"For All the Saints" was written as a processional hymn by William Walsham How, who would later become the Bishop of Wakefield in the Church of England. The hymn was first printed in Hymns for Saints' Days, and Other Hymns, by Earl Nelson, 1864.

Tune

The hymn was sung to the melody Sarum, by the Victorian composer Joseph Barnby, until the publication of the English Hymnal in 1906. This hymnal used a new setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams which he called Sine Nomine (literally, "without name") in reference to its use on the Feast of All Saints, 1 November (or the first Sunday in November, All Saints Sunday among some Lutheran church bodies or those congregations whose membership makes weekday services infeasible). It has been described as "one of the finest hymn tunes of the [20th] century." Although most English hymn tunes of its era are written for singing in SATB four-part harmony, Sine Nomine is primarily unison (verses 1,2,3,7 and 8) with organ accompaniment; three verses (4, 5 and 6) are set in sung harmony. The tune appears in this forms in most English hymnbooks (for example English Hymnal (641), New English Hymnal (197), Common Praise (232)) and American hymnals (for example, The Hymnal 1982 and the Lutheran Service Book (677)). Since the 1990s, some Presbyterian churches and groups affiliated with Reformed University Fellowship in the United States use a tune composed by Christopher Miner. Charles Villiers Stanford's tune Engelberg was also written to be partnered with this hymn, although in the wake of Sine nomine it never gained popularity and is now more commonly used with other hymns, including "When in Our Music God is Glorified."

Text

''Some versions substitute "far off we hear" for "steals on the ear" (verse 8). There are other minor variations as well. Most renditions omit verses 3, 5 and 6.''

["For All Thy Saints"

(Sarum Hymnal, 1868) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/For///all///Thy///Saints.jpg]

Use in German

On a request by German composer Heinz Werner Zimmermann, Anna Martina Gottschick wrote a hymn "Herr, mach uns stark" (Lord make us strong [in courage to confess you]) to the "Sine nomine" tune in 1972, because the composer wanted to make it available for German church singing. Her hymn is intended for the end of the liturgical year. The version in German Protestant and Catholic hymnals closes with a stanza which Jürgen Henkys translated from "For All the Saints".