Onward, Christian Soldiers: Arthur Sullivan's greatest hit Ian Bradley tells the story of its composition in his new book on Sir Arthur Sullivan's sacred music, Lost Chords and Christian Soldiers (SCM Press, £25). Sullivan was staying with a couple called Ernest and Gertrude Clay Ker Seymer at their large house at Hanford, Dorset, and, by his own account, dashed it off in a few minutes in the drawing-room, naming the tune "St Gertrude" after his hostess. "We sang it in the private chapel," she recalled, "Sir Arthur playing the harmonium." But in 1864, he was a 30-year-old curate starting out in his efforts to organise a church "mission" in the rough neighbourhood of Horbury Bridge. Horbury itself had a parish church, but at Horbury Bridge, Sunday meetings were in what is now the Post Office. Twenty years later, the parish was able to build the church of St John, with its little stone bell-cote. But, for Whitsun 1864, Baring-Gould had arranged for the local children (who perhaps included, unknown, his future wife) a procession behind a cross and banners. The Saturday before, he sat down for 10 minutes and "knocked off" a hymn for them to sing. To begin with, Onward, Christian Soldiers used the tune "St Alban," taken from the slow movement of Haydn's Symphony 53. It wouldn't provoke a very quick march. Sullivan's "St Gertrude" seemed made for Onward, Christian Soldiers. When he introduced musical references to "St Gertrude" in his Boer War Te Deum, the audience would naturally have thought of the hymn. Sullivan's father had been a sergeant bandmaster at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and his son did not object to soldiers. Yet the hymn itself is not literally bellicose. The "foe" is the army of Satan, against which Christ leads his followers: "Forward into battle see His banners go." Baring-Gould, who was of an historical cast of mind, would have had in mind the celebrated Good Friday hymn Vexilla Regis written by Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth century and in use ever since. There, the banners of the king are nothing else than the saving Cross, "from which in the flesh the creator of all flesh is suspended." But that didn't stop Baring-Gould's less informed public from taking his stirring hymn as a mere celebration of Christian militarism. As Dr Bradley notes, there have been several attempts to rescue the hymn while retaining its popular tune, such as the version by David Wright, after the Falklands war, beginning: Onward Christian pilgrims, Working hard for peace, Day by day we're praying That all wars may cease. Such inability to discern the metaphor of Baring-Gould's lyrics is like rewriting "Crown him with many crowns" because a republic has been declared.