The Miracle and Majesty of The Hymnal 1982

Every Sunday we turn to the 1982 Hymnal for music to enhance our worship, both in the hymns we sing and the liturgical music. However, it’s a rare moment when we consider the stunning work of art we hold in our hands.  The magnitude of history and effort that went into creating the hymnal is such that we in the pews ought never to take it for granted!

The Hymnal 1982 and The Book of Common Prayer as found side-by-side in a typical Episcopalian pew

When we use the hymnal, we see a single book.  But in actuality, the 1982 Hymnal is just one small part of all the publications that make up the music of the Episcopal Church. The appendices offer a great deal of information concerning the authors, sources, liturgical references and purposes of each hymn.  But lists aren’t enough for the inquiring mind—so a three-volume The Hymnal 1982 Companion was published with detailed information about every single contribution of music. Further, if you want to select hymns based on certain Biblical passages or elements of worship, there are indexes for that as well. There are versions and addendums for music leaders and directors. And if that were not already enough of an astonishing feat, there are supplements and addendums like Wonder, Love and Praise!, Sing Praise, and A Hymn Tune Psalter.  That’s a lot of music and a lot of indexing!  Yet it wasn’t a matter of “reinventing the wheel” since much of the work was preceded by other hymnals.

The Episcopal Church, in fact, has had seven authorized hymnals. Shortly after the church was founded in 1785, the church fathers determined right away to accompany the prayer book with a hymnal.  The first hymnal was published in 1789. New updated hymnals were authorized by General Conventions and published in 1826, 1871 and 1892.  These first four hymnals included only hymn texts. (Remember a few issues ago when we looked briefly at American hymnody and singing schools? We learned then that hymns were learned by rote  and sung out of the oral tradition, so music wasn’t necessary in these early hymnals, especially since so few people could even read music.) It was the next authorized hymnal, published in 1916, that was the first to include music. Actually, two versions were published because the Bishop of Marquette’s resolution to publish an edition with music and the Bishop of Vermont’s resolution to publish an edition without music were both adopted by the 1916 General Convention.  The musical version was finally edited and published in 1918 and was forever known as the “new version,” not because it was more recently published, but because this was the first sanctioned hymnal with music included—a new concept.  At this point in our hymnal’s history, things begin to grow huge with details and industry. Adding music, after all, is a whole new element, and regulations must be set! (We ARE talking about the Episcopal Church, don’t y’know.)

So in 1919, General Convention approved a resolution tasking the Joint Commission for Church Music (an august body comprised of six bishops, six presbyters and six laypersons) to “make recommendations as to the character and form of music to be used in church services,” and to “recommend methods and instruction on the history and practice of church music.”  This was the first time that thoughtful consideration was adopted for rules constituting the inclusion of music into Episcopal Church worship.  The Joint Commission did report back their recommendations—primary among them being that the older members of the church be patient in trying out the new hymn tunes and the hymnals with music in them—but felt their initial commission to be incomplete. Soon enough, a rubric and protocol for choosing service music, psalm tunes and hymns was established. Up until the 1916 hymnal, music was mostly chosen based on familiarity to the congregation; the Commission felt it most important that the music be sing-able. So the content sources were predominantly of English and American authors.  But one of the recommendations from the new Joint Commission was that the hymnal includes more historical music (Greek, Latin in origin) and more European sources.  The hymnal was to become more worldly! The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1940) was published in the midst of strife from the Second World War in 1943.

After the war, things were changing rapidly in the Episcopal Church. The Church continued to expand into territories outside of the USA.  The word “protestant” was dropped from the formal name. The Book of Common Prayer was revised. The Joint Commission for Church Music was dissolved and regrouped as the Standing Commission for Church Music (this is of any kind of significance only because the commission is now a permanent one that does not have to be reestablished at each General Convention). When the BCP was revised and published in 1975, the Standing Commission asserted the importance that the music used in worship parallel the changes in the BCP, including areas such as the expanded lectionary, revised church calendar, and renewed emphasis on baptism. If you look at the preface on page 6 of the hymnal, the Standing Commission includes a list of objectives for the hymnal, ultimately creating “a book which is comprehensive and musically practical.” The rich repertoire found in the hymnal includes music from a wide spectrum of cultures, such as South African, Native American, Chinese, Russian and Mexican as well as from the familiar European cultures.  It includes both ancient and modern compositions. Above all, it enriches worship by presenting Christian faith “with clarity and integrity.”

The Hymnal 1982 is a result of more than 200 years of evolution in church music.  Its breadth of quality spans not only time, but cultures and attitudes. It is a reflection of our faith in both the collection of hymns and the intent of the texts.  The Hymnal 1982 and all its companion texts and addendums are a musical miracle unparalleled in any other denomination or Church.  When next you hold the hymnal in your hands, think on this and marvel at its excellence.

Getting a Handle on Handel

For those of limited experience with Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), his most famous work is more associated with Christmas than Epiphany.  But as masterful and glorious a composition as Messiah is, Handel’s genius is so much more—even an epiphany in itself. But as is often the case, genius is wrapped up in a figure that would otherwise be rather lacking in appeal. Here we have a fellow who is at once outspoken and introspective, self-indulgent and overachieving, full of humor and explosive in temper, and in his later life portly and sickly.  He was not a man who physically aged gracefully, yet his musical compositions matured with every new experience.  He was not a socially personable or affable man, yet he understood so intimately the human spirit as is evidenced by his gift.

Georg Friedrich Handel

Handel was a demanding, quick-tempered bear of a man.  He did not take great care of his body and his indulgence led to failing health in his later years. It is thought he suffered a stroke that impaired his right side, although other controversy claims his indulgence in cheap port caused his to suffer from lead poisoning of his central nervous system.  He developed severe cataracts that when corrective surgery was attempted caused Handel to go completely blind. (His optician who attempted the surgery had the same unsuccessful results with Bach when he tried to remove his cataracts.) In spite of his failing health, Handel was uncompromising when it came to the performance of his music.  He would frequently be found berating his performers and even belittling his audience. When his oratorio Theodora was poorly attended, he commented, “Never mind, the acoustics will be better without the bodies.”

Handel was a contemporary and colleague of many famous baroque composers including J.S. Bach (whom Handel remarked as being little better than a country church organist), Domenico Scarlatti (who shared the same birth and death years as Handel), G.P. Telemann (whom Handel considered a friend), and Maurice Greene (whom he did not consider a friend after Greene befriended Handel’s archrival Bononcini and the two set up a rival musical society that featured music composed by virtually any composer but Handel). During his years in Italy, Handel learned from the best Italian composers and musicians of the day.  He had the occasion to hear Antonio Vivaldi play violin and claimed his talent to be a gift from God that will never be surpassed. He heard the voice of the famous castrato Farinelli and tried to lure him away from composer Nicolo Porpora, thereby earning himself the life-long enmity of yet another composer.  But not all of Handel’s professional relationships were so prickly. His mentors such as Arcangelo Corelli and Georg Philipp Telemann remained true friends and helped Handel develop his prodigious talent for composing.

Handel’s great musical passion was for composing dramatic operas.  He spent a number of years in Italy developing his skill in opera composition, and composed his first opera Almira before he turned 20. However, opera’s popularity was waning in London during his life there. By 1737 his opera company went bankrupt, and his last opera, Deidamia, was staged in 1741.  Yet some of today’s favorite operatic arias are from Handel’s operas, such as Lascia chi’o Pangia from Rinaldo and Ombra Mai Fu from the opera Serse (Xerxes).  So Handel turned to composing oratorios instead.

Oratorios, like operas, tell a dramatic story.  But operas are musical theatre with staging and all the accoutrements, whereas oratorios are strictly concert performances. Generally speaking, oratorios take their text from religious settings rather than the secular. Handel was the first to stage an oratorio in England with his production of Esther.  The Church, of course was outraged at the profanity of performing a sacred text in the theater and did their utmost to undermine Handel’s credibility.  But when the Royal family attended a production, Esther became very popular.  One could hear snatches of arias sung with garbled texts on the streets—for the line “I come, my queen, to chaste delights” became “I comb my queen to chase the lice”.  A true sign of popular admiration! Handel composed 29 oratorios in his lifetime, each a testament to his own religious fervor. Once, it is said, a woman asked him how he composed such sublime music when he had such little command of the English language.  To which he replied, “Madam, I thank God I have a little religion.”

The Battle of Culloden, 1745

Besides Esther and, of course, Messiah, one of Handel’s most well-known oratorios is Judas Maccabbeus. Handel composed the oratorio to compliment Prince Augustus upon his victorious return from the Battle of Culloden. The battle was the culmination of a 1745 Jacobite uprising in effort to return the Stuarts to the English throne.  The battle, which lasted all of an hour, took the lives of nearly 2,000 Jacobites and cost the British army only 50.  The libretto for the oratorio takes its plot from the rebellion of the Jew Mattathais who refused to worship Zeus as commanded by the Seleucid Empire which ruled Judea in 170BC.  He escaped to the hills and gathered like-minded Jews to fight against the empire for their faith.  The oratorio displays the changing fortunes of the Jews from oppressed to jubilant.  It is a token of Handel’s wry sense of humor to use this story as an analogy when the strength of faith of the Jacobites was defeated while the empire was victorious. The choral anthems See, the Conqu'ring Hero Comes! and Hallelujah, Amen are two of the more famous choruses from the oratorio.

This Sunday, the third Sunday after Epiphany, Trinity Church’s worship music will centerpiece the compositions of G.F. Handel—particularly his oratorios. The prelude will be an aria from Messiah very appropriate to Epiphany: The People that Walked in Darkness (Shall See a Great Light).  The choral anthem and the postlude are both taken from Judas Maccabeus.

"We Are One" in Our Music

For the next two Sundays, the lectionary for the Epistle is taken from the first letter to the Corinthians in which Paul talks to us about variety and diversity and its unity and how both diversity and unity are found in Christ. Whether or not one founds their beliefs and principles on Christ’s teachings (through Paul and the other apostles), this basic ideal of diversity being a uniting force can be found universally. The text, or paraphrasing of the text from Paul’s letter is found not only in music that we use in our worship, but in secular music as well.

Several times a year, because it is sectioned under the category of Holy Eucharist, we will sing hymn 305 “Come risen Lord, and deign to be our guest.” The music is called Rosedale and was composed by Leo Sowerby.  The words are attributed to George Wallace Briggs.  But while it is ostensibly a hymn for Holy Eucharist, it is also one very much appropriate for these next couple of weeks of Epiphany as it paraphrases the lectionary: “one body we, one Body who partake, one Church united in communion blest;” and “one with each other, Lord, for one in thee.” Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) was an American composer in the early part of the of 20^th century who became known as “the Dean of American church music.” He gained recognition for his composing at 18 when his violin concerto was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  He received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1944 for his cantata Canticle of the Sun.  Along with hymns, Leo Sowerby’s contributions to service music also appear in our hymnal.

Dana Scallon

One of the more widely recognized songs in Christian music that refer to this week’s lectionary is a song written by Irish singer Dana Scallon called, “We Are One Body.” This song was chosen as the theme for World Youth Day in 1993 and was performed before an audience of nearly 230,000 people which included the Pope.  Since then, the song has become a uniting song for youth groups and youth programs all over the US and Europe. During the ‘60s and ‘70s when Dana first became popular in the Christian music scene, one of the more popular tunes sung by youth groups and kid’s choirs was a song (still popular today) called “They Will Know We Are Christians” which refers to being united by the Spiritual gifts as mention in the first part of 1 Corinthians 12. The above hyperlink will take you to a recording by Jars of Clay, a contemporary Christian rock band.

Interpretation of the ideals presented in Paul’s letter (and the theme appears in the letter to the Romans and the letter to the Galatians and in the Gospels) are not unique, and therefore easily accessed by the secular world. Disney movies, for instance, are a great source of moral stories.  The song “We Are One” is a message of unified diversity taught in the film The Lion King.  While the lyrics are not even a paraphrasing of Paul, they do speak of the principle.

If you were to do a Google search of the phrase ‘we are one’, you would find an eclectic variety of websites from a recording artists network to a farmer’s market to a free-trade jewelry sales site to an AFL-CIO job protection site to a promotional site for a book about world tribal life. In fact, the concept is so deeply ingrained in societal behavior that it appears mathematically provable. One mathematician, Ron Eglash, demonstrated how self-organizing social structures which are based on unification of diversity follow rules of fractal development. You can hear a fascinating talk about this on TED Talks: Fractals at the Heart of African Design. It all goes to show that regardless of whether or not one is familiar with Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, his message is a universal one. 

The Southern Harmony Influence

For many, putting away the beautiful color and décor of Christmas can be a sad time.  It’s a shame that the Feast of the Epiphany is no longer treated as it used to be as one of the great and festive seasons on the Church calendar, for its message of Jesus bringing Light to the world can certainly brighten a gloomy mood! You can hear it in the music of the season.  Isaiah’s prophecy of people walking in darkness until the great Light appears has been paraphrased and set to at least two hymn tunes in The Hymnal 1982.  There’s the ubiquitous John Mason Neale who tells us about the sages who “…by light their way to Light they trod…” And, of course, there are various star of wonder tunes, not the least of which includes “Star in the East” whose tune is taken from The Southern Harmony.

William Walker

The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion tunebook was compiled by William Walker and first published in 1835. During the nineteenth century, this was the most popular of the hundreds of singing-school tunebooks, and today, many of its harmonies are represented in other hymnals and songbooks.  In our own Episcopal hymnal, six tunes are taken directly from The Southern Harmony, while many other hymn tunes are represented—albeit not with those William Walker harmonies. Still, each of those six tunes is very familiar: Star in the East for Epiphany, Middlebury a sweet hymn sung during Easter, Holy Manna appears twice—once for Martyrs and once in Christian Responsibility, and Wondrous Love, Restoration, and Charlestown are the other three.

William Billings

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, especially during the antebellum years, singing schools were popular centers for informal instruction in reading music.  These schools developed out of a controversy in the method of congregational singing.  Because of the general public inability to read music, singing in a congregation was limited to singing melodies learned in the oral tradition—known as “the usual way.” But New England reformers, led by Massachusetts ministers John Tufts and Thomas Walter, felt it important that music be sung true to the composer’s wishes, which entailed reading the music.  This method became known as “regular singing.”  William Billings, often referred to as “the father of American Choral Music,” was the first to form one of these singing schools in Stoughton, MA. He was a composer whose style of music was heavily influenced by both American folk traditions and the fuguing tune style of the West Gallery tradition in Britain. (A fuguing tune is similar to a canon where two to four voices overlap each other singing the same tune, but end in unison. New Jerusalem, composed by Billings’ contemporary Jeremiah Ingalls in 1796 with words from Isaac Watts, is an example of a fuguing tune.) Billings’ style of music composition became the forerunner of today’s “singing” traditions.

While the folk traditions lend themselves to learning in “the usual way,” the fugue structure is benefitted by “regular singing.” Thus, master singing teachers developed methods for easing the learning of sight reading music.  To that end, shape note music and “fa-so-la” syllable training was born. Shape note singing is often referred to as Sacred Harp singing, so named for the tunebook published by White and King in 1844.  Today, most of the “singings” in America use the Sacred Harp book. The Sacred Harp, like The Southern Harmony, uses the four-shape system, or “fa-so-la-mi” syllables.  

When a song is begun, the singers sing the tune by the syllables first and then sing the words of the verses.  This is reminiscent of the days of the singing schools when the object was to teach sight reading.  By the twentieth century, shape note singing was almost extinct, but for a few churches in the South that still used shape note hymnals.  A revival (in urban settings, of all places) for American folk music traditions brought back shape note singing and “singings” can now be found all over the country.  “Singings” are not rehearsals or performances; they are gatherings of singers who meet to sing the old Sacred Harp songs.  While the tradition rose out of religious settings and the music are hymns, psalms and anthems, “singings” are entirely secular these days. If you’ve never heard shape note singing, your first audition of it may be quite shocking!  The tone is very raw and earthy and the volume is LOUD. 

It’s a curious and circuitous route that hymns in our hymnal take.  A tune that derives from a catchy folk tune sung in the public houses of Britain during the days of the Restoration migrates to America. The tune is adapted and set with a psalm and becomes familiar as a hymn to Colonists in New England churches.  It is collected into a hymnbook compiled for use in the Deep South and given all new harmonies. It virtually disappears in the Northeast until it is collected, complete with new harmonies, into a songbook whose purpose and audience is secular. As the tune once again fades into near extinction when the secular purpose no longer holds public sway, a new revival takes note and the tune is included in a modern hymnal, but given credit as originating from a Southern songbook. And so it will continue.