Hymns and Arias
I have to admit to pinching the title of this post from Max
Boyce’s song of the same title where he sing’s ‘And they were singing hymns and
arias, Land of my Father, Ar Hyd a Nos, and as you might have already worked
out I want to share some thoughts on the hymns part of this.
I have been following for some time now discussions in the
Methodist Recorder about one line in one hymn which seems to cause a lot of
people difficulty and all sorts of suggestions have been made about leaving the
verse out of changing the words and to be honest I would not favour either
suggestion but then I have no problem with seeing the wrath of God satisfied.
In this week’s Methodist Recorder there are two letters
about hymns that I found quite interesting. The first one was about the choice
of tune for a particular hymn and the other was about the words of a different
hymn and I find myself at odds with both letter writers.
The first hymn is Glorious Things of thee are spoken which is
usually sung to the tune ‘Austria’ and the writer is suggesting a change to
another tune because of the militaristic tone of ‘Austria’. I think it carries
the words far better for me that ‘Lux Eoi’ and wonder if the objection may be
more because the tune ‘Austria’ was also the German National Anthem – ‘Deutschland,
Deutschland Uber Allies’.
The second hymn is ‘How great thou art’ and the writer of
the letter is questioning the line ‘And when I think that God His Son not
sparing, Sent Him to die I scarce can take it in’ and is in particular questioning
why if God sent Him to die he didn’t let Herod finish the job when Jesus was a
baby. Now I am not sure how that might have worked given the amount of prophecy
about the coming of Jesus and of how he was likely to die – by His stripes we
are healed etc.
I have to admit to be a little curmudgeonly when it comes to
hymns and tunes – I am sorry I am not very keen on changing words when the
result is that they do not scan and present problems for many of our congregations who know the words sometimes without
opening their hymn books. At one church I preach at there was a lady who I
never saw open her hymnbook and I felt a challenge to find a hymn that she had
to open her book to sing every time I went there.
There are also in my opinion some hymns that you cannot
really change the tune to as it is almost as if tune and words were written to complement
each other and of course many hymns were. Fanny Crosby’s great hymn ‘Blessed
Assurance’ was written after a friend had played her some music.
I remember playing at a service once where the preacher
requested a tune change to ‘Abide with me’ and unlike the old joke I am an
organist you can negotiate with so I went along with it. Unfortunately the tune
change did not work at all well and meant that the rest of the service however
good or bad the elements were did not register with a congregation who were
very upset at the change of tune.
We have a hymn tomorrow morning and the set tune in Singing
the Faith is not the tune that I have normally heard this particular hymn sung
to – could be quite interesting if the preacher goes with that tune – I will of
course offer my advice but will go with the preacher’s wishes. The hymn for
those who may be interested is ‘Christ triumphant ever reigning’ which I am
used to singing and playing to the tune ‘Christ Triumphant’ however in Singing
the Faith it is set to ‘Guiting Power’. I have to be honest I think I prefer
the tune that is not in StF.
Maybe readers have a view on this!
