Was Ever Love Like Thine?

Aitken sets Samuel Wesley’s dramatic hymn with freely emotive drama.  Even within a conservative four-voice texture, Aitken achieves a large canvas on which he paints the pained images of Wesley’s text.  Punctuating staccato notes and syncopation heighten the immediacy, at times bordering on theatricality.  Aitken nimbly evades a clear indication of key, although the music vacillates most frequently between D minor and F major.  Aitken sets four stanzas of the hymn, and the first stanza reappears in only slightly varied form at the end, effectively marking a recapitulation.  The final cadence, however, increases the tonal ambiguity with a chord that does not lend itself to simple aural interpretation.  This unsettled, inconclusive termination fits the emotional turmoil of the anthem extremely well.
— Jason Overall, The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, January 2018