Orlando Gibbons came from a family of professional musicians, and his own musical career seemed preordained. His father was a town wait (civic musician), and Orlando fairly quickly followed in his footsteps, singing in the King's College choir perhaps by age 12. By 1605, Orlando had already joined the Chapel Royal of England, and was close to completing his music degree at Oxford. Though by his untimely death, Orlando was serving no fewer than four organist positions, during his life and since he has been better known for his English church compositions. The forward-looking composer contributed mightily to the development of the particular genre of Anglican church music known as the verse anthem. At the same time, his characteristically careful attention to contrapuntal detail and the sense of a musical text served him well in traditional English compositions such as the full anthem O Lord, in they wrath rebuke me not. Some anthems like this one were reproduced in early printed anthologies such that Gibbons' music has truly been in the active repertory of the Church of England from 1660 to the present.

O Lord, in thy wrath rebuke me not is shorter than many of Gibbons' full anthems, but very tightly wrought. Its penitential text, from Psalm 6:1-4, could be appropriate for the celebration of Evening Prayer on the first day of any month, or for singing during any service of special need or penitence. Gibbons sets the text for six voices (two boy treble parts, two male altos, and two lower parts), using all six parts throughout, though he shifts vocal textures often for special effect. The musically spacious opening rapidly expands from a single medial pitch to fill two and a half octaves, with a vicious accent in the top voice (leaping up an octave) on the word "wrath." The second "point" of imitation, "neither chasten me in thy displeasure," creeps by quickly in all voices, as though they are all reluctant to give God any time to interrupt. Gibbons' care for the sense of individual words in his text continues throughout the brief anthem, including a softer motive for the plea "have mercy," a sudden shift to unsupported high voices on "for I am weak," and a rhetorically powerful single voice first decrying "But Lord, how long wilt thou punish me?"

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