All the Best Tunes?

Photo: chrischapplear via flickr.com

As an amateur Church musician with a strong interest in hymns, I really enjoyed reading Helen Bourne’s article The 10 Commandments of Worship Songs (issue 99), which makes many valuable points, most of which I quite agree with. However, I cannot agree entirely with her Eighth Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal tunes from elsewhere.” It is certainly true that many hymns and songs that have been deliberately written to fit existing popular tunes are of very dubious quality and value. On the other hand, much of the corpus of Christian song, including several useful and well-loved hymns, owes its existence to the long tradition of breaking this commandment. Here followeth an account of this tradition, which draws upon the published writings of several Church music experts including A. S. Gregory, Erik Routley, Bertram Barnby and Ian Bradley. (Is it coincidence that their surnames end in ‘y’?)

It is in evidence even in the Book of Psalms. According to the New Century Version, eleven of them were originally sung to pre-existing tunes; for example, Psalm 22 was to be sung to the tune of The Doe of Dawn, and Psalm 56 to The Dove in the Distant Oak. (Incidentally, several of the Psalms specify which instruments they were to be accompanied on — detail which I find fascinating!)

Moving swiftly onward to the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther and his followers, in sixteenth-century Germany, had no qualms about writing hymns to be sung to the tunes of the secular songs of the common people. Thus the song Innsbruck, I now must leave thee was soon set to sacred words. Likewise, the well-known tune Passion Chorale, set in the 1650s to the German original of O sacred Head, sore wounded, had originally belonged to words to the effect of My heart is distracted by a gentle maid!

In eighteenth-century Britain, the preacher Rowland Hill posed the famous question: “Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?” Accordingly, he wrote a hymn to be sung to the tune of Rule, Britannia. Charles Wesley likewise wrote hymns to fi t popular tunes. When a party of sailors disrupted one of his open-air services by singing Nancy Dawson, he wrote a hymn for them to sing to its tune! Furthermore, when he composed Love divine, all loves excelling — one of our most popular hymns — he evidently had in mind Purcell’s tune to Dryden’s song Fairest isle, all isles excelling.

In the early nineteenth century, there was a fashion for fashioning hymn tunes from pieces of classical music. To this tradition belong the tune called Mozart, often sung to Take my life, and let it be, which is an adaptation of part of a Mass setting composed in the style of (and formerly attributed to) Mozart, and the use of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as a hymn tune. Meanwhile, other secular tunes, such as the old love song Drink to me only with thine eyes, were frequently used in church.

However, it was General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, who, in the late nineteenth century, famously saw the evangelistic potential of popular melodies. Thus, under the aegis of Salvationist songwriters, the popular music-hall chorus Two lovely black eyes became My Jesus has died, whilst Here’s to good old whisky, drink it down was transformed into Storm the forts of darkness, bring them down! In the same era, Sunday Schools and the Temperance (anti-alcohol) movement frequently used hymns and songs set to existing popular tunes. Two once-popular children’s hymns, I think when I read that sweet story of old and When mothers of Salem their children brought to Jesus, were sung to a Greek marching tune and a German drinking song respectively. This tradition continues: Mister Noah built an ark, a song often used in my Sunday School when I was a kid, was set to a tune which I later discovered had originally belonged to the old American plantation song So Early in the Morning.

The use of old tunes was taken to new heights with the appearance of the English Hymnal in 1906. Its musical editor, Ralph Vaughan Williams, had the bright idea of setting hymns to old folk song tunes and other traditional melodies, which, unlike those adopted by the Salvationists, did not carry strong associations with secular words except in the country districts from which they had been collected, and in which, in any case, the originals were fast dying out. Thus He who would valiant be and O little town of Bethlehem were first set to the traditional English melodies to which they are now wedded in this country. Several hymn-book editors would follow in Vaughan Williams’ footsteps; the tradition has been continued in recent years in the music of the Iona Community, for example in John Bell and Graham Maule’s A Touching Place, with its old Gaelic lullaby tune.

Regarding the suitability of any particular adaptation of secular music for religious purposes, much depends on context. The requirements of evangelistic work and children’s ministry are distinct from those of, say, a moderately traditional Sunday service attended mostly by long-term churchgoers in their fifties or over. Thus an adaptation of a jaunty popular tune, which would certainly not be suitable in the latter instance, may be very suitable for reaching out to the unchurched who, knowing the tune, might fi nd it more accessible than they would a purpose-built hymn or worship song. Likewise, the theme tune of a currently popular kids’ TV show, sung to simple words based upon the originals, would be quite unsuitable in most contexts, but might be found very useful in, say, a children’s holiday club, where it could be very effective in capturing young imaginations!

The nature of the tune thus borrowed also affects its suitability. Whilst a bouncy, jolly popular tune is likely to be most useful among children, many serene or stately traditional or classical melodies, appropriately arranged and performed, can appropriately be used in the context of an ordinary Sunday service. Admittedly, some hymn-book editors have been reluctant to include tunes that might call to mind the secular words with which they are commonly associated. They have a point; however, in certain cases, such as I cannot tell to Londonderry Air (widely known as Danny Boy), the tune is so suited to the religious words that the secular association doesn’t really seem to matter. The danger is in cases where the words are so closely modelled on the originals (as in the case of I’ve found the bare necessity to the Bear Necessities tune) that they descend into the realms of parody, and thus induce feelings of amusement or disgust, rather than worship, in those who sing them (with the exception of children, for whom, as I have said, such songs may be very suitable). However, the nature of the original words can be subtly acknowledged without ill effect. For example, I have found that the tune of Drink to me only with thine eyes goes very well with Charles Wesley’s Help us to help each other, Lord — a secular love song thus becomes a song about mutual love among Christians.

Therefore, Christian songwriters, whilst keeping the above points in view, feel free to carry on breaking the ‘Eighth Commandment’ — as long as you remember that there is such a thing as copyright!

Peter Tylor

As a postscript, I must defend James Montgomery, who was one of the most important hymn-writers of the nineteenth century. The ‘offending’ verse of Lord, teach us how to pray aright is actually a prayer for “Faith in the only Sacrifice that can for sin atone”, and makes it reasonably clear that this Sacrifice is “Christ alone”.