Throughout his prodigious career, Benjamin Britten proved himself a master of that musical art, both ancient and modern, of borrowing pre-existing melodies and incorporating them into new works. This is, of course, a staple of sacred music traditions, which for centuries have built elaborate polyphonies upon the simple monophonic contours of the plainchant repertoire. Thus, Britten's own sacred music conveys a sense of timelessness and reverence while at the same time drawing on the composer's unique contemporary musical language—itself a unique mixture of ageless English tonal clarity and modern experimental ambition. This mixture is readily apparent in Britten's Hymn to St. Peter, for chorus and organ. The piece was composed in 1955 and presented as part of the 500th-anniversary festivities for the Church of St. Peter in Norwich, England. Britten takes as his "seed music" the plainchant from the plainsong Tu es Petrus. The choral text, rendered in English, is taken from the Gradual portion of the mass associated with the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. Britten formally divides the piece according to the divisions of the text. The first portion, corresponding with the words "Thou shalt make them Princes over all the Earth: They shall remember thy name, O Lord," is set in evenly paced homophony, the carefully declaimed syllables forming a steady pulse of colorful and sometimes oddly dissonant chords above the organ's more meandering bass line. A hint of word-painting can perhaps be detected in the setting of the next line, "Instead of thy fathers, Sons are born to Thee": a single musical gesture replicates itself into striking, imitative entrances and carefully woven polyphony. The slow chordal texture of the beginning returns for the final line of the Gradual text, "Therefore shall the people praise thee, Alleluia." Britten then adds a kind of coda in which a multiplicity of styles and references converge: a soprano soloist sings the generative Tu es Petrus melody, this time with its original text and in its original Latin; at the same time, the choir, in a quiet, shimmering chordal texture, sings the same text in English translation.

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