I AM writing about composer Benjamin Rogers (1614-1698).

It is easy to forget Benjamin Rogers whose anniversary occurs in 2014, yet this Restoration composer was not only famous in his own time, but wrote music that still deserves more recognition than it currently receives.

For many he is only known as the composer of the Hymnus Eucharisticus which is annually sung from the top of Magdalen College, Oxford tower, every May Morning at 6am but other people know his music for an exciting Te Deum, a setting of the Eucharist in D and two anthems Behold now praise the Lord and Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes which are valued in the church music repertoire.

He spent most of his life in Oxford but he had earlier been a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, organist at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin and organist of Eton College. He was however, an Oxford man through and through, and as well as having worked there for most of his life was given a prized college pension on retirement.

In his early life he was supported by the Protector Cromwell who was responsible for him studying for the degree of Bachelor of Music at Cambridge.

Soon his instrumental and choral music was widely used and prized in the court of Charles II, in the festivities of the city of London and in the fashionable circles of the Archduke Leopold of Germany and Queen Christina of Sweden.

He could be described, sarcastically, as the Vicar of Bray of his musical world but perhaps more appropriately through the words of John Dryden, 1631-1700, a contemporary: ‘I swam with the tide and the water beneath me was buoyant’.

A. LELLO (Mr), Coram Avenue, Lyme Regis