March 2007
An Introduction to Hymnody	Show Menu

Adrian Somerfield, Organist, St Thomas, Mount Merrion

This article is a modified version of a “Talk with Hymns”, given by the writer in both St Thomas’ Mount Merrion and St Philip and St James, Booterstown on 14 January 2007

I had suggested to the Rector that we might have an “Organist's Choice” Sunday. As I developed this idea, I decided to try to illustrate various examples of hymnody during Morning Prayer, though in six items, which is less than 1% of the current hymn book, I can't cover everything! For those interested in church music there is a most useful recent book by Edward Darling and Donald Davidson, Companion to Church Hymnal, which I have referred to extensively.

In early editions of the Book of Common Prayer, there were very few references to hymns and, apart from the psalms and canticles, virtually the only position for music was the point after the third collect: “In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem”. It used to be common to have a hymn at this point but even so in the past there was considerable opposition to having any sort of hymns, other than psalms and anthems, in the Church of Ireland.

Hymns in anything like a modern sense started with Luther around 1500 (1483—1546) and were part of his reforming ideas. He believed in the effectiveness of popular hymn-singing in advancing the cause of reform. He wrote many hymns and knew how to match them with telling melodies, either his own or by others. There was a great burst of hymn and tune writing in the Lutheran Church.

In the mediaeval church audience participation was not encouraged. The priest said Mass in the Choir behind a screen, and the mob just attended, and this was very much the custom in the pre-Reformation Church and even in the Church of England, until quite recently.

Most of the earlier official music in church would have been modal settings of the Mass and psalms, such as is often to be heard as “backing” on TV whenever a picture of a monastery appears. We then think of sixteenth and seventeenth century musicians such as Monteverdi (1567—1643) and Palestrina (1525—1594) in Italy and William Byrd (c.1542—1623) and Merbecke (c.1510—c.1585) in England, with more elaborate settings. Merbecke's was probably the first setting of the Communion Service in English. It is still popular and to be found in the C of I Chant Book. The Council of Trent

(1545—1563) regularised music for the future in the Roman Catholic Church; the Church was worried about music becoming dangerously elaborate. However, I suspect that there may have been “unofficial” religious music, such as carols using popular tunes of the day, going back a long way.

In the Lutheran Church more emphasis began to be placed on the congregation. Many Lutheran hymns and tunes were worked up by Bach, mainly in the years 1723—50 while he was Cantor at St Thomas School and organist at two churches in Leipzig, where he was expected to compose vast amounts of music for each Sunday; the Lutheran service of those days lasted several hours!

A number of these Bach arrangements occur in our hymnal. For example there is “Wachet Auf” or “Sleepers awake” for Advent; “How brightly beams the Morning Star” for the Epiphany, and several for Holy Week and Easter, including “O sacred head, sore wounded” as the Passion Chorale. For modern tastes these tend to be seen as too solemn and stolid for congregational use, but because of Bach's rich harmonisations, choirs love them.

We start with one of these, Hymn 668, God is our fortress and our rock to the tune Ein' feste Burg, a Strong City. The words are based on Psalm 46, which may have been written at a time of great historic crisis, possibly when Jerusalem was delivered from the overpowering Assyrian army in 701 BC, and is widely used in times of crisis today. It is also reminiscent of the canticle Urbs fortitudinis which uses words from Isaiah. Probably both the words and tune were originally by Luther and it became popular in Protestant parts of Germany. The poet Heine referred to it as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation”

The first hymn I chose was based on a psalm, as many are. These would have been the temple music that Christ knew and the basis of much church music in monasteries and cathedrals, where they were sung to plainsong chants, which in England melded into the ingenious Anglican chant. However, for congregational use chant is not very popular (though I enjoy it) especially in the Calvinist tradition in Geneva and in particular in the derived Presbyterian tradition in Scotland, metrical versions of the psalms such as the

Geneva Psalter of 1551 were produced. Calvin would not allow anything to be sung in public worship which was not wholly based on the scriptures.

Metrical versions are paraphrases such as “The Lord's my shepherd” for Psalm 23, originally found in the Scottish Psalter of 1650. One of these compilations was by Sternhold and Hopkins (1572) and became known as the “Old Version” to distinguish it from a later compilation by the Irishmen Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady published in London in 1696 and referred to as “The New Version”. Tate and Brady's book with numerous supplements became essentially the hymn book used in most churches well into the nineteenth century. Tate and Brady hymns we still use include “While shepherds watched” and “Hark the herald-angels sing”. Our hymnal contains several tunes with titles such as Old 104th, Old 120th, Old 134th and so on.

One of the best known is The Old Hundredth, this being a setting of the hundredth psalm, or Jubilate Deo. The melody derives from the Geneva Psalter and was probably composed by Louis Bourgeois who was choirmaster at St Peter's Church in Geneva under the patronage of John Calvin. The words are attributed to a Scot, William Kethe, who, like many other puritans, had fled to Europe in the reign of Queen Mary Tudor, and had settled in Geneva. We find it in the form of Hymn 683, All people that on earth do dwell.

It is often thought that I am old-fashioned, and that I do not like “modern” hymns or those written within living memory! This is not altogether true, though I do find some of the modern jingles and jangles unattractive. However, to be a bit up to date I would like to have another hymn derived from the first few verses of. Psalm 42, which opens “Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee O God”. The setting I have chosen was written by Martin Nystrom of Seattle in 1981 and we have it as Hymn 606, As the deer pants for the water. It is a little unusual in that the tune and words are by the same author. While particular hymns are often associated with particular tunes, we must remember that they may date from different periods. For example, Come down O love divine (294) has words by Bianco da Siena from the fifteenth century to the tune Down Ampney by Vaughan Williams from the twentieth.

While on the subject, I do think that it is a pity that recently we have lost so much of poetry in our services in attempts to be modern and 'with it'. We have entirely lost the Authorised Version of the Bible and also the Coverdale version of the psalms which the C of I used up to 1926 and in a modified version up to 1984. Many well-known quotations in the English language are taken from the 16th century versions of the bible and the psalms, as well as from the plays by Shakespeare.

Hymn singing developed much more quickly in the Evangelical churches than in the Anglican, and one of the most prolific writers of hymns was Charles Wesley (1707—1788). Charles was the younger brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. He also was the father of Samuel Wesley (the younger) and grandfather of Samuel Sebastian Wesley, both of whom were consummate musicians, SS having ended up as organist at Gloucester Cathedral. Both have contributions in our book, which contains twenty-three hymns by Charles. It is notable that often you find you have been singing a “good hymn”, and you see the name Charles Wesley at the bottom. All these we sing to tunes by others, and I have chosen a setting derived from Handel, 281 Rejoice the Lord is King (Gopsal). Handel, who accompanied George I from Hanover to England, was acquainted with the Wesley family and wrote this tune especially for this hymn. Gopsall Hall was the home in Leicestershire of Handel's friend Charles Jennens, who compiled the libretto of Messiah. It is interesting to compare the different musical styles of the two German contemporaries, Bach and Handel.

I would like to include an Irish hymn. In the previous book there was a section quaintly called “Hymns from Ancient Irish Sources”. It contained “St Patrick's Breastplate” and “Be thou my vision” and various hymns derived from the writings or traditions of early saints, translated and versified in more recent times. One of these, Hymn 560, Alone with none but thee my God is attributed to Columba (sixth century). This is usually sung to Emain Macha but I like the tune Tibradden, written by my old teacher Joe Groocock for use at St Columba's College. I remembered this tune from schooldays and was delighted to see it in the new hymn book. It catches a nice Irish flavour. In the days I knew him, Joe lived with his wife and family in an old cottage on the slopes of Tibradden Mountain, and his daughter Jenny Robinson suggested the title for the tune.

There are many good tunes from Wales: Aberystwyth, St Denio, Blaenwern, Hyfrydol, Cwm Rhondda, Gwalchmai, Rhyddlan, Llangollen and so on, where there is a great tradition of singing and Welsh choirs from the slate mines of the north and the coalfields of the south are famous, so we will finish with a Welsh tune, although the words are not by a Welsh author. Hymn 105 O the deep, deep love of Jesus goes to the tune Ebenezer. The writer, Samuel Francis, was a member of another evangelical group, the Plymouth Brethren, and the tune is by Thomas John Williams of Ynysmeudwy. The words have a very nautical theme, with Jesus' love being compared with a “mighty ocean, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free”. Ebenezer, the “stone of help”, was the name of a monument raised by Samuel after a victory over the Philistines, and is a name often applied to nonconformist chapels, especially in Wales.

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