Parish Church in England, 1944) Originally modelled on (but distinct from) the
Book of Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as "
canticles") in the Scriptures, Christian hymns are generally directed as praise to the
Christian God. Many refer to
Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.
Origins In the New Testament,
Saint Paul wrote to the Ephesian and Colossian churches, enjoining the singing of psalms and hymns for "mutual encouragement and edification". even during unfortunate circumstances. among other Scriptural verses, encourage Christians to sing hymns to praise God. As such, since the earliest times, Christians have sung "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs", both in private devotions and in corporate worship. Non-scriptural hymns (i.e. not psalms or canticles) from the Early Church still sung today include '
Phos Hilaron', '
Sub tuum praesidium', and '
Te Deum'.
Traditions The hymn '
Te Deum' is sung or recited in the
Liturgy of the Hours and in thanksgiving to God for a special blessing (such as the election of a pope, the consecration of a bishop, the canonization of a saint), and on December 31 to thank the Lord for the past year. The hymn "" is sung or recited at
Mass, after the
Kyrie, on Sundays outside of
Lent and
Advent, on Christmas, during the
octaves of Easter and Christmas, and on
solemnities and feasts.
Definition One definition of a hymn is "...a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper's attitude toward God or God's purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it."
Special occasions Christian hymns are often written with special or seasonal themes; such hymns are used on holy days such as
Christmas,
Easter and the Feast of
All Saints, or during particular seasons such as
Advent and
Lent. Others are used to encourage reverence for the
Bible or to celebrate Christian practices such as the
Eucharist or
Baptism. Some hymns praise or address individual
saints, particularly
Mary, mother of Jesus; such hymns are particularly prevalent in
Catholicism,
Eastern Orthodoxy,
Evangelical Lutheranism, and to some extent in
High Church Anglicanism.
Terminology A writer of hymns is known as a hymnodist, and the practice of singing hymns is called
hymnody; the same word is used collectively for those hymns associated with a particular denomination or period (e.g. "nineteenth-century Methodist hymnody" would mean the body of hymns written and/or used by Methodists in the 19th century). A specific collection of hymns is called a
hymnal, hymn book or
hymnary. These may or may not include music; among the hymnals without printed music, some include names of hymn tunes suggested for use with each text, in case readers already know the tunes or would like to find them elsewhere. A student of hymnody is called a
hymnologist, and the scholarly study of hymns, hymnists and hymnody is
hymnology. The music to which a hymn may be sung is a
hymn tune. Nondenominational evangelical churches may classify traditional songs as hymns while more contemporary worship songs are not considered hymns. The reason for this distinction is unclear, but according to some it is due to the radical shift of style and devotional thinking that began in the late 1960s with the
Jesus movement and
Jesus music. In recent years, Christian traditional hymns
have seen a revival in some churches, usually more Reformed or
Calvinistic in nature, as modern hymn-writers such as
Keith & Kristyn Getty and
Sovereign Grace Music have reset old lyrics to new melodies, revised old hymns and republished them, or simply written a song in a hymn-like fashion such as
"In Christ Alone".
Music and accompaniment In ancient and medieval times,
string instruments such as the
harp,
lyre and
lute were used with psalms and hymns. Since there is a lack of
musical notation in early writings, the actual musical forms in the early church can only be surmised. During the Middle Ages a rich hymnody developed in the form of
Gregorian chant or plainsong. This type was sung in unison, in one of eight
church modes, and most often by monastic choirs. While they were written originally in
Latin, many have been translated; a familiar example is the 4th century ''
Of the Father's Heart Begotten sung to the 11th-[century plainsong Divinum Mysterium''.
Western church music Later hymnody in the
Western church introduced four-part vocal
harmony as the norm, adopting major and minor keys. The
organ and
choir came to lead the singing. Western hymnody shares many elements with
classical music. Today, except for choirs, more musically inclined congregations, and
a cappella congregations, hymns are typically sung in unison. In some cases, complementary full settings for organ are also published; in others, organists and other accompanists are expected to adapt the available setting, or extemporise one, on their instrument of choice. In traditional
Evangelical Lutheran and
Anglican practice, hymns are sung (often accompanied by an organ) during the
processional to the altar, during the receiving of communion, during the
recessional, and sometimes at other points during the service. The
Doxology is also sung after tithes and offerings are brought up to the altar.
Contemporary Christian worship, as commonly found in certain forms of
Evangelicalism and
Pentecostalism, may include the use of
contemporary worship music played with
electric guitars and
drum kits, sharing many elements with
rock music. These groups include the
Brethren (often both
Open and
Exclusive), the
Churches of Christ,
Mennonites, several
Anabaptist-based denominations—such as the
Apostolic Christian Church of America—
Primitive Baptists, and certain Reformed churches. However, during the last century or so, several of these groups, such as the
Free Church of Scotland, have abandoned this stance.
Eastern church Eastern Christianity (the
Eastern Orthodox,
Oriental Orthodox,
Eastern Lutheran and
Eastern Catholic churches) has a variety of ancient hymnographical traditions. In the
Byzantine Rite, chant is used for all forms of liturgical worship: if it is not sung
a cappella, the only accompaniment is usually an , or
drone. Organs and other instruments were excluded from church use, although they were employed in imperial ceremonies. However, instruments are common in some other Oriental traditions. The
Coptic tradition makes use of the
cymbals and the
triangle only. The
Indian Orthodox (Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church) use the
organ. The
Tewahedo Churches use
drums,
cymbals and other instruments on certain occasions.
Development of Christian hymnody Thomas Aquinas, in the introduction to his commentary on the Psalms, defined the Christian hymn thus: "." ("A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.") The
Protestant Reformation resulted in two conflicting attitudes towards hymns. One approach, the
regulative principle of worship, favoured by many
Zwinglians, Calvinists and some radical reformers, regarded anything that was not directly authorised by the Bible as a novel and Catholic introduction to worship, which was to be rejected. All hymns that were not direct quotations from the Bible fell into this category. Such hymns were banned, along with any form of instrumental musical accompaniment, and organs were removed from Reformed churches. Instead of hymns, biblical psalms were chanted, most often without accompaniment, to very basic melodies. This was known as
exclusive psalmody. Examples of this may still be found in various places, including in some of the
Presbyterian churches of western Scotland. The other Reformation approach, the
normative principle of worship, produced a burst of hymn-writing and congregational singing.
Martin Luther is notable not only as a reformer, but as the author of hymns including ("
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"), ("Praise be to You, Jesus Christ"), and
many others. Luther and his followers often used their hymns, or
chorales, to teach tenets of the faith to worshipers. The first Protestant hymnal was published in Bohemia in 1532 by the
Unitas Fratrum. Count
Zinzendorf, a Lutheran bishop of the
Moravian Church in the 18th century, wrote some 2,000 hymns. Some of the works of the Anglican "
metaphysical poet" the Reverend
George Herbert (1593-1633) have found their way into hymnals. The earlier English writers tended to paraphrase biblical texts, particularly
Psalms;
Isaac Watts (1674–1748) followed this tradition, but is also credited as having written the first English hymn which was not a direct paraphrase of Scripture. Watts, whose father was an Elder of a dissenter congregation, complained at age 16, that when allowed only psalms to sing, the faithful could not even sing about their Lord, Christ Jesus. His father invited him to see what he could do about it; the result was Watts' first hymn, "Behold the glories of the Lamb". Found in few hymnals today, the hymn has eight stanzas in common metre and is based on Revelation 5:6, 8, 9, 10, 12. Relying heavily on Scripture, Watts wrote metered texts based on New Testament passages that brought the Christian faith into the songs of the church. Isaac Watts has been called "the father of English hymnody", but Erik Routley sees him more as "the liberator of English hymnody", because his hymns, and hymns like them, moved worshippers beyond singing only Old Testament psalms, inspiring congregations and revitalizing worship. Later writers took even more freedom, with some even including
allegory and
metaphor in their texts.
Charles Wesley's hymns spread Methodist
theology, not only within
Methodism, but in most Protestant churches. He developed a new focus: expressing one's personal feelings in the relationship with God as well as the simple worship seen in older hymns. During the 19th century, the gospel-song genre spread rapidly in Protestantism and to a lesser but still definite extent in Roman Catholicism; the gospel-song genre is unknown in the worship
per se by Eastern Orthodox churches, which rely exclusively on traditional chants (a type of hymn). The
Methodist Revival of the 18th century created an explosion of hymn-writing in
Welsh, which continued into the first half of the 19th century. The most prominent Welsh hymn-writers are
William Williams Pantycelyn and
Ann Griffiths. The second half of the 19th century witnessed an explosion of hymn-tune composition and congregational four-part singing in
Wales. Along with the more classical sacred music of composers ranging from
Charpentier (19
Hymns, H.53 - H.71) to
Mozart and
Monteverdi, the
Catholic Church continued to produce many popular hymns such as "
Lead, Kindly Light", "
Silent Night", "O Sacrament Most Holy", and
"Faith of Our Fathers". In some radical Protestant movements, their own sacred hymns completely replaced the written Bible. An example of this, the
Book of Life (Russian: "Zhivotnaya kniga") is the name of all oral hymns of the
Doukhobors, the Russian denomination, similar to western
Quakers.
The Book of Life of the Doukhobors (1909) is firstly printed hymnal containing songs which have been composed as an oral piece to be sung aloud. Many churches today use contemporary-worship music which includes a range of styles often influenced by
popular music. This often leads to some conflict between older and younger congregants (see
contemporary worship). This is not new; the Christian
pop-music style began in the late 1960s and became very popular during the 1970s, as young hymnists sought ways in which to make the music of their religion relevant for their generation. This long tradition has resulted in a wide variety of hymns. Some modern churches include within hymnody the traditional hymn (usually describing God), contemporary-worship music (often directed to God) and
gospel music (expressions of one's personal experience of God). This distinction is not perfectly clear; and purists remove the second two types from classification as hymns. It is a matter of debate, even sometimes within a single congregation, often between revivalist and traditionalist movements. Swedish composer and musicologist
Elisabet Wentz-Janacek mapped 20,000 melody variants for Swedish hymns and helped create the Swedish Choral Registrar, which displays the wide variety of hymns today. In modern times, hymn use has not been limited to strictly religious settings, including secular occasions such as
Remembrance Day, and this "secularization" also includes use as sources of musical entertainment or even vehicles for mass emotion.
American developments Hymn-writing, composition, performance and the publishing of Christian hymnals throve in the 19th century, and many hymn-writers often linked this activity to the
abolitionist movement.
Stephen Foster wrote a number of hymns that were used during church services during this era of publishing. Thomas Symmes, a clergyman of the third generation of
Puritans in New England, spread throughout churches a new idea of how to sing hymns, in which anyone could sing a hymn any way they felt led to; this idea was opposed by a writer of the time, Rev. Thomas Walter, who felt it was "like Five Hundred different Tunes roared out at the same time".
William Billings, a
singing-school teacher, created the first
tune-book with only American-born compositions. Within his books, Billings did not put as much emphasis on "
common measure" - a
quatrain that rhymes ABAB and alternates four-stress and three-stress iambic lines - which was the typical way hymns were sung. Noting in his preface the fondness of other compilers for tunes in common measure, Billings promised his subscribers a well-balanced collection, with "a Sufficiency in each
measure". And indeed ''The Singing Master's Assistant'' has many tunes whose declamation is based on the
dactyl in
duple time. Boston's
Handel and Haydn Society aimed at raising the level of church music in America, publishing their "Collection of Church Music" in 1822. In the late-19th century
Ira D. Sankey and
Dwight L. Moody developed the relatively new subcategory of
gospel hymns. Earlier in the 19th century, the use of musical notation, especially
shape notes, exploded in America, and professional singing-masters went from town to town teaching the population how to
sing from sight, instead of the more common
lining out that had been used before that. During this period hundreds of tune-books were published, including
B.F. White's
Sacred Harp, and earlier works like the
Missouri Harmony,
Kentucky Harmony,
Hesperian Harp, D.H. Mansfield's
The American Vocalist,
The Social Harp, the
Southern Harmony,
William Walker's
Christian Harmony,
Jeremiah Ingalls'
Christian Harmony, and literally many dozens of others. Shape-notes were important in the spread of (then) more-modern singing-styles, with tenor-led 4-part harmony (based on older English
West Gallery music),
fuging sections,
anthems and other more complex features. During this period, hymns were incredibly popular in the United States, and one or more of the above-mentioned tune-books could be found in almost every household. It is not uncommon to hear accounts of young people and teenagers gathering together to spend an afternoon singing hymns and anthems from tune-books, which was considered great fun, and accounts survive of
Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart singing together from the
Missouri Harmony during his youth. By the 1860s musical reformers like
Lowell Mason (the so-called "better music boys") were actively campaigning for the introduction of more "refined" and modern singing-styles, and eventually American tune-books were replaced in many churches, starting in the Northeast and urban areas, and spreading out into the countryside as people adopted the gentler, more soothing tones of
Victorian hymnody, and even adopted dedicated, trained
choirs to do their church's singing, rather than having the entire congregation participate. But in many rural areas the old traditions lived on, not in churches, but in weekly, monthly or annual conventions were people would meet to sing from their favorite tune-books. The most popular one, and the only one that survived continuously in print, was the
Sacred Harp, which could be found in the typical rural Southern home right up until the living tradition was "re-discovered" by
Alan Lomax in the 1960s (although it had been well-documented by
musicologist George Pullen Jackson prior to this). Since then there has been a renaissance in "Sacred Harp singing", with annual conventions popping up in
all 50 states and in a number of European countries recently, including the
UK,
Germany,
Ireland and
Poland, as well as in
Australia.
Black America's hymns African-Americans developed a rich hymnody from
spirituals during times of slavery to the modern, lively black-gospel style. The first influences of
African-American culture into hymns came from the collection
Slave Songs of the United States, compiled by
William Francis Allen, despite difficulties pinning them down from the oral tradition. He points out the awe-inspiring effect of the hymns when sung by their originators. Some of the first hymns in the
black church were renderings of Isaac Watts hymns written in the African-American vernacular English of the time.
Hymn meters The meter indicates the number of syllables for the lines in each
stanza of a hymn. This provides a means of marrying the hymn's text with an appropriate
hymn tune for singing. In practice many hymns conform to one of a relatively small number of meters (syllable-count and stress-patterns). Care must be taken, however, to ensure that not only the metre of words and tune match, but also the stresses on the words in each line. Technically speaking, an iambic tune, for instance, cannot be used with words of, say, trochaic metre. The meter is often denoted by a row of figures besides the name of the tune, such as "87.87.87", which would inform the reader that each verse has six lines, and that the first line has eight syllables, the second has seven, the third line eight, etc. The meter can also be described by initials; "L.M." indicates long meter, which is 88.88 (four lines, each eight syllables long); "S.M." is short meter (66.86); "C.M." is common metre (86.86), while "D.L.M.", "D.S.M." and "D.C.M." (the "D" stands for
double) are similar to their respective single meters except that they have eight lines in a verse instead of four. == Hindu hymnody ==