Variations on “My Country, Tis of Thee” L. Beethoven (1770-1827) [PIANO]
“When In Our Music God is Glorified” [ORGAN — note: offertory and postlude are ALWAYS organ, due to the logistics of me running up and down the stairs.]
“All Glory, Laud and Honor” arr. J.S. Bach [ORGAN]
with Curtiss Allen, Tuba
(the melody appears in slow motion down in the pedals/tuba)
[MIMI: PLEASE include this explanation line!)
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ‘hymn’ derives from Greek ὕμνος (hUMNOS), which means “a song of praise”. A writer of hymns is known as a ‘hymnist’. The singing or composition of hymns is called ‘hymnody’. Collections of hymns are known as ‘hymnals’ or ‘hymn books’. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment.
Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christianity, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent. Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts.
Christian hymnody derives from the singing of psalms in the Hebrew Temple. The earliest fully preserved text (c. 200 CE or earlier) is the Greek “Phos hilarion” (“Go, Gladsome Light,” translated by the 19th-century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Hymnody developed systematically, however, only after the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity (313 CE).
By the late Middle Ages trained choirs had supplanted the congregation in the singing of hymns. Although new, often more ornate melodies were composed and many earlier melodies were elaborated, one syllable of text per note was usual. This evolved into ‘plainsong’, sometimes known as “Gregorian Chant” (there are distinctions here over which I’m glossing), in which a trained choir (and not the congregation) sang long, complicated unison melodic lines without accompaniment.
Congregational singing was reestablished only during the Reformation (16th century), by the Lutheran Church in Germany. The early ‘chorale’ (German hymn melody), was unharmonized and sung unaccompanied, although harmonized versions, used by varying combinations of choir, organ, and congregation, appeared later. Some were newly composed, but many drew upon plainsong, vernacular (non-Latin) devotional song, and secular song. The patterns of secular lyrics also influenced the hymn texts of Martin Luther and his contemporaries — a marked shift in which the rhythmic patterns of popular music of the day supplanted plainsong.
Swiss and, later, French, English, and Scottish Calvinism promoted the singing of metrical translations of the psalter, austerely set for unaccompanied unison singing (The reasoning was: “Since there’s no reference to any musical instruments in the Book of Acts in the Bible (the story of the early church) we’re not going to use any either.”). English and Scottish Protestantism permitted only the singing of psalms.
Indeed, Zwingli (1484–October 1531) — an important reformer almost as significant as Luther (1483–1546) and Calvin (1509–1564) — was utterly opposed to any music at all in the service. Not even Calvin’s unaccompanied psalm-singing was permissible. Zwingli’s recommendations were put into effect in Zurich: organs were silenced and then destroyed, and in 1525 “the city council enacted the ban on singing in worship.”
Congregational hymn singing has been well established throughout the Protestant Church for the last couple centuries, and was officially reinstated in the Catholic Church with Vatican II in in the 1960s.
We take congregational hymn singing for granted, but in fact (as you can see) the Church has had a long and complicated history around hymns, ranging from not permitting congregational signing at all, to maybe only Psalm texts in unison (with no organ or any other instrument), to our current practice of permitting any theologically suitable poem to be set to music, and harmonized, and sung by the choir and/or congregation accompanied by whatever instruments are at hand.
I note that the pipe organ became popular for supporting congregational singing because — until the advent of electronic amplification in the early 1900’s — it was the only instrument grand and loud enough to lead and support a singing congregation. In my humble opinion it remains unsurpassed in that role. I personally consider leading the hymns — and having fun with that (otherwise no one else will either!) — the most important and rewarding part of being the organist. In my humble opinion, preludes & postludes and all that are fine, but the hymns are the musical meat and potatoes of the service.