lutheranhymns | Entries tagged with classic for a reason

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This is another one of those "I don't know if it's really a classic but it's classic to me." This was one that I liked as a kid--maybe because of the rhymes? vanished/banished are good, and then "living/thanksgiving" gets echoed back in verse 2, but at the end of the verse rather than the beginning--it feels more like "tying together" than "repetitive."

I also like the imagery of God ultimately being in charge of all the cosmos. The original version is "His law he enforces: the stars in their courses and sun in its orbit obediently shine." This got changed for this edition. Presumably for gender-neutrality reasons, it got changed to "God rules all the forces..." But the idea of the sun being in an orbit gets to stay, despite the scientific inaccuracy! They weren't worried it would be perceived as too literal??

This is fairly elaborate in terms of bass echoes/splitting up text on different lines. The melody has some high pitched "oo-oo"s, while the tenor/alto parts repeat "we are marching, marching" "in the light of, the light of God." It is also very much a zipper song in that they list "additional stanzas ad lib" rather than an official "verse 1, verse 2, etc;" you can substitute "dancing," "praying, "singing," or anything else for "dancing," and that's the only change necessary.

I'll go ahead and put it under "classics for a reason," I think it's pretty well known as an upbeat South African tune contrasted with some of the more staid English/German stuff. Some time ago the the children's choir sang a Christmas anthem with new words to this melody, so it's spread beyond the one text.

This is a classic for a reason. It's one of Isaac Watts' best-known hymns. It features some bass echoes on "and heaven and nature sing" (probably on the other verses too, but the echo is only printed for one verse!). It has stuff about "plains" and "prove" which worked well for a math parody about "planes" and proving things. My choir sang an arrangement by John Rutter (famous for "What Sweeter Music" and other choral anthems) at a big multi-choir event in winter 2004, which was a couple months after the Red Sox won the World Series, so I was thinking of them during "far as the curse is found!"

There is only one problem. This is not an Advent song.

This is very clearly a Christmas carol. "The Lord is come," "the Savior reigns," "he rules the world." Present tense! He does it right now! Because he has come, we're not still anticipating him! This was categorized as a Christmas hymn in previous hymnals, and it's the last song in this edition's Advent section (we're really getting down to the last few now!), which made me literally wonder if it was a typo. It's not. The editors decided to put this with the Advent hymns.

I mean, it's a great song, but...????

This is definitely a case of classics for a reason. You probably know it. You might prefer some performance styles to others, there are many. One of my bell-ringing comrades remarked after the recent Biden inauguration, when it was performed, that she just isn't a fan. I don't think she finds it objectionable for any particular reason, just not her style. And I was quiet and polite about it, but I was thinking, "that sure is a take."

The last verse is not by the original composer, but an anonymous addition: "When we've been [in heaven] then thousand years...we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun." As a logician, I approve of this cardinal arithmetic. Infinity minus a finite quantity is still infinity! This is a big and important deal! Faith in the eternal part of eternity is a cause for hope and joy and not something to be ashamed of!

There are, however, a couple other culture-war aspects to the text. I feel like I've seen somewhere (maybe this was satire?) that we should be hesitant about using it because the line "[I] was blind, but now I see" could be perceived as ableist. I feel like this ignores the established and multifaceted use of metaphorical language (does the idea "I once was lost, but now am found" connote judgment of people who need directions?) as well as the Gospel narratives of Jesus literally healing sick people, including blind people.

Also, the famous backstory is that the lyricist was a slave trader who had a dramatic change of heart mid-journey, and wrote this text about his own miraculous conversion narrative. And I feel like there are a lot of people who would be like "he does not deserve any credit for ceasing to do evil, he is fundamentally an irredeemable person and no amount of divine love is gonna change that." Which, if that's your theology, fine, but at that point why do you care about how people who do believe in the infinite power of divine love sing about that belief.

So I've actually blogged about this one on a very unrelated site. Basically, I would call it a classic for a reason. By classic, I mean its lyrics are based on ancient chants dating from the eighth century or older. I figure, something almost has to be good if it's survived this long. Not necessarily, but often. Maybe eighth-century monks had just as many mediocre/cheesy/cliche lyrics as our 21st-century Christmas songs. (Again, not necessarily, but maybe.) And the ones that stand the test of time are a good form of selection bias.

The different verses are sort of associated with the last few days of Advent. You would think there aren't that many hymns with specific verses for specific days, but then, some of the saints' days hymns do this too!

I'm not sure if this one qualifies as a classic, but it should be, it's one of those I've always liked for some reason. The rhymes are kind of a stretch, but the commitment to repeating the "grain/lain/pain/slain, again/been, seen/green" motif is impressive, and the extended metaphor between Jesus as a seed extending to "fields of our hearts" is lovely. The tune is minor-ish, which is incongruous for an Easter song, but that's one of the reasons it stands out. (Actually it's not strictly minor; it ends on the 2nd note of the scale.) It might be better known as a Christmas song--the French melody "Noël nouvelet," or "Sing We Now of Christmas."

This is by St. Francis, who is famous for many things, particularly his love of all of creation, and unconventional preaching to the animals. In his honor, some churches observe a "blessing of the animals" day in early October, which is usually my cue to keep a wide berth. This was also one of the first hymns to be written in vernacular Italian rather than Latin. (Another common translation has "All Creatures of Our God and King.")

In keeping with Francis' theology, this addresses all creation to praise God, addressing things like "brother sun" and "sister moon." I'm putting it as "classics for a reason" because I think it's fairly well known, and I've borrowed some imagery from it for fanfiction purposes. It then takes a turn into addressing "most gentle sister death"--since Christ has already died for us, she's just another beautiful part of creation too.

The translations and adaptations include this Swahili/English arrangement. Our choir tried it, but we only had the one soloist, and the rest of us are not very good at Swahili (nor did we go for the chirpy-bird sound effects).

This I would consider "classic for a reason." It's an adaptation of Psalm 90, which is a text comparing human mortality and ephemerality to God's steadfastness, but is somewhat less bleak than that base would suggest, with the repetition of "our hope for years to come" maybe not referring to just earthly time but also heavenly time. (It's not exactly "final verse same as the first," but close enough that I'm counting it.) Adding to this is the image of our years being like "a dream [that] dies at the opening day"--fleeting, but perhaps anticipating a deeper, fuller reality. Of course, my associations with "opening day" are usually positive because I'm a baseball fan!

You might expect this to be the kind of song I roll my eyes at like I do with the Taizé stuff--it's the same thing over and over again, in this case as a round, and the source for the text and music is just "Traditional." The text is very old, it means "Grant us peace" and comes from the Latin "Lamb of God" song/prayer in the communion liturgy. Is the music from North America? Europe? The 20th century? The 19th century? We have no idea.

It's good, though--the type of folk-y chant my extended family would sing as a meal prayer.

First things first, this is not a traditional Quaker song. It was written by the same person as these two, which are much more identifiably "1800s USA white guy." However, this one would pick up a few extra verses in the 1950s about "when tyrants tremble" and "when friends rejoice," and the (mis)identification of modern-day friends with the Society of Friends stuck. Then it got picked up by Pete Seeger, who rearranged the verse/chorus structure (increasing the Shannon density because now there's no repeated chorus!) and turned it into a slightly less explicitly religious text ("since love is lord of heaven and earth," rather than "since Christ"). And that was the version that got big, at least it was in my folky family; this was one of my mom's favorites to play on guitar in her ~~hippie~~ socially-conscious youth phase. Probably still is, TBF.

There are other arrangements that go even further in the hippie direction and try to de-Jesusify it (see here) which my choir has also done. For me the Seeger version is still the best balance between that and the hymnal staidness.

What's up with the harmonization?

There are some huge intervals in the bass clef. At a couple points, the tenors and basses (higher and lower mens' parts) are singing an octave plus a fifth apart, which is big. But during the start of the third line ("Joyful, all"), the basses, tenors, and altos (lower women's part) are all together on middle C, while the sopranos are an octave higher! Cool unison effect.

What about the lyrics?

It's a classic for a reason! I love "join the triumph of the skies," as if the stars have just won the big game, but the next couple verses are great too. Even my dad, who isn't really the music-reader in our family, listed this as one of his favorite Christmas hymns once.

Any translation issues?

No and yes. It's by Charles Wesley, who was a native English speaker, so there aren't too many divergent versions of the lyrics. But there have been a couple different arrangements/rearrangements, and I'm sometimes thrown for a loop when I hear it on the radio during Christmas song season. One because it's better than a lot of pop Christmas music, but two because it's often a more "masculine" text--"pleased as man with men to dwell," "born to raise the sons of Earth"--then this arrangement. This is one of those times where I'm very used to the way ours flows, including the PC adjustments.

What about the music composer?

That's Felix Mendelssohn, of general classical music fame. (Just me? Fine.)