(From the Rector provides a forum through which St. John’s Rector will occasionally publish his rambling thoughts for all to read… hmmmm.)
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Email PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS |
PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS
On the Sunday called SEPTUAGESIMA (Latin for “seventieth”, because it is approximately the seventieth day before Easter), we begin our preparation for the observance of our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection. In token of this preparation, the altar hangings are violet, Alleluia is not sung, and we begin a three-week focus on Creation, Sin, and the way of Redemption in the Old Testament and New.
The Protestant reformation of the 16th century brought many great gifts to the Catholic tradition. In doctrine, it taught with new emphasis the all-sufficiency of Christ’s atoning work upon the cross, the priority of divine grace to all human willing, and the necessity of a lively faith as the means by which we receive the benefits of salvation. In external forms of worship, it brought the Church a new emphasis on the Bible, read and studied by all Christians in the vernacular; a new emphasis on the doctrine of the Bible preached in sermons and taught in catechisms; a new use of the vernacular for public worship, and, not least of all, the congregational hymn.
We take it for granted that we should sing together in church, though in fact we rarely do so anywhere else. To see why this is not to be taken for granted, read Thomas Day’s witty and perceptive book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing. (Apparently it is the fault of the Irish, but I will let you read it for yourselves.) My copy, alas, has gone astray, but in one of the passages that sticks in my mind, Day, who is himself a Roman Catholic organist, asks why it is that a small cluster of elderly Presbyterians can make more joyful noise together than a vast congregation of able-bodied Roman Catholics. Day shows us what a remarkable phenomenon the Protestant tradition of congregational hymnody is. There were hymns before the Protestant reformation, but by the High Middle Ages, the ancient tradition of congregational chant and song had been squeezed out by the elaborate development of [absolutely gorgeous] art music – melismatic chant and polyphony. Popular hymn-singing in the late Middle Ages – the chorale and carol – was done outside the formal liturgy.
It was Martin Luther, who about the year 1523, first harnessed this tradition of popular singing to the evangelical doctrine of the Reformation, brought it into the Church’s liturgy, and triggered an explosion of hymn-writing, hymn-publishing, and hymn–singing that marked Protestant worship and spirituality ever since. Drawing upon a wealth of medieval melodies, both ecclesiastical chant and popular folk songs. This body of music was enormously expanded in the next two hundred years, by Luther himself, a host of others, and the great composers Praetorius, Schutz, and Bach. Yet the German chorale retains the freshness, directness, strength, and warmth of its roots in chant, carol, and folk-song.
Much of it is still too little known. Miles Coverdale (translator of the 1535 Psalter in the Prayer Book) tried to introduce the Lutheran chorale into England in the 16th century, in a book with the wonderful title of Ghostly Psalms and Spiritual Songs, but it was not until the 19th century translations of Catherine Winkworth and Frances Coxe that it began to find acceptance in Anglican worship. In the USA, the best known of these is the translation of Luther’s Ein’ feste burg, “A Mighty Fortress” (#551), by Frederick Henry Hedge, but the 1940 Hymnal has a good selection of others. Two of them are the highlight of our Christmas services at St. John’s: Luther’s Vom Himmel Hoch (#22 and 23) and Quem Pastores (#35). Last week we sang “How bright appears the Morning Star” (#329) for Epiphany; and soon we shall be singing the great Passion chorals, “Ah Holy Jesus, how hast thou offended” (#71) and “O sacred head, sore wounded” (#75). There are many more!
Though Luther and the German chorale was the beginning of Protestant hymnody, it was from Calvin’s Church at Geneva that English-speaking Christians learned the joys of congregational singing. While sojourning at Strasbourg, Calvin had been greatly impressed by the singing of chorales and metrical psalms which he heard there, and it was at his instigation that the Psalms of David were translated into French metrical paraphrase, largely by the poet Clement Marot, and set to music composed by Louis Bourgeois and Claude Goudimel. Unlike the freely-composed lyric of the German chorale, this Huguenot psalter was closely tied to the scriptural text of the Psalms, but it had the same directness and rugged strength which made the chorale so popular. And it was this metrical psalter, heard by English exiles in Geneva during the reign of “Bloody” Mary, that was to shape English singing for the next two hundred years or more.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Colossians 3:16). This text is a kind of charter for congregational singing as a means of participation in the saving Word of God. It should be read with the parallel passage in Ephesians 5:19, wherein the emphasis is upon the grace of the Holy Spirit: “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to Lord”. At its best, the congregational hymn is not emotional indulgence, but a corporate experience of sober spiritual ecstasy that takes us out of ourselves, and our narrow pre-occupations, into the work of God in Word and Spirit. That treasure of Protestant liturgy and spirituality, the congregational hymn, has its origins in the popular religious song of the Middle Ages. It was brought into the church’s worship, however, by Martin Luther, beginning in about 1523, and German chorales – direct, stirring, powerful proclamations of the gospel and confessions of faith with tunes that drew upon a wealth of medieval chants and carols – marked the Protestant reformation everywhere.
Many of these chorales were free compositions, based on themes of the Church’s year, the Sacraments, or the Catechism, but some were metrical paraphrases of the psalms. These inspired John Calvin to instigate the production (from 1539 onwards) of a complete metrical psalter for French-speaking Protestants in Strasbourg and Geneva. Accurately translated into metrical verse by the poet Clement Marot and the scholar Theodore Beza, and set to tunes by Louis Bourgeois and Claude Goudimel, the Genevan psalter had an enormous impact not only on the French reformed churches (the Huguenots, whose descendants later settled in this part of the world), but also the English. For Marot’s translations began to circulate in the English court of Henry VIII in the 1530’s, inspiring one of his courtiers, Thomas Sternhold, to begin his own translations, which were eventually completed by others (including one John Hopkins) after his death.
During the reign of “Bloody Mary” English exiles in Geneva were inspired to correct and complete this psalter (known as “Sternhold and Hopkins”) which was supplied with tunes either from the Geneva Psalter or from English ballads. (As in the Lutheran hymnbooks and Genevan psalter, it also included some metrical paraphrases of non-scriptural texts, including the Athanasian Creed!) Well into the 19th century, English congregations sang “Sternhold and Hopkins”, although today the only survival of it is William Kethe’s paraphrase of Psalm 100, “All people that on earth do dwell” (#278), set to a Genevan tune by Louis Bourgeois, still known as “Old Hundredth”. Elizabeth I referred to such metrical psalms as “Geneva jigs”, an indication that in music as in verse they were rugged and lively, rather than smooth and stately. Smoothness of meter and rhyme did eventually come, in the 1696 New Version of Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, represented today by the metrical version of Psalm 42, “As pants the hart” (#450), and the paraphrase of Luke 2, “As shepherds watched their flocks by night” (#13). Later editions marked the first appearance of hymnody that was not a paraphrase of scripture or a Prayer Book text, the hymns composed for private use at morning (#151) and evening (#165) by the saintly bishop of Sodor and Man, Thomas Ken. The doxology (ascription of praise) composed by Ken for these two hymns, and sung to “Old Hundredth” is for many people “the” doxology. We sing it at St. John’s at the presentation of alms and oblations most Sundays of the year. (Other doxologies include Gloria Patri, Te Deum, and Gloria in excelsis).
The taste for polished rhymes and tramping or tripping rhythms, typical of most 18th and 19th century hymnody, eventually drove out the rugged rhythms of Sternhold and Hopkins, a loss which educated opinion has often snobbishly rejoiced in. Yet the abiding influence of the “Old Version” can be detected in the huge number of tunes which later hymn-writers reused with new words. In Scotland also, the metrical psalter (in various translations) acquired its own set of splendid tunes, which were combined in 1650 with an excellent new translation based on one made by Francis Rouse. Perhaps the best-known of these Scottish psalter tunes in the 1940 Hymnal is Dundee, now set to Wesley’s “Let saints on earth in concert sing”(#397).
In the early 18th century Isaac Watts abandoned strict adherence to the Old Testament text for looser paraphrases overlaid by explicit New Testament interpretations. Thus “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” (#542) is based on the Psalm 72’s prayer for a righteous king of Israel. Watts’ break with strict adherence to scriptural texts ignited a second great explosion of Protestant hymn writing in the 18th and 19th centuries (beginning with evangelicals like the Wesleys but in time by churchmen of all kinds) which eventually drove the metrical psalters out of Anglican use. The 19th century did produce at least one enduring masterpiece of metrical psalmody, “The King of love my shepherd is”, a paraphrase of Psalm 23, usually sung either to a sturdy 19th century tune (Dominus regit me) or to a lovely lilting Irish melody (St. Columba). Yet this handful of texts represents only a tiny portion of the psalter, and in two weeks I shall discuss why the psalm, in prose or verse translation, deserves a larger place in congregational worship.
The Rev’d Gavin G. Dunbar