Hymn tune
Musically speaking, a hymn is generally understood to have four-part (or more) harmony, a fast harmonic rhythm (chords change frequently), with or without refrain or chorus.
From the late sixteenth century in England and Scotland, when most people were not musically literate and learned melodies by rote, it was a common practice to sing a new text to a hymn tune the singers already knew which had a suitable meter and character.
Editors bring extensive knowledge of theology, poetry, and music to the process of compiling a new hymnal.
[1] When editors choose a text for the planned collection, it may already be paired to a tune that supports its meaning, catches its spirit, and allows for congregational participation.
If one refers to the hymnal's metrical index, more possible tunes may be found, of the same meter, which might be used for singing text "X".
For the well-loved and great hymn, "All Creatures of Our God and King", the words were written by William H. Draper and first published in 1919, based on a 13th-century text by Francis of Assisi, with further adaptations made in 1987.
In other instances a text may be used with a variety of tunes, such as "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" sung to any of Lyngham, Oxford New, Arden, Lydia, Richmond, Azmon, or University.
The custom in such cases was to use part of the first line of the first text with which the tune was associated as a name for the tune: for example Lasst Uns Erfreuen ("Let us rejoice" / All Creatures of Our God and King), Gelobt Sei Gott ("[May] God be praised" / Good Christian men, rejoice and sing) and Was lebet, was schwebet (O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness).
Typically, worship services in churches and synagogues include hymns which are sung by the congregation, accompanied by organ, or piano, and/or sometimes by guitars or other instruments.
Using a regular meter, authors would translate the psalms into the vernacular, and create versions which could be set to music for the people to sing.
St. Paul encourages Christians to "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord" (Col. 3:16), "[s]peaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."
In 313 AD, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which "... gave the Christians the right to practice religion openly.
[10] Hymnals evolved from psalters, in that hymns are songs for the congregation and choir to sing, but go beyond metrical recasting of only psalm texts.
By the mid 18th century, hymnal editors began marrying particular tunes, by name, to individual texts.
A century later, in the 1861 (first) edition of the English Hymns Ancient and Modern, for the first time, the music was printed with its text on the hymnal page.
Many marriages from that book became and remain ecumenically endorsed, including those where a tune was composed and appeared in print for the first time in that 1861 edition.
B. Dykes to set it "for the first edition of Hymns A & M."[11] As part of his efforts at reform, after Martin Luther prepared a version of the Mass in Latin, he prepared a version in German, adapting parts of the liturgical texts of the Mass as chorales in the vernacular which could be sung and understood by the congregation.
An example of the latter is the tune he composed for his German paraphrase of Psalm 46, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" ("A Mighty Fortress Is Our God").
He composed and found hymn tunes which were accessible for ordinary people to sing, and "... at the same time he encouraged church choirs to continue the tradition of polyphonic motets within the Lutheran Mass.
His profound reverence for the biblical text "...caused him to insist that public praise in church should be confined to the language of the Bible, adapted to the minimum extent required for congregational singing.
"[18] Clement Marot (c. 1497–1544) was a French Court poet in Strassbourg, who had begun setting psalms in metrical versions before Calvin met him.
[18] The Genevan Psalter of 1562 contained all 150 psalms, and included the works of Calvin's successor, Theodore de Beza (1509–1565).
Calvin endorsed only singing of metrical psalm texts, only in unison, only a cappella, with no harmonization and no accompanying instruments of any kind.
Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549), Groom of the Royal Wardrobe at the end of Henry VIII's reign and during Edward VI's, "...began metricizing psalms for the edification of the young new king (ten years old when he came to the throne in 1547: sixteen when he died in 1553)."
Sternhold's work paralleled Marot's efforts in the French Court; Sternhold's "...strong puritan strain moved him to replace with sacred songs the trivial secular music that was the Court's normal entertainment; this led him to versify certain Psalms in the ballad metre that would enable them to be sung to tunes already known."
[20] Progress on the Psalter was interrupted when King Edward died in 1553, and his elder half sister Mary became queen.
Churchmen whose lives were threatened fled to the Continent, some ending up in Geneva, where they encountered the 1551 Genevan Psalter and the congregational singing which it supported.
When Elizabeth I ascended the throne after her sister's death in 1558, the exiled churchmen returned to England, bringing them an Anglo-Genevan Psalter containing all the psalms plus a few tunes to set them,[21] along with their desire to add congregational singing to church services.
The total number of hymn tunes published with English-language texts in publications from 1535 up to and including 1820 is recorded as 159,123.
[citation needed] Among twentieth-century developments was the publishing of The English Hymnal in 1906 under the music editorship of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
