A version of a paper given at the Annual Conference at Leicester. 23 July 2002 There are age-old associations between what John Milton so aptly termed ‘voice and verse’. The hymn is just one of many genres that link words with music, and my specific brief is to consider the mutual impact of words on music in the context of …
Treasure No 64: The English Hymn (review)
The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study, by J R. Watson. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997. xi 4–552 pp. £65.00 (£48.00 to Hymn Society members using special order form with July Bulletin) The publication of this scholarly, thought-provoking and enormously enjoyable book is a major event for hymnologists. In scale and scope it is comparable only with Louis F. Benson’s …
Treasure No 48: Pastoral Revision of Hymns
[This is a shortened and revised version of a lecture given at our 1982 Conference. Mr Perry is rector of Eversley, Hants., and a member of the words committee responsible for Hymns for Today’s Church (Hodder and Stoughton, 1982), a review of which we hope to include in the next Bulletin.] My intention is to attempt some justification for the …
Treasure No 36: Hymnody in the Eastern Churches
Hymnody as we know it in the West is mostly a post-Reformation development, first in the Lutheran chorales and the Genevan and Strassburg paraphrases and then later in England in the hymns of Wesley and Watts. In the post-Reformation Latin services in the West hymnody was severely restricted to the Office Hymn and the Sequence between the Epistle and Gospel …
Treasure No 33: ‘100 Hymns for Today’—a Supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern
The new supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern will receive a very wary reception. It will be seen by some as being in the tradition of the First and Second Supplements that make up the Standard Edition. Others will hope to find in it some reflection of present interests, rather than the bringing up to date of an existing book. …
Treasure No 10: Hymns on the Air
I have been asked to review the field of hymn-singing on the air, and to say something about the criteria which govern the choice of hymns in religious broadcasts. As these programmes stand at the moment, no less than thirty hymns are broadcast every week. 1. The Daily Service (Home Service, 10.15 a.m.). From the very first this has been …
Treasure No 9: ‘English Hymnal’ and ‘Ancient and Modern’
A brief correspondence has appeared in the columns of The Musical Times for September, October, and November, 1946, under the general heading of “Hymn Tunes,” but dealing in fact with the rival merits of The English Hymnal and Hymns Ancient and Modern. This is a well-worn subject of controversy, although it has not actually been ventilated before in our own …
Treasure No 6: Hymns and no Hymns
Everyone is busy planning a grand new world to come after the war. Sometimes it is a grand new world for Britain and her allies, and sometimes it is a grand new world for the world—a World-State with a World -language and a World-Religion. Oddly enough, it is easy to plan for the world. The larger the scope the more …