This tune was composed for a hymn Glory be to God the Father, by the Scottish hymnwriter Horatius Bonar. It has come to be a "common tune": that is, it is customarily used with many different texts, even in the same hymnal.⁸ Henry Smart (1813-1879) was a respected church organist and composer. Like many church organists, he favored very slow unison singing,⁹ and would provide brilliant harmonizations as accompaniment.

This tune would not have been my first choice, but it wears very well with use. Some books use the Welsh tune "Bryn Calvaria," which I think is beautiful and interesting, but its rippling triplets seem more suitable for sunlight on rippled water than for the "thunder of the mighty deep." other options¹⁰ may be worth considering.

Use:

This hymn is too intense to be an opening song; it may serve as the climax to a series of hymns of praise; its conclusion referring to God's word may suit it for use immediately before the sermon.

Excursus: Unison Singing

As a lover of music, I appreciate Martin Luther's innovative use of harmony. But that is my prejudice and my tradition, which I have no right to impose on the church. Is that prejudice defensible in any context? Singing in harmony is a traditional practice without explicit Biblical sanction or support from early church practice; it is limited to cultures which remember their European musical traditions -- and so obviously cannot be universally imposed in a universal church.

In favor of an emphasis on unison singing, it must further be admitted that it is the only kind a significant number of people will ever participate in, and must be tolerated, even if it is not considered ideal; it is much easier to learn by rote (very few oral traditions successfully preserve four-part harmony); and it focuses attention on the melody as the most important part of a hymn tune. We need to acknowledge that a weak melody cannot be made tolerable by any amount of lush harmony or rushing mighty organ accompaniment. So looking at a tune as for a unison performance should be an important part of considering its usefulness in worship.

But there is perhaps nothing that will encourage good singers to participate in the worship, and will discourage poor singers from engaging in distracting departures from the congregation's choice of tunes, than cultivating a sense of harmony. Already in the second century, Ignatius of Antioch¹² was emphasizing the importance of singing together in worship, as a symbol of congregational unity. In the Scottish experience, that togetherness was altogether absent, with disastrous consequences, as one musical reformer¹¹ testified: "This shows by experience that if harmony is once disregarded, melody likewise will soon come to nothing."

Personal experience suggests to me also that good singers can best assist their less talented fellow-worshippers by singing clear harmony. A firm harmonic foundation will reinforce correct notes in the melody, and discourage idiosyncratic variations and ornamentation. It will not introduce musical distractions as a descant is liable to do. It should be considered one of the most effective aids to singing that we have.

And forcing a congregation to sing in unison to allow the organist more freedom to show off his performing skills, simply piles perversity on top of apostacy. Our best defense against this kind of apostacy is to show concern and effort toward making our congregations as musical as they can be, in order to make our music truly congregational. Harmony, by finding a place for musical interest and skill within the congregation, can make a significant contribution to that end.

Notes:

¹See the discussion of Myth in the Psalms.

²Also called the sea "monster," Leviathan, and the "seven-headed chaos dragon," all expressions used in Biblical imagery.

³In his version in Lift Every Heart, © 1983, Timothy Dudley-Smith provides a different (and to my mind more convincing) interpretation of those two points. In his psalm, the seas (like the nations of Psalm 2) are constantly rebelling, but God's throne (high on the "holy mountain," or Zaphon, another figure familiar from the myths, corresponding to the Greek Olympus) is not threatened: unlike Baal, God is "holy" -- completely beyond such challenges.
But which interpretation is right? When we are singing the words to God, then whatever we mean to say to God is what the hymn should say. (More often that we may realize, the meaning of the words of the psalm we sing is different from the meaning of the same words read as scripture.) In this case, either statement is a scriptural statement of praise, and would make a suitable hymn.

⁴Author of Sun of my soul, thou Savior dear.

⁵Available online at CCEL.

⁶Psalter or Psalms of David in English verse, by a member of the University of Oxford, 1839.

⁷Dictionary of Hymnology, "Psalters, English."

⁸For instance, in Great Songs of the Church, to Montgomery's Nativity hymn Angels from the Realms of Glory, Cennick's Judgment Day hymn Lo! He comes with clouds descending, and the medieval dedication hymn Christ is made the sure foundation. An index of seven Baptist hymnals shows it used 18 times for eight different texts.

⁹This seems to be an occupational hazard of organists; Ralph Vaughan Williams exhibited the same prejudice. If we are to choose an aid to singing that will counteract our worst problem, the organ would seem to be a poor choice.

¹⁰I would consider "Zion" by Warren Hastings, written for Zion stands with hills surrounded and most often now combined with another Welsh hymn, Guide me, O thou great Jehovah. But the latter is now generally sung to the magnificent Welsh tune "Cwm Rhondda" (a choice impossible to fault on either musical or historical grounds); the latter is rarely used. And "Zion" is one of my favorite tunes.

¹¹Thomas Channon, in the mid-eighteenth century, cited in Millar Patrick, Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody. That experience was indeed bitter, as numerous witnesses testify.
In the American Restoration movement (many of whose members came from the Scottish presbyterian tradition) that traditional attitude influenced Alexander Campbell (who "didn't see why anyone should need to learn more than five tunes"). It inevitably took the form that mere members of the congregation were not expected to contribute any musical skills, talent, or effort to the worship. The natural reaction against the horrific results, coupled with the lingering effects of the underlying assumption, created a context in which it was inevitable that church music be commercialized and turned over to professionals. The process can be easily traced through eyewitness testimony to the introduction of instrumental music in the Midway, Kentucky, church.

¹²Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians, online at CCEL.