will be recalled that The Apostles was planned as the first part of a trilogy and Elgar's mind may already have been wrestling with the Biblical settings for the remaining parts of the trilogy. In the course of the holiday, the Elgars became acquainted with an English clergyman, Dr Joseph Robertson, then Dean of Westminster and an expert on biblical research. A number of interesting discussions on theological aspects of the trilogy ensued. According to Elgar's close friend Rosa Burley, in the course of one such discussion, Elgar asked the Dean to suggest a text suitable for setting as an anthem. In a somewhat offhand way, Robertson is reported to have replied : "Oh...Praise the Lord".

The suggestion remained in Elgar's mind until 1910 when he set to work and composed Great is the Lord. He had just completed the violin concerto and there are obvious musical parallels between the two works. For this reason, he delayed submitting the work to Novello's until 1912. The work was first performed in Westminster Abbey later that year and is dedicated to Dr Robertson, by now Dean of Wells. In its original form, Elgar wrote the work for choir and organ but published an orchestral arrangement of it in 1913.

By the time of the first performance of Great is the Lord, George V had ascended to the English throne. The background to the composition of The Crown of India is recorded elsewhere, but Elgar also composed two other works for the King's coronation : the Coronation March, arguably the finest of all Elgar's processional marches though rarely heard today, and a short offertory, O Hearken Thou. The latter, a setting of two verses from Psalm 5, is a peaceful, even soulful work, similar in mood to parts of the Second Symphony which Elgar had completed the year before.

The final work of the later trio - Give Unto the Lord - was commissioned for a festival to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the Sons of the Clergy at St Paul's Cathedral in 1914. It is an exuberant work, in marked contrast to O Hearken Thou, and is scored for chorus, organ and orchestra.

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