…Blessèd be the Lord my strength Blessèd are the people who have the Lord…
One of the Salvation Army's leading figures, Ray Steadman-Allen created this piece in a virtually through-composed style, using a combination of unison and strong chords based largely on thirds to reflect the positive text of Psalm 144 with its imagery of God as ‘fortress, castle, deliverer and defender’. The busy outer sections enclose a 2-bar quasi-recitative statement of the line ‘upon a ten-stringed lute’ which signals a brief change from compound to simple time before a triumphant return to compound, and apart from a short unison, unaccompanied slower passage, the piece shouts out the final line repeatedly: ‘Blessed be the Lord our God’.
