William Walton's anthem and mini-cantata, The Twelve, was commissioned in 1965 by Christ Church, Oxford—where Walton had attended choir school years before, and with which he had maintained a professional relationship. The Dean of the school, Dr. Cuthbert Simpson, had long been dissatisfied with the anthems available for use in church services, and especially sensed a need for music appropriate for Apostolic feast days. He thus approached Walton and poet W.H. Auden with a request for such a piece. Reportedly, the two collaborated only minimally, each supplying his portion of the commission without much consultation with the other. Nonetheless, the work, the full title of which reads The Twelve: An Anthem for the Feast of Any Apostle, stands as one of the most distinctive in Walton's repertoire, owing largely to its wide ranging palette of harmonic colors, its ambitious style of rhythm and articulation, and its evocative and expressive approach to vocal texture.

At the time of its premiere at Christ Church in 1965, the work was scored for SATB soloists and SATB chorus, with organ accompaniment. A year after the premiere of this original version, the composer arranged the accompaniment for full orchestral forces. Thus fully orchestrated version was featured as part of a concert celebrating the 900th anniversary the establishment of the Westminster Cathedral, under whose arches it took place in January 1966.

The work, which runs about 11 minutes, is divided into three general sections following Auden's text. In the first, the humble beginnings of the apostles' ministry in chronicled, as well as the spread of their message, the conversion of masses, and the martyrdom at the hands of conspiring government officials. This opening section is initially set as a bass recitative with a pensive, almost mysterious dramatic air, somewhat uncharacteristic of the composer. The bass solo ends at the phrase "Went forth into a joyless world...To bring it joy," at which point the chorus enters in rich, opaque eight-part harmony. The subsequent choral setting utilizes various textures, making particular use of quasi-antiphonal exchanges and melodramatic text declamation—take, for example, the instrumental sweep introducing the men's unison depiction of the "Dark Lord," followed immediately by the women's voices representing "the Light."

The sedately homophonic account of the Apostolic martyrdom makes the transition into Auden's second section, a penitential poem whose quiet, fragile tones Walton entrusts to tandem soprano soloists. The final section initially returns to the low men's range, employing a male chorus and tenor and bass recitative passages. Auden's final lines are delivered in a fugal texture that expands by degrees from the basses and tenors to the women's voices before settling into a triumphant homophonic charge: "praise them with a merry noise."

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