This text, © Stephen Hutcheson,
2005, and offered freely for use under a
Creative Commons License.
 These studies are created by members of the West Allen Church of Christ in Allen, Texas |
Music: [Sheet Music]
[Score]
[MIDI File]
Notes: [Textual]
[Musical]
| In the beginning, God sang in the darkness;[Gen. 1]
Wisdom and melody, beauty and might Flowed from His Word, and the angels in wonder Raised joyful chorus to "Let there be light!"[Job 38:7] Jesus rejoiced in the great congregation,[Ps. 22] Risen in triumph from torture and death, After his love had obtained our salvation, Singing His joy in His brethren's pure faith.[Zeph. 3:17] Ever the Spirit moves over the ocean,[Gen 1:2] Filling our hearts, overflowing in song,[Col 3:16; Gal 5:18,19] Drawing us up in our praise and devotion[Jn 12:32] To Whom all music and gladness belong. When we have offered our best to our Savior-- Reverence, melody, harmony, love-- God will return every gift to its giver, Magnified, fit for rejoicing above. |
This is, I think, a failure as a hymn, and as a poem--even, that is, by my standards. And yet it says something that I think is both important and neglected: what we know as communal joy is a reflection of God's nature and activity: we feel and share joy, we create and make music, because God made us in his image:--and thus, singing together is a way in which we ought to act (and be) like God. And here "ought" means not only "God has commanded it, and it is our duty" but also as in "we feel a need, and delight in its fulfilment."0
Zephaniah triggered the idea of God singing: and I was reminded that all eight divine creative statements of Genesis 1 are in poetic form. Psalm 22 has from the beginning been considered a messianic psalm. So the trinitarian form of the first three verses arose naturally. Our singing figures in the third stanza; but there was more to say about it, so the final form became:
Although the outline and architectonics were simple, the implementation was a struggle. Stanza 1 and 2 almost "came together". Stanza 3 just flowed: it is definitely the climax of the song. And stanza 4 happily echoed the appositive list of stanza 1. I was pleased with the way the first three stanzas each combined linguistically-distinct forms of expression. Genesis 1 is a straight narrative; Job 38 is an impassioned poem. Psalm 22 is a foretelling myth; Zephaniah is a prophetic promise. In the third verse, the Genesis allusion is used mythically--that is, it no longer talks about what did happen, but about what always happens.
At first I tried to force each verse to refer back to creation. The source texts texts didn't support that; and what eventually emerged was the chronological pattern so typical of this collection:
There are few if any songs in our books that are about singing but are praise. I don't want to deprecate the parenetic power of, say, Watts' Come, we that love the Lord, or Psalm 148. But I think that in taking Psalm 148 out of the context of psalms 146-150, we've almost altogether lost its aspect of praise.1 This song is all about God: rather than hectoring someone else to praise,1a it does praise the God who sings, who gave us the ability to sing and to hear song, and who made singing a reward in itself in time and eternity. This is how I think we ought to start a song service.
In the eighteenth century, French Roman Catholics began to explore the possibility of a national church. One practical outcome was the creation of various local "breviaries" with newly written texts and tunes. The tunes were still written in the medieval neumatic notation and designed for unison singing, but tended to reflect a much more modern concept of tonality. "O Quantia Qualia" was one of the earliest of those tunes to be adapted and arranged for English use, in that influential Victorian hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern. In the reaction against Victorian aesthetics, Ralph Vaughan Williams would make even more extensive use of those tunes in his English Hymnal. At the end of the twentieth century, those decisions have worn well: as a class, Erik Routley described the breviary tunes3 as having "extraordinary congregational sense" -- that is, they conform well to the limits of what untrained people could sing. This tune's excellent smooth singing quality certainly makes it ideal for an opening hymn.
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This text, © Stephen Hutcheson,
2005, and offered freely for use under a
Creative Commons License.
These studies are created by members of the West Allen Church of Christ in Allen, Texas |