‘‘Veni, Sancte Spiritus was originally written under the title Ceremonial for the Band of the
Royal Air Force Regiment to play at a Thanksgiving Service in St Clement Danes Church, the
Central Church of the RAF in London. In its original version it didn’t contain a hymn tune,
and when I came to arrange it for brass rather than wind band Vaughan Williams’s beautiful
tune Down Ampney came to mind, and this fits nicely into the last sections of the piece. The
moving words of the hymn (Come Down, O Love Divine) of course reflect the work’s new
title.

It was written with the wonderfully rich acoustics of the beautiful thousand-year-old church
very much in mind. It should be played cantabile and legato throughout, with a real sense of
a gradual build up into section F, and then a gentle ‘dying away’ as the music of section G,
with its final reference to Down Ampney, seems to fade at the end into the lovely architecture
and high spaces of the church.’