Orlando Gibbons, like many of the most successful musicians, composed well in nearly every genre of music available to him. As a professional organist (son and grandson of professional instrumentalists), Gibbons left a number of fine keyboard arrangements, as well as popular fantasias and other music for consorts of viols, and music for solo voices and instruments. In composing anthems for worship in the Church of England, Gibbons was a master both at the simpler style of chordal writing and at the polyphonic intricacies of the recently passed sixteenth century. In addition, he wrote a large number of pieces in the progressive idiom of the verse anthem, helping make possible the achievements of John Blow and Henry Purcell. It is often in the case of an extended verse anthem such as See, the word is incarnate that Gibbons' skill is most evident.

The text and conception for See, the word is incarnate is a dramatic narration of the life of Christ, from birth to resurrection. "Dr. Goodman, Dean of Rochester" composed the piece's quite lengthy text. Faced with such a long text, Gibbons chose to condense the musical form by avoiding a common feature of many of his other verse anthems, the repetition of text between solo and full-choir sections. Instead, he strings together a series of contrasting musical events that together dramatize the events of Goodman's narration. The opening solo (with instrumental accompaniment) sings the part of an angelic herald to Jesus' birth, largely in a sequence of rising voices; the full, five-voiced choir answers with a trumpet-like entry for the angelic host's "Glory to God." Twice more, solo passages meditate upon facets of Christ's life: a high duet singing of His preaching and His miracles, and a low trio using painful suspensions conventionally to represent His sacrifice; this latter ensemble also introduces sharp syncopations on mention of the earthquakes, and new major harmonies as the "powers of hell are shaken." After each, the full choir alternates jubilant passages. The final two solo sections contrast musical suspensions ("see the fresh wound") and florid solo passages ("he sitteth at the right hand of God"), while again the choir inserts its own meditations: rising imitative motives for Christ's Ascension, and two resounding antiphonal choirs for "Glory to the Lamb." The full choir concludes the long meditation with the long, jubilant final pages on the theme of Victory.

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