MILES LANE is one of three tunes that are closely associated with this well-known and beloved text; CORONATION is found at 471. Other hymnals also include the more florid DIADEM, composed by James Ellor in 1838 and noted for its elaborate choral harmo¬nization.
MILES LANE was published anonymously with Perronet's first stanza in the November 1779 issue of the Gospel Magazine. The tune appeared in three parts with the melody in the middle part. Each "Crown him" was meant to be sung by a different part, first by the bass, then by the treble, and finally by the tenor. Thus MILES LANE was a fuguing tune. Stephen Addington identified William Perronet as the composer in his Collection of Psalm Tunes (1780). The tune's title comes from the traditional English corruption of St. Michael's Lane, the London street where the Miles' Lane Meeting House was located, of which Addington was minister.
William Shrubsole (b. Canterbury, Kent, England, 1760; d. London, England, 1806) composed MILES LANE when he was only nineteen. A chorister in Canterbury Cathedral from 1770 to 1777, Shrubsole was appointed organist at Bangor Cathedral in 1782. However, he was dismissed in 1783 for associating too closely with religious dissenters. In 1784 he became a music teacher in London and organist at Lady Huntingdon's Spa Fields Chapel, Clerkenwell, a position he retained until his death.
Shrubsole is the subject of a famous essay (1943) by Ralph Vaughan Williams (PHH 316): who called MILES LANE a "superb" tune and composed a concertato arrangement of it in 1938. Edward Elgar called it "the finest tune in English hymnody." MILES LANE has a wide melodic range and a most effective climax in the refrain, which could benefit from some rubato, especially at the end of stanza 4. Accompany and sing in a majestic manner.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook
