page_title: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
section_title: Musical settings
hierarchical_section_title: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling / Musical settings
caption_attribution_description: English: Organist and composer John Zundel
context_page_description: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling is a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley with a theme of "Christian perfection." Judging by general repute, it is among Wesley's finest:
  "justly famous and beloved, better known than almost any other hymn of Charles Wesley." Judging by its distribution, it is also among his most successful:
  by the end of the 19th century, it is found in 15 of the 17 hymn books consulted
  by the authors of Lyric Studies. On a larger scale, it is found almost universally in general collections of the past century, including not only Methodist and Anglican hymn books and commercial and ecumenical collections, but also hymnals published by Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, Brethren, Seventh-day Adventist, Lutheran, Congregationalist, Pentecostal, and Roman Catholic traditions, among others including the Churches of Christ. Specifically, it appears in 1,328 of the North American hymnals indexed by the online Dictionary of North American Hymnology, comparable to Newton's "Amazing Grace", Wesley's "O for a Thousand Tongues", and Watts' "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross", though still well short of Toplady's "Rock of Ages" or Wesley's own "Jesu, Lover of my Soul".
context_section_description: In current use, the hymn seems to be set most often, particularly in American hymnals, to the tune Beecher by John Zundel (1815–1882; from 
  Christian Heart Songs, 1870); and to the stately Welsh tunes "Hyfrydol" by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811–1887);
  "Blaenwern" by William Penfro Rowlands (1860–1937); and "Moriah"—the latter two especially in Great Britain.
  One of several tunes known, inevitably, as "Love Divine," that by Sir John Stainer, appeared with the hymn first in the 1889 Supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern and has persisted into several
  modern British collections; Airedale, by Sir C. V. Stanford, appeared in the 1924 edition
  of Hymns A & M but seems confined there, as does Bithynia (by Samuel Webbe, 1740–1816; from Webbe's Collection, 1792) in several Methodist collections. There has also been at least one modern attempt to revive the hymn's original tune, "Westminster."
  Other settings include
  "Love Divine" George Le Jeune, 1887
  "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling"  William Lloyd Webber, 1964, (Music Sales)
  "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling"  Howard Goodall, 2000
  "Lugano" (adapted from a melody in Catholic Hymn Tunes, 1849)
  "Exile" (English traditional melody, harm. Martin Shaw)
  "O Gesegnetes Regieren" (from Gnadauer Choralbuch)
  "Falfield" (by Arthur Sullivan)
  "Autumn" (variously described as a "Spanish melody, from Marechio" or as a "Scotch melody") or the "substantially similar" "Jaynes."
  "Tabernacle" (unidentified)
  "O du liebe" (Musikalischer Christenschatz, Basel, 1745)
  "In Babilone" (Dutch trad. melody, harm. by Winfred Douglas, 1918)
  "Ingatestone" (unidentified)
  "Austria" Joseph Haydn; perhaps identical to "Vienna" (unidentified)
  "Jay"
  "Otto" (H.B. Oliphant)
  "Little" (attributed to an "Old Melody")
  "Bethany" (Henry Smart)
  "Lux Eoi" (Arthur Sullivan)
  "Whitefield" (unidentified)
  "Ode to Joy" (Ludwig van Beethoven).
  Most interesting of these perhaps are the settings to German tunes adopted by the two American Lutheran hymn books.
caption: John Zundel, composer of the hymn tune "Beecher"
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