Psalms in Our Time

Technical Notes: Classical Influence on Hymn Tunes

A glance at the Geographic Sources for these tunes will show the influence that "Classical" music has had on these tunes. Not only were many of the composers also active in other forms; but some tunes were actually borrowed from themes in concert pieces.

Obviously, we are ill served by hymnal editors who favor their unskilled friends' effusions.¹ Everyone but their friends would agree that we would have been better served by the work of skilled musicians. But that alone is no guarantee of success; the vast majority² of hymn tunes (whether written by the most accomplished professional musicians or by untrained amateurs) are failures. Therefore, any approach purporting to provide tunes that have already succeeded surely deserves careful consideration.

In the eighteenth century, hymn tune editors were already drawing from the works of operatic composers such as Thomas Arne³, Charles Avison, and Handel⁴. But the practice received new momentum by the work of William Gardiner in Europe and his disciple Lowell Mason in America, who actively used and promoted the practice.

Gardiner was an English hosiery manufacturer and an avid musical amateur. He took advantage of business trips to cultivate acquaintances in the musical world: he knew Haydn and Beethoven, and may have been the first to introduce Beethoven's music in England. He published books on musical subjects, including six volumes of "Sacred Melodies" consisting of themes from "Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and other composers,⁵" arranged for use as psalm tunes and intended to "rejuvenate the singing of psalms."

Generally, he failed: throughout the next century, hymns supplanted psalms almost everywhere. But his tunes were widely used, and his method of mining classical music for tunes widely imitated, throughout the nineteenth century: particularly and notably by Lowell Mason.

Mason was an enthusiastic proponent of music education (both singing and music appreciation) in the American public school system. He considered both the ancient psalm tunes (in the debased and neglected usages of the time) and the folk tunes of the "shaped-note" books (with their "unscientific" harmonies) unsuitable for use in worship. The complex four-part harmonies of the old chorales and Genevan tunes, whatever their musical merit, he considered too difficult for untrained congregations to sing. So he introduced a "homophonic" style of tune, with a melodic line supported by simple parts, and harmonies conforming to the classical style being developed in Europe. Besides original tunes, he borrowed freely from many sources -- from plainchant to folk tunes to classical symphonies and opera -- sometimes (as here) modifying them almost beyond recognition.

At best, the results are beautiful, singable, effective tunes. And when popular musical tastes are most debased, this may seem the only possible approach. My own prejudices favor it, but -- as well as it has served this selection of tunes -- it is neither a palliative nor panacea for bad taste, ineffective tunes, or poor congregational singing. I need to particularly consider its pitfalls and potential deficiencies -- and in the history of American hymnody after Mason, we can see some of the deficiencies achieve their full potential.

Later hymnal editors imitated Mason's example: blindly, clumsily, and unnecessarily. They knew nothing of musical reformation; indeed, congregational singing needed not so much reform as protection from themselves. But they saw the stream of new tunes; they saw the adaptations of secular music; they saw the profits on copyrighted songbooks: so they also wrote and adapted and published industriously -- sometimes a new songbook every year.

They could not match Mason's musicological knowledge, so they borrowed tunes and styles only from what they knew -- classical works so well known as to have inevitable concert associations even in popular culture; or the "light and flighty" sentimental popular songs of the moment; they concentrated on teaching their own new productions (and promoting their publishing profits) rather than teaching music.

But above all, they failed to grasp Mason's understanding of hymnody. And faced by some arrangements of symphonic themes, pianistic figures, or operatic choruses, one wonders whether to be shocked more by their execrable taste or their thoughtless irreverence.

As a result, many people, bewildered by the constant stream of novelties, ceased to sing at all.⁶ People with musical sympathies⁷ would have been repelled, or would naturally have expected the popular musical idiom to be used as they knew it was designed to be used: that is, professionally performed for their own entertainment. The "tent evangelists" of the late 19th century had their own "lead singers," who performed the latest songs (with instrumental accompaniment, following the current popular music fads) not to God but to large "unsaved" audiences. Whatever the benefits of that music in that context, as a whole it could bear no relationship to any effective congregational worship.

But this difficulty, however detrimental to the worship, will arise whenever anyone, for any reason, vandalizes a substantial part of the traditional hymnody, replacing rather than reforming the worship. And any reverent person will carefully consider whether such a drastic step is needed, or whether with less effort existing tunes might be restored to effective use.⁸ And it behoves hymnal editors to carefully and explicitly justify their actions based on public necessity rather than personal greed, lest their followers fall into a pattern of "novelty for novelty's sake".

Most classical music is intended for performance. It is easy to succumb to the temptation to select bits for their entertainment value -- or to suppose that success as entertainment music correlates to suitability for group singing. The opposite is true. Gardiner and Mason generally drew from obscure sources. Their imitators, with a much shallower knowledge of the history of music, often drew from well-known sources: and as a result produced tunes with associations incongrous with reverence. This problem is also common to all kinds of musical borrowing: perhaps especially acute for tunes in the lust-and-violence genres of commercial pop music, but Luther had already seen it with a borrowed folk tune.

There are issues that especially apply to adaptations of themes from classical compositions:

• Most classical music is intended for trained performers. The temptation is to preserve the complexities of the original, at the expense of its suitability for untrained singers. I have tried to control this tendancy by using "Ein feste berg" as a benchmark⁹. But in any case the classical adaptations generally are not among the most complex tunes here.
• Most classical music is instrumental (and where vocal, the voice is often wielded instrumentally). What works for a piano or violin may not work for a voice; what works for a coloratura soprano will not work for a chorus. A similar but more acute problem occurs with pop music, which is not only predominately vocal solo with instrumental accompaniment (impractical to convert to effective four-part harmony). Pop music is emphatically dance oriented rather than song-oriented. But even classical music since the Baroque period has primarily been modelled on dance rather than song. Outside of opera¹⁰ (or deliberate imitations of the earliest reformation hymn tunes) it is hard to find recent examples of genuine song without a dance beat attached.

If there arises a need for new hymn tunes¹¹, we ought to ask exactly what there is about Mason that we need to imitate. Clearly his serious musical study is worthy of respect: our age worships creativity but is oblivious to craftsmanship. The opposite approach is needed.

Gardiner and Mason lived when the predominate style in Austrian music (represented by Haydn and Mozart) had a close stylistic relationship to European folksong: that association is usually not present in the Romantic and post-Romantic eras. Gardiner usually adapted instrumental themes, which could not shock worshippers by any profane or irreverent verbal association; but by careful selection he could provide melodies and harmonies that conformed to the classical aesthetic ideal, and were yet simple enough for congregations to sing. Mason drew from a wider range, but freely adapted tunes to conform to his ideals and congregational limitations.

Later in the nineteenth century, the popular taste (admirably captured and reflected by the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas¹², was (to use Calvin's language) decidedly "light and flighty". Nor was the romantic ideal of music (focused on the "creative artists", the composing genius and performing virtuoso) congenial to folk music of any kind. Gardiner himself might well have recoiled from trying to bring such music into the worship.

It is probably no accident that serious musicians from Sullivan to Vaughan Williams borrowed more often from folk music.

There is no substitute for good judgment, and we can't sensibly deprecate all borrowings from more recent composition. Occasionally, romantic composers (notably Beethoven, Brahms, and Sibelius) wrote themes imitating traditional chorales, which have successfully been taken up into hymnals.

This is a warning against thoughtless imitation of either the traditional styles or the transient fads as our pattern for worship. Our goals, our performers, our audience, are all different from any concert-hall (whether classical or pop). The answers from the past are useful -- often, however, only as bad examples. But the recurring questions require us to give an answer, and "thoughtless vacillation between a hidebound traditionalism and wholesale adoption of the penultimate fashion just as it becomes universally intolerable¹³" is not it.

Notes

⁰Including madrigals, suites, symphonies, operas and oratorios.

¹This reprehensible practice has debased most of the hymnals used in the church; of all that I have seen, only Great Songs of the Church was not a victim; Songs of the Church was relatively mildly effected. In contrast, Ralph Vaughan Williams, a man considered the most important English composer since the Renaissance, in the process of editing the most influential selection of tunes in the English language for the 1906 English Hymnal, included a grand total of seven of his own tunes!

²Musicologists note that of all compositions in all musical genres, a hymn tune is least likely to be successful.

³E.g., "Arlington" (Am I a soldier of the cross).

⁴E.g., "Halifax" and "Maccabaeus" (Thine be the glory, risen conquering Lord).

⁵Gardiner was frustratingly vague in documenting his sources: some of them have never been identified.

^5aMason had produced over 1000 tunes, many of which are still in use.

^5bErik Routley has said "At his best, [Mason's] clear understanding of what constitutes a usable hymn tune could well be envied by later composers."

⁶Compare Benson's comments in The English Hymn (online at CCEL). The church is still afflicted by "the bane of many hymnals", in the words of Ralph Vaughan Williams, in the Musical Preface to the English Hymnal (also at CCEL).

⁷Robert Bridges lamented in his 1899 Yattendon Hymnal that "when people were musical, they would rather listen; when they were not, they would rather sing."

⁸As a child, there was one particular invitation song that I hated with a passion. In a congregation which shall be unnamed, the one song leader knew only three invitation songs, and disliked two of them; so that on some Sundays that song might be featured twice. It was sung as a cross between a wail and a dirge: each note was dragged out to such a length that there was no recognizable rhythm, and slurred to such an extent that there could be no chance for harmony. And each successive verse descended deeper into an abyss of bathos.
After ten years or so, at another congregation that seldom used the song, I could tolerate looking at it again. Its text had been taken from an appropriate scripture and turned into acceptable verse. Simply doubling the musical tempo allowed those words to be recognized; a fixed determination to keep the tempo constant even on the high notes at the musical climax, made the tune recognizable and effective; sung several times a year as one of a rotation of dozens of invitation songs, familiarity had fewer chances to breed contempt. This took no little effort to implement; long-familiar songs are almost invariably sung too slowly; and it took time and determination to overcome those long-ingrained bad habits without overutilizing the song. But I felt that my efforts had been worthwhile when I accidentally overheard one young man, just beginning his work as a song leader, casually mention that it was one of his favorite songs.

⁹It is in all our hymnals; none of the major-mode tunes here have more difficult parts. The modal tunes can at least be sung effectively in unison.

¹⁰I have never learned to like opera, and perhaps I have never really learned an appreciation for any form of music based purely on singing. The earliest psalm tunes did not have fixed measures like dance music, but most of the survivors have been subjected to the Procrustean bar lines. (And I still haven't figured out how to lead the others.)

¹¹Already in 1906, Ralph Vaughan Williams had suggested there were already too many good tunes to use effectively. But in the late twentieth century, the complete inability of the best-known and most-imitated "artists" to create two stanzas in the same meter may call for new tunes based on the meters of the new hymn texts.

¹²Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote many hymn tunes (see "Lux Eoi"), but he steadfastly refused to adopt melodies from his operettas for hymn tunes, or to allow anyone else to do so.

¹³"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." -- Oscar Wilde.

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