One doesn’t of course know how these things are allocated, but it does seem that St Edmundsbury have a particularly generous share of what might, non-liturgically, be termed the Pops: eight or nine of them, I’d say, whereas to Sheffield go a mere three or four (though they include O God, our help in ages past, greatest of all). As with the other volumes, both of these range freely over the Church year. In form or style, St Edmundsbury are what I would nervously describe as traditional central Anglican; Sheffield introduce two examples of the ‘Responsorial psalm’, where a sentence in the psalm is introduced at the start and then repeated as a kind of refrain.

In musical terms, choral performance of the hymns (there’s no telling what the congregation do with them) is a more sophisticated exercise in Sheffield than at St Edmundsbury. There, words and tunes are for singing much in the manner of our fathers that begat us: a syllable is a syllable, and they don’t mess around with the tunes. At Sheffield there is more light and shade, more variety of ways and means, and, as a further token of minds at work, a livelier tempo set.

Sheffield have girls’ voices, St Edmundsbury boys’: both are excellent. With tenors and basses, Sheffield are fortunate to be unusually well supplied; at St Edmundsbury they appear to be blest with some good altos. Both organists do well, especially in the reharmonised last verses (which used to be left to the wit or whim of the player, but now tend to be written down). The acoustics of both buildings are clear rather than reverberant, but, as recorded sound, the Sheffield disc has the warmer glow, the hint of splendour.