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 49: The Hymn Tunes of Elgar and Holst
Fate laid a heavy hand on English music in the year 1934. Within less than four months death claimed three major figures: Delius, Elgar and Holst. Delius had no impact on the world of hymnody—he would no doubt have been surprised if he had—but, fifty years on, the work of the other two in our field may be worth a …
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 46: The Tune ‘LASST UNS ERFREUEN’ as we know it
One of the great successes of The English Hymnal in 1906 was its inclusion of the old German Catholic tune ‘LASST UNS ERFREUEN’, linked originally with Easter rejoicing, but now set to ‘Ye watchers and ye holy ones’, a new text by Athelstan Riley (EH 519). It is of some interest to trace the musical ancestry of this now-famous EH …
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 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 …
Treasure No 4: The Criticisms of ‘Songs of Praise’
No Hymn Book of modern times has attracted greater attention than Songs of Praise; not least significant is the prominence given to it by the B.B.C. At the same time, no hymn book has been more severely criticized. The Bishop of Chelmsford, in particular, has laid himself out to ban it, as far as a bishop may, from his diocese. …