Hymns: More Flexible Than You Thought

image from sainjamesucc.org

Hymns have been getting a bad rap since the invention of the overhead projector. Many churches dismiss hymns as "traditional" -- meaning inflexible. But at least for the past few hundred years hymns have been adapted to fit the needs of various congregations. Even the most traditional churches have never been locked in to use hymns in a certain way. And today's most contemporary of worship leaders still find that only the text of a standard hymn will do in some situations.

Many people don't realize just how much flexibility you have with hymn-singing. These days we often associate a hymn with a specific set of words, set to one and only tune. But hymnals have always been designed to let you switch up the hymn tunes with different words. In an age when people didn't read music, the congregation probably only knew a handful of tunes by heart. If the pastor wanted to introduce a new set of words to go with the sermon, then the congregation could just sing those new words to a standard tune. This is how Charles Wesley composed so many hymns. (There are over 50 credited to him in the index of the United Methodist Hymnal.) He didn't come up with a new tune for each set of words. Instead, he arranged the syllables of his hymns in a pattern that fit an existing melody.

Today's hymnals still allow us to do this kind of mixing and matching. In the back of any hymnal there are several indexes, including one called the Metrical Index. Every hymn is listed there according to its meter. I'm not referring to the two numbers stacked on top of each other at the beginning of the song (right after the clef and key signature). The meter of a hymn is shown in a different set of numbers, usually at the bottom of the page, that indicate the arrangement of syllables. For example, this photo comes from hymn 577 in the UM Hymnal: God of Grace and God of Glory. The meter is 87.87.87. That means that there are 8 syllables in the first line. The next line has 7 syllables. Then that pattern of 8- and 7-syllable lines repeats twice.

So I can go to the hymnal's Metrical Index and see that eight tunes in the hymnal have that same meter of 87.87.87. I see the tune name associated with God of Grace, which is CWM RHONDDA. It is also the same meter as the tune name LAUDA ANIMA, which is commonly sung as Praise My Soul the King of Heaven. If you know either of those hymns, you can try mixing them by singing the words of one to the melody of the other one. Back in the day (and still a few churches now) the song leader would announce the hymn tune that would support the words. Many folks knew the those capitalized hymn tunes better than the lyrics-based titles we use today.

That's because it has only been in the last century or so that specific tunes and words got paired together permanently. Notice that the dates listed for the words and music listed in the hymnal are often off by several decades. For example, take that most famous of hymns: Amazing Grace. John Newton wrote the words in 1779 in England. But the tune that we know today arose in America sometime in the late 1800s, and it wasn't even published with those famous words until 1900. John Newton never heard the standard melody that we sing today. That means that the song was sung for over 100 years to other tunes in the Common Meter (CM), which has the syllable pattern of 8.6.8.6.

So while it pains me to play mythbuster here, for the sake of history I have to let you know that this scene from the movie Amazing Grace could have never happened. It has William Wilberforce (a real-life friend of John Newton) singing a tune that didn't exist in his time. It's what historians call an anachronism -- something that is out of its proper setting.

This also means that some of the details from this famous sermon by Wintley Phipps are inaccurate. John Newton was indeed the captain of slave ships, and he no doubt heard the captives singing. But he didn't borrow this "black key" tune for his hymn. Despite that historical inaccuracy, it's still a great sermon, with some great points. You should watch this short segment if you haven't seen it already.