Hymns: A Joyful Noise

“A hymn should be a prayer set to music,” says the Rev. Gerrit Barnes of Denver’s Christ Church (Episcopal). “It should follow the idea of ‘make a joyful noise unto the Lord.”’ Ideas change about what is joyful noise, and what is just plain noise. Church musicians and their pastors are quietly revising the nation’s taste in congregational song, and in the process are consigning a surprising number of quaint old favorites to oblivion, while searching oblivion for revivable classics. Dr. Charles C. Hirt, professor of church music at the University of Southern California, calls it “a renaissance in hymnody.”

The chief targets of contemporary hymnpresarios are what they call “jiggy tunes”—the sentimental lyrics of late Victorian Christianity, with their self-directed emphasis upon individual salvation, and their grim and hypocritical portrayal of man’s sinfulness. Most clergymen today wince at the thought of having to lead their faithful in Rock of Ages (“Foul, I to the fountain fly/ Wash me, Saviour, or I die”) or Mrs. C. F. Alexander’s all too vivid hymn entitled The Circumcision:

By those drops, the first red rains

Bursting from thy bleeding veins,

Grant to us for thy dear merit,

Circumcision of the spirit.

Also going out of style are rousing but theologically unsophisticated Gospel songs, such as C. Austin Miles’s In the Garden:

And He walks with me, and He talks

with me,

And He tells me I am His own,

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

Like a Bride’s Trousseau. Most of these baroque horrors are gradually being dropped from congregational repertories and eased out of new hymnals. In England, Teacher David Holbrook and Composer Elizabeth Poston are preparing a new hymnal for use in schools (every British school starts the day with a hymn), and so far have found only 100 usable songs from the 10,000 or so contained in seven standard English hymnals. Two years ago, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church brought out a new hymnal that left out such traditional numbers as The Old Rugged Cross and Nearer, My God, to Thee. In 1966 the Methodist Church hopes to publish its first new hymnal in 31 years; more than one-fourth of the songs will be entirely new. The Lutherans revised their hymnal in 1958, and the Southern Baptists in 1956; the Baptists’ publishing house, Broadman Press, plans to issue a new hymnal in 1964 for use by evangelical churches.

Dr. Deane Edwards, president of the 2,000-member Hymn Society of America, argues that “hymnody must be kept abreast of the life of the church.” But in replacing Victorian flotsam, hymnal makers have cautiously steered away from abrupt modernization, or harmonies more discordant than Brahms’s. Instead, they have subtly blended, like the bride’s trousseau, something old, something borrowed, something new.

Many churches have revived the stately anthems and chorales from the early years of the Reformation, and there is a new interest in the work of Protestantism’s classic hymn-makers—Martin Luther, Isaac Watts, Methodism’s John and Charles Wesley. Protestant hymnists have put new words to melodies borrowed from Eastern Orthodox liturgies and Roman Catholic Gregorian chants (just as Catholics have freely adapted the Lutheran chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach). Most churches have taken up such Negro spirituals as Were Yon There When They Crucified My Lord?, and Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees. Others have found a wealth of good tunes in the hymnals and psalmbooks used by the Moravian Brethren of 18th century Pennsylvania.

“A Stone Wall.” Church leaders estimate that it takes 15 to 20 years before a hymn works its way permanently into congregational repertories. Hymn-writing is thus never a fulltime profession. One of the nation’s most prolific composers, David McKay Williams (Georgetown, Christus Rex), was an organist and choirmaster at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue for 27 years. Most hymn writers—such as the Rev. R.B.Y. Scott, author of O Day of God, Draw Nigh—are known for only one or two works.

“We have found through experience,” says the Hymn Society’s Dr. Edwards, “that if you try to launch a new text with a new tune, you come right up against a stone wall. However, if it is a new lyric and an old tune, people will sing it readily.” One popular blending of old and new is Hoiv Great Thou Art, a standard feature of Billy Graham’s crusades; lyric was translated from the Russian by Stuart K. Hine in 1958, and matched to a stately Russian folk melody. Sample lyric:

0 Lord my God, when I, in awesome

wonder,

Consider all the world thy hands have

made,

1 see the stars, I hear the rolling

thunder;

Thy power throughout the universe

displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God

to Thee,

How great Thou art! How great Thou

art!

Another congregational favorite. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s God of Grace and God of Glory, was tried out with a number of tunes, caught on only after having the soaring Welsh melody Cwm Rhondda wedded to the lyric:

God of grace and God of glory,

On Thy people pour Thy power;

Crown Thine ancient Church’s story;

Bring her bud to glorious flower.

For the Space Age. The Hymn Society frequently advertises in religious journals to get new lyrics for occasional hymns, publishes booklets of hymns suitable for celebrations honoring rural life, the Bible, youth weeks, Christian marriage. The society has even issued a space-age hymn, written by Dr. Edwards’ son Robert:’

Launch forth, O man, and boldly rise,

Beyond our planet pierce the skies,

Boundless venture! Alleluia!

No soaring flight can e’er outrun

Truth God has shown us in His Son.

Robert Lansing Edwards also likes to promote ecumenicism and the social gospel in song; his hymn for Christian stewardship goes:

Skills and time are ours for pressing

Toward the goals of Christ, thy Son;

Men at peace in health and freedom,

Races joined, the Church made one.

Hymns can be modern in lyrics; they had better not be modern in music. Congregations resist anything more daring than the late Ralph Vaughan Williams’ For All the Saints, published in 1906. Virtually frozen out of churches, except as one-time experiments, are the much-publicized jazz hymns and liturgies which are supposed to make religion meaningful to the teenagers. But for all the conservatism of hymnal music, ministers seem to agree there is a properly Christian radicalism to the trend in lyrics. “In our faith today,” says Savannah’s Dr. Bland Tucker, an editor of the 1940 Episcopal hymnal, “the hymns are praise to God—looking up to God rather than looking within ourselves. It’s a good emphasis.”