The Latin hymn Te Deum laudamus ("we praise Thee, God") is attributed to Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana in Dacia (Today's Romania), who lived in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.  Although this tripartite composition soon found a firm place in the liturgy for matins, it also came to be used for general festive occasions.  It was infrequently set by composers of the pre-1600 period but later became popular in the middle baroque (Benevoli, Purcell) and subsequently in lavishly scored versions by Boyce, Graun, Handel (Utrecht Te Deum, 1713; Dettingen Te Deum, 1743), and others.  The festive nature of the text inspired large-scale works by Berlioz (1855), Bruckner (1884), Dvorak (1896), and Verdi (1898), and in the 20th-century by Vaughan Williams with the Festival Te Deum, written for the coronation of King George VI in 1937.