Hymns : Entering the Minefield

"I didn't like the hymns today."

"Why did we sing 'x' to the wrong tune?"

"The hymns were far too fast this morning."

"The hymns were far too slow this morning."

Anyone who leads worship regularly will be all too familiar with these - and similar - comments. The selection and performance of hymns can be a major bone of contention in even the most harmonious congregation (if you pardon the pun).  

I suspect that many worshippers have little idea of how much time, blood, sweat and tears actually goes into the choosing of hymns, if it's done properly and conscientiously.  

Selecting hymns for worship isn't simply a matter of closing one's eyes and sticking a pin in the index of a hymn book, nor of endlessly regurgitating one's own - or indeed one's congregation's -  favourites. It is rather a matter of carefully matching the hymns to the liturgical season, the themes of the set readings for the day (especially the Gospel) and the respective points in the liturgy at which they are to be used. All of this helps to create a properly integrated act of worship. Indeed, it's one of the ways in which we try to ensure that our worship is the best that we can offer and as worthy as humanly possible of the God to whom it is offered. 

Of course, we all have our favourite hymns, along with those which we positively despise, so those of us tasked with choosing them must set aside our personal preferences and prejudices whilst nevertheless being vigilant against both heresy and theological doggerel (both of which are found to some degree in all hymn books, ancient and modern alike.) 

Some hymns, of course, are firmly associated with one tune and one tune only. It is, for example, unthinkable that 'For all the Saints' should be sung to anything other than the tune Sine Nomine or 'O God our help in ages past' to anything other than St Anne; whereas other hymns such as 'O Jesus I have promised' can be associated with several well-established tunes, each of which will have their fans and their critics. This is where the church musician enters the minefield! Many an organist has been reprimanded for playing the 'wrong' tune (and sometimes complimented after the same service for playing the 'right' one!)  

But is there really such a thing as a 'wrong' tune? 

I suppose there might be in terms of the musical mood of a tune being totally unsuited to the words of the hymn.. The Lenten hymn 'Forty days and forty nights', along with its context, demands a solemn tune in a minor key, whereas 'Come let us join our cheerful songs' would be nothing short of absurd if sung to some melancholy dirge.

Other hymns, however, are much more 'neutral' and here the question of the 'right' or 'wrong' tune does become one of personal taste. I, for example, much prefer to sing the hymn 'All hail the power of  Jesu's name' to the lusty tune 'Diadem'  - admittedly more popular in Noncomformist circles - than (in my view) the rather dreary and pedestrian 'Miles Lane' which is more commonly used in the CofE.

There are also tunes - often more recently composed - that quickly gain popularity and displace more established tunes and which can often breathe new life into previously little-used hymns. Two obvious examples of this are Maurice Bevan's Corvedale and Kenneth Naylor's 'Coe Fen' which have given the hymns  'There's a wideness in God's mercy' and 'How shall I sing that majesty' a new lease of life, with both firmly in today's 'Top Ten'.

If choosing hymns and marrying them up a suitable tune is challenging, deciding how they should be played and sung is almost equally contentious. Again, the sentiments of a hymn and its liturgical, architectural and acoustic context should all be factored in to its tempo and volume. Some organists take every hymn at the same stately pace, whilst others leave their congregation with a sense that they have a train to catch at the end of the service. For 'To God be the Glory' and 'Abide with me' to go at the same tempo - whether it's rattling along or soberly meandering - is, I think, nonsensical and actually non-musical; and even when the overall pace and general volume of a hymn is decided, the nuances of its words should always be taken into account. I'm grateful to my own organ tutor who drummed into me that 'playing the words' was equally important as playing the music. He was right - not least because it encourages the congregation to sing more expressively and, therefore, more worshipfully.

Finally, of course, there is the big question that every organist faces - whether to underplay or overplay. Where congregations are reluctant to sing (as many Anglican congregations are), the organ being 'too loud' or the organ being 'too quiet' are both frequently used as excuses (for that is what I believe them to be) for poor congregational singing.  I suppose it could be argued that a good Anglican compromise would be to aim for a 'medium' volume, but this rather undermines my previous point about needing to express the words  appropriately, and my own experience as an organist is that diffident congregations are better encouraged to sing by a fairly robust 'accompaniment'. 

I'm sure that by now some of my readers will be disagreeing with much of what I've written, and that actually proves my point - that hymns are very emotive and potentially dangerous, and they can lead to very polarised opinions and heated discussions. There is a need, therefore, for clergy, church musicians and congregations alike to realise that hymnody is a more complex area of church life than we might sometimes imagine, and that the lot of the hymn selector and church musician alike is not always an easy one. There is a need too, as in so many areas of the Christian life, to approach the subject sensitively and charitably.