Purcell composed it c. 1682, at the beginning of his tenure as Organist and Master of the Choristers for Westminster Abbey.

The composition is thought to have been intended to be part of a longer work, indicated by several blank pages following it in the autograph, which is held by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

[2] The text of the extant music are the first verse of Psalm 102: "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my crying come unto thee."

[3][4][2] Purcell begins the composition with a simple setting of the first line on one tone, with only one exception, a minor third up on the word "O".

[2] Musicologist Timothy Dickey notes that Purcell "gradually amplified the vocal texture, and intensifies the harmonic complexity, until all eight voices combine in a towering dissonant tone cluster which desperately demands the final cadential resolution.