Tuesday, February 20, 2007 AD
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Our church service on Sunday was something of a J.M. Neale benefit gig, with the good John Mason providing three of the four hymns. The only other hymnwriter to get a look-in was Joseph A. Robinson, whose Transfiguration-themed hymn "'Tis good, Lord, to be here" includes the marvellous final verse:
Our church service on Sunday was something of a J.M. Neale benefit gig, with the good John Mason providing three of the four hymns. The only other hymnwriter to get a look-in was Joseph A. Robinson, whose Transfiguration-themed hymn "'Tis good, Lord, to be here" includes the marvellous final verse:
'Tis good, Lord, to be here.Returning to J.M. Neale, the final hymn was his translation of the 11th century Latin hymn, Alleluia, dulce carmen. The footnote in HS98 describes this hymn as "burying the Alleluia" before the season of Lent, when the church refrains from singing "Alleluia". So it seemed a good item to post the day before Ash Wednesday:Read more »
Yet we may not remain;
But since Thou bidst us leave the mount,
Come with us to the plain.
Labels: church year, hymns, lent
Sunday, January 07, 2007 AD
I couldn't let Christmas pass without posting this wonderful Christmas hymn by Frank Houghton. I was playing the organ at our old church this evening, and this was the closing hymn. What a great way to end the Christmas season:
Frank Houghton was editorial secretary for the China Inland Mission (now OMF), and he wrote the hymn in the aftermath of the savage martyrdom of two missionaries, John and Betty Stam, who were beheaded by bandits in China in 1934 (their three-month old daughter miraculously survived, unnoticed by the bandits). The Stams' great-nephew, Chip Stam, takes up the story:
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,The hymn is based on one of my favourite Bible verses, 2 Corinthians 8:9, and is sung to the tune FRAGRANCE, a gorgeous French carol tune (of which a snippet can be heard as track 14 here; a fuller version, in a not-to-my-taste-but-it'll-give-you-the-idea arrangement, can be heard here, MP3).
All for love's sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love's sake becamest poor.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love's sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenward by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love's sake becamest man.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King, we worship thee.
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us what thou wouldst have us be.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King, we worship thee.
Frank Houghton was editorial secretary for the China Inland Mission (now OMF), and he wrote the hymn in the aftermath of the savage martyrdom of two missionaries, John and Betty Stam, who were beheaded by bandits in China in 1934 (their three-month old daughter miraculously survived, unnoticed by the bandits). The Stams' great-nephew, Chip Stam, takes up the story:
The news of these sorrows had reached the mission's headquarters in Shanghai. Though this was a very dangerous time for both the Chinese Christians and the foreign missionaries, Frank Houghton decided he needed to begin a tour through the country to visit various missionary outposts. While traveling over the mountains of Szechwan, the powerful and comforting words of 2 Corinthians 8:9, "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor," were transformed into this beautiful Christmas hymn.I already loved this hymn, but the "backstory" only adds to its power. Had it been written in comfortable, western safety, this would already be a great hymn. But how moving it is to think of a hymn so full of the love of God being written in circumstances of such precariousness and fear.
Labels: christmas, hymns, martyrs, missionaries
Monday, January 01, 2007 AD
Christopher Idle's booklet, Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (see previous posts 1 | 2), includes Idle's (highly personal) checklist for assessing a hymnal. Here are his twenty questions to pose to any hymn book you are thinking of adopting:
Q.18 was a breeze, since Catherine Winkworth - translator of many of Luther's hymns - has a whopping 41 entries in the book (though if you think that's a lot, try looking up "Wesley, Charles" next time you come across a copy of the Methodist Hymn Book!).
By way of contrast, Hymns Ancient and Modern New Standard (a personal favourite of mine) scored 1 negative (q.7) and 7 positives (qq.2, 4, 6, 12, 14, 16 and 18).
Anyone care to tot up a score for their own church's hymn book? Or want to take Idle to task over any of his criteria? Please feel free to take this up in the (intermittently functioning!) comments.
- Does it include The old rugged cross?
- Does it have There is a land of pure delight and Give me the wings of faith?
- Or O valiant hearts? [Note: that's the post-Great War hymn with the infamous line about "our lesser Calvaries", referring to the war dead. If you think American "civil religion" is bad enough, just read the words of this hymn to see what British civil religion looked like, when we still had such a thing.]
- Or For the fruits of his creation?
- Or When I feel the touch?
- Or Forgive us our sins, as we forgive?
- Or City of God, how broad and far?
- Or All glory be to God in the sky and Glory be to God on high?
- Are there plenty of copyright addresses printed under each hymn?
- Will the music edition stay open, or even stay put, on the piano/organ/keyboard?
- Does its version of Amazing grace have anything at all about ten thousand years?
- Are the words and music clearly readable?
- Does its version of Thy/Your kingdom come, O God include "o'er heathen lands afar"?
- Can the words be sung with integrity and conviction by your congregation?
- Do more than 5% of first lines start with "I"?
- Is it a simple matter to find a hymn on the Transfiguration?
- Do more than three tunes go above top E or below middle C?
- Can you easily find a hymn by Anne Steele, Catherine Winkworth or Alan Gaunt?
- Does the book include its own supplement bound in at the end? [Note: a reference to "Hymns for Today's Church", for which Idle was one of the contributors.]
- Can you readily find a hymn connected with Psalm 98, Luke 13 or James 5?
Even numbers:Doing a check on the first hymnal that came to hand (Lutheran Worship), this scored 0 on the odd-numbered questions (probably the first time anyone has described LW as being in any way "ideal"...), and 4.5 on the even numbers (qq. 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18; I docked it half a point on q.12, because I don't think putting the text within the score is particularly clear for congregations to follow). However, it has to be borne in mind on both counts that questions 1 to 8 are very anglocentric, and LW scored zero on all eight, positive and negative.
10: Check again; there is no such book.
7-9: This could be the one for you.
<6: Hmm.
Odd numbers:
10: I hope there is no such book.
6-9: Forget it.
1-5: There may be something better.
0: Ideal.
Q.18 was a breeze, since Catherine Winkworth - translator of many of Luther's hymns - has a whopping 41 entries in the book (though if you think that's a lot, try looking up "Wesley, Charles" next time you come across a copy of the Methodist Hymn Book!).
By way of contrast, Hymns Ancient and Modern New Standard (a personal favourite of mine) scored 1 negative (q.7) and 7 positives (qq.2, 4, 6, 12, 14, 16 and 18).
Anyone care to tot up a score for their own church's hymn book? Or want to take Idle to task over any of his criteria? Please feel free to take this up in the (intermittently functioning!) comments.
Labels: christopher idle, hymns, now this is just a bit of fun, questionnaires
Sunday, December 31, 2006 AD
As Percy Dearmer's corpus passes out of copyright protection (see previous post), here is a sad little tale of how copyright can entangle and hamper hymns (and other resources) that might otherwise have become treasures of the church.
Christopher Idle, in the Real Hymns booklet I referred to before, mentions in passing Canon W H Vanstone's 1976 hymn, Morning glory, starlit sky - "in its revised form which while available in many books may now be illegal to reprint".
Idle expands on this rather puzzling comment in a 1999 article for New Directions. William Vanstone published a book in 1977 called Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense, of which Idle writes:
The full words of the revised, hymn version can be found online here (the original poem is at the bottom of this page). For reasons that are about to become depressingly obvious I am not going to reproduce the full text here, but here are the final two stanzas of the hymn:
Christopher Idle, in the Real Hymns booklet I referred to before, mentions in passing Canon W H Vanstone's 1976 hymn, Morning glory, starlit sky - "in its revised form which while available in many books may now be illegal to reprint".
Idle expands on this rather puzzling comment in a 1999 article for New Directions. William Vanstone published a book in 1977 called Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense, of which Idle writes:
If the book itself became a landmark for countless studies, seminars, and sermons, the final page was (from a hymn-lover's viewpoint) its crowning glory. Morning glory, in fact; so began the poem which perfectly crystallises the book's pastoral and incarnational theology. What a way to write a hymn! And how satisfying to sing, if we know it was not a commission dashed off in ten minutes, but came to fruition from reflection on long experience.The poem was then adapted to turn it from a seven-stanza poem into a six-stanza hymn, with the editors (crucially) also changing some of the language, getting rid of Canon Vanstone's "thees" and "thous" and generally modernising the words. It appeared in this form in More Hymns for Today (the second supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised), and in that form is a beautifully written and challenging hymn.
The full words of the revised, hymn version can be found online here (the original poem is at the bottom of this page). For reasons that are about to become depressingly obvious I am not going to reproduce the full text here, but here are the final two stanzas of the hymn:
Therefore he who shows us GodIn an era where it is the theologians of glory who often appear to have all the best tunes, how refreshing to see a hymn from a theologian of the cross. Except that it's highly unlikely you will see it anytime soon, partly because some hymnal editors have found it rather strong meat, but also for reasons explained by Idle:
helpless hangs upon the tree;
and the nails and crown of thorns
tell of what God’s love must be.
Here is God: no monarch he,
throned in easy state to reign;
here is God, whose arms of love
aching, spent, the world sustain.
In March this year, Canon Vanstone died, aged 75. Discerning editors want to include his hymn in future books, but his literary executors are allowing only the original, complete with thee/thou, and minus the other changes which helped to make it a small masterpiece. Result? Although the later text is in wide use, many new books will not carry the words at all. Modern editors may be happy with archaisms from 1777, but not from 1977. They will not choose the superseded text.I think the "discerning editor" Idle probably has in mind is himself, as he was in the process of editing two hymn books at this time! But how sad that this hymn should find itself stifled in this way.
Labels: christopher idle, copyright, hymns, theologians of the cross
Today is the last day in copyright of one of the most famous hymns of the twentieth century, Percy Dearmer's He who would valiant be. Dearmer died in 1936, and copyright therefore expires at midnight tonight, "the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author die[d]" (s.12(1) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, since you asked).
Dearmer's hymn was, of course, an adaptation of John Bunyan's poem beginning "Who would true valour see" from Pilgrim's Progress. Personally I greatly prefer Bunyan's original, which has itself been adopted as a hymn. However, this adoption of Who would true valour see as a hymn came after, and as a result of, Dearmer's adaptation.
One of the main differences between the two versions (which can be seen together, with a MIDI warning, here) is that Dearmer omits Bunyan's references to "hobgoblins" from the third stanza. Dearmer explained this decision as follows:
Of course, as Idle points out, the success of both hymns, hobgoblins or no hobgoblins, is "largely thanks to MONK'S GATE and Ralph Vaughan Williams" anyway.
Dearmer's hymn was, of course, an adaptation of John Bunyan's poem beginning "Who would true valour see" from Pilgrim's Progress. Personally I greatly prefer Bunyan's original, which has itself been adopted as a hymn. However, this adoption of Who would true valour see as a hymn came after, and as a result of, Dearmer's adaptation.
One of the main differences between the two versions (which can be seen together, with a MIDI warning, here) is that Dearmer omits Bunyan's references to "hobgoblins" from the third stanza. Dearmer explained this decision as follows:
"In 1904, we who were working at the English Hymnal felt that some cheerful and manly hymns must be added to the usual repertory [sic]; and this song sprang to mind. It was a daring thing to add [this] song to a hymn book, and it had never been attempted before. To include the hobgoblins would have been to ensure disaster; to ask the congregation of St Ignotius, Erewhon Park, to invite all to come and look at them, if they wished to see true valour, would have been difficult."This is taken from Christopher Idle's fascinating Grove booklet from 2000, Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books, from which I hope to post some more in due course.
Of course, as Idle points out, the success of both hymns, hobgoblins or no hobgoblins, is "largely thanks to MONK'S GATE and Ralph Vaughan Williams" anyway.
Labels: christopher idle, copyright, hobgoblins, hymns, john bunyan, percy dearmer
