All The World

This song came about randomly and suddenly, as so many flashes of inspiration do. One day I was looking up something in my well-worn Dictionary of Literary Terms and chanced upon an entry for “Antiphon” – a literary form common in hymns of praise that is essentially a call-and-response between a verse choir and an answering chorus. To illustrate, the book reprinted the whole of a George Herbert poem from 1630, aptly titled “Antiphon 1.” I’m not sure why, but it immediately spoke to me; I grabbed a guitar and strummed a droning A chord and sang the melody of the chorus as it is. With minimal change (A to G to D and back), I did the same to the verse lyric. They were simple melodies, but somehow powerful and I recorded a demo version that very day, adding the requisite choral harmonies, panning hard left and right to emphasize the two antiphonic parts. Only later did I look into it further and find that there have been many versions of this hymn by bonafide church choirs (including the legendary Mormon Tabernacle) – but they don’t sound much like this, so I’m secure with my ‘original’ piece of music. As for the lyrics, well, George Herbert is still known and studied 400 years later, so my hat’s off to him – thanks for the words, George!