A brief study of the development of church music was reported in these columns in March, 1949. That was necessarily brief and incomplete. I have been invited to continue that discussion, giving fuller treatment than was possible at that time. Even in this discussion all reference to or study concerning the anthem, motet, cantata, or other special or occasional music of the church will be omitted. The problem, then, is to trace the development of modern church music.
As noted before, the music of many ages and many countries has indirectly affected that of the present; but on the whole, music in America is almost directly the offspring of its British ancestry, with some definite shaping by German music. It will be well, therefore, for us to trace the development of the music of the church in England.
During the two centuries after the Reformation the Church of England had practically nothing to show in the way of congregational hymnody except the metrical version of the psalter. There was a brief trend toward developing a hymnody based on the Lutheran model, and some translations were made from German originals during this time. But this movement was only temporary and soon died out, because of Calvinistic influences, it is thought.
During the time of Henry VIII and Arch bishop Cranmer there were some primers intended for use in private devotions that contained a few hymns. Queen Elizabeth favored the development of hymn singing, and a few at tempts were made during her reign to introduce the hymn into the church, but the hymns got little farther than the appendices of the psalters. Of the hymns in current use not more than ten owe their origin to the Elizabethan Age; and one of these, "Jerusalem, My Happy Home," is of Roman Catholic origin.
Perhaps a score of hymns appeared in various forms during the next fifty years. Men such as George Herbert, John Donne, Robert Her- rick, Phineas Fletcher, John Milton, and especially Bishop Ken made contributions during this time, and some of their work endures to this day.
Earliest English Hymnbooks
What has been described as "the earliest attempt at an English hymnbook" appeared in 1623. It was George Wither's Hymnes and Songs of the Church which obtained both temporary court favor and fierce opposition. The changing political situation soon brought him and his work into disfavor.
William Barton (c. 1603-1678), a Puritan minister who later conformed to the Anglicans, made and published in 1659 a collection of hymns, each of which consisted of selected pas sages of Scripture turned into verse and woven together into a whole. This book was sparingly used by the Anglican Church, but the Independents used it widely, and undoubtedly it pre pared the way for the later' outstanding work of Dr. Watts and the Wesleys.
Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711) in later life became very desirous of making it possible for church people to express praise to God in words of his own composition. He left two hymns which became famous and which, even today, are in common use, namely his morning hymn, "Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun," and his evening hymn, "All Praise to Thee, My God. This Night" (or "Glory to Thee, My God, This Night"). The Doxology, which, it is said, has been sung more than any other four lines in the English language, was the last stanza of both these hymns.
Richard Baxter and John Mason, both of whom died just at the close of the seventeenth century, should be mentioned for their contributions to English hymnody. The latter is especially notable, because he seems to be the first Anglican clergyman who actually favored the practice of hymn singing in church as distinct from the use of metrical psalms. In 1683 he .published a group of hymns known as Spiritual- Songs, or Songs of Praise to Almighty God.
Joseph Adclison, the last of the great seventeenth-century writers, contributed a few hymns that still survive, the most commonly used of which begins—
"The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue, ethereal sky."
It must be remembered, however, that practically none of these hymns, at the time they were produced, were intended or employed for use in public worship. They were found only in meager appendices to the Old (and later, the New) Version of Metrical Psalms. By 1709 the Supplement to the Psalter contained seventeen hymns, including four for Christmas Day. But the day of general hymn singing was yet to come. It was not the Church of England but the Separatist bodies, or Independents, who really produced a change in that situation.
Beginning of General Hymn Singing
In order for any great change to be made in the practice of hymnody in England, four new concepts had to be established:
1. That though the Bible is God's message to us the hymn is properly our response to Him, our word of praise to Him, and hence should be of human origin or composition.
2. That the Christian church is of New Testament origin, and the exclusive use of Old Testament psalms is not always in keeping with the spirit of the gospel of the New Testament.
3. That the metrical versions of the psalms were not inspired.
4. That if it be proper to pray to God with the thoughts and language of human composition, it is justly and equally proper to praise Him vocally in a similar manner.
At least, these were the contentions of Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and he succeeded in establishing all four concepts in the minds of many of his countrymen. He began writing hymns when only a young man, and provided a new hymn for his father's church each Sunday evening until he had written more than two hundred. But his greatest work was his versification of the psalms. In this work, although his poems were based on the psalms, they were so full of free expression, poetic simplicity, and Christian terminology that they have been regarded as original hymns.
Watts' hymns number about six hundred in all, and were published in four separate volumes during the years 1709-1719. These were well received, and Dr. Watts' songs were soon in common use in England. Their popularity was by no means short-lived. The new Presbyterian hymnal, out of only 513 hymns, includes 20 by Watts; and the Seventh-day Adventists have used 31, out of 703, in their hymnal.
Many critics have considered Dr. Watts' "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" to be the greatest hymn in the English language. Watts fought for and won a place for original hymns in the worship of the church. But Charles Wesley went even further, and com posed and popularized poems of greater freedom and departure from the patterns of praise established in England.
Watts' hymns were always objective and formal, setting forth the glorious majesty of God. Wesley's poems were personal and intimate, and much more subjective. So the work of these two great writers supplemented each other, and together they supplied the great want in English hymnody.
For a time Wesley's hymns were used almost entirely and exclusively by the Methodists. They had an abundant source from which to choose, as Wesley's compositions totaled nearly 6,500 in all. In time every Christian body in England, and eventually throughout the whole world, was influenced by them. His hymns areas commonly used today as are Dr. Watts'. Wesley's two greatest hymns are commonly considered to be "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" and "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." The influence of these hymns has been immeasurable.
Influence of the Evangelistic Movement
The evangelistic movement started by John and Charles Wesley, which cut Methodism away from the established church shortly after their death, and by Whitefield and other re formers of their time, certainly had a profound influence upon the music of the church.
Less and less attention was paid to the formal and ritualistic use of music. More and more congregations were taught to sing, and to sing because they felt like praising God. In this respect the English singing at public worship became more like that in common practice in Germany. German influence was quite strong in the work of the Wesleys. John was a diligent student of German pietistic hymnody, and translated several German hymns into English.
While the Wesleys were in America they met a devout Moravian, Peter Bohler, who demonstrated to the Englishmen the effective use of original composition and vernacular and stirring music in common use in German hymnody. A deep impression was made upon the Wesleys, and by them, in turn, upon all England. Hymn singing of a personal, emotional type soon became common. The Wesleys, like Luther, were greatly encouraged by this use of singing by the common people. They conceived of hymn singing as valuable, not only for exciting and voicing religious emotion, but for instruction and edification. A new era had indeed dawned in the history of church music.
Need for New Hymn Tunes
This new era of evangelism that swept England—and to a lesser degree, America—called for something new in the way of hymn tunes. The staid, devotional, worshipful music of the past did not meet the demands of the new- hymns, filled as they were with the joys and inspiration and ecstasy of the emotional evangelism. The use of music to attract the unsaved to the meetings and to win them to the gospel, made attractive, spirited, and even exciting tunes almost imperative.
The Wesleys consciously encouraged the composers of their day to produce the kind of tunes they needed. Lady Huntingdon and Walter Shirley made a new collection of hymns, many of them original; and the Moravians struggled intensively to provide suitable music to meet the needs of the time. All helped to bring in an era of flowery music, so that the hymn tunes of this period have been given the title Florid School.
Many of the hymns of this period were secular in nature, and were complicated and impracticable. But there was still a large conservative group in England, both in the Anglican Church and among the Noncomformists, so the new tunes suffered much criticism, opposition. And ill repute. However, they were not without permanent effect upon the hymnody of the church. At least a score of the hymns of that period survive today, and the whole course of modern hymn tunes has been altered noticeably because of this florid period.— To be continued next month
