All are warmly recommended for churches where there is an average but enthusiastic SATB choir, an organ and a piano, and a music group (which need only be three clarinets, percussion, a few strings, and three guitars). But the orchestration for each of these five hymns is so adaptable that almost any combination will work, and other instruments may be added.

John Gardner was born in Manchester and educated at Wellington College and Oxford University. After 6 years in the RAF, he joined the music staff of the Royal Opera House, leaving at the end of 1952 to pursue a freelance career as composer, teacher, pianist, and conductor. He has composed three symphonies, several large-scale cantatas, four operas, and a great variety of ensemble, solo and choral music as well as theatre music for the Old Vic and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford.