Historical Hymns

[marc]

Tonight as we sang the first verse of "Jesus is Coming Soon" I noticed the date the song was written--1942--and the words took on a new meaning:

Troublesome times are here
Filling men's hearts with fear
Freedom we all hold near now is at stake
Humbling your heart to God
Saves from the chastening rod
Seek the way pilgrims trod, Christians awake.

Hmmmm. . . could we have some WWII references here?

Okay, I know about "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".  And I know some of you may consider "Bonnie Blue Flag" to be a hymn. ;) But does anyone know of other hymns with historical significance?

[memmy]

Oh sorry Marc, I thought you were asking about a hymn that has "ties".

I was gonna say "Bless be-ee the ties-ies that bind"  ;)

Sorry, I'll have to get back on you on this one.

Memmy :D

[david johnson]

an historical, hymnologic figure...some of my favorite music...sacred harp singers still sing billings' music...i think the rest of us should, also.....from nationwide.net

dj



William Billings (1746-1800), is considered by many to be the foremost representative of early American music. Billings was born in Boston on October 7, 1746. Largely self-trained in music, he was a tanner by trade and a friend of such figures of the American Revolution as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Billings's New England Psalm-Singer (1770), engraved by Revere, was the first collection of music entirely by an American. (The image above is the frontispiece engraving for New England Psalm-Singer by Paul Revere)

Especially known among his compositions are his canon (round) "When Jesus Wept," the anthem "David's Lamentation," and the hymn "Chester," written to his own patriotic text and unofficially the national hymn of the American Revolution. Billings died in Boston on September 26, 1800.



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(Excerpts from an article on William Billings by John H. Lienhard, University of Houston)

Anyone who's done much choral singing has sung William Billings's music. Ask what music came out of Colonial America: we get Billings and little more. Few sophisticated musicians think much of him -- I love his stuff. Historians have made little effort to know Billings. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians runs to almost 20,000 pages and it gives Billings only a page and a half.

Billings was born in Boston in 1747. He was poor and uneducated -- he supported himself much of the time as a tanner. But he also took up music when he was young and was teaching choral singing by the age of 22.

Biographers call him a gargoyle. He was blind in one eye with a short leg and a withered arm. But that's only the beginning. He practiced what a contemporary called "an uncommon negligence of person," and he was hopelessly addicted to tobacco -- constantly inhaling handfuls of snuff. That may explain why he only lived to the age of 54. He had a stentorian, tobacco-damaged bass voice and he seemed uninterested in any easy beauty of sound.

At 24, Billings published his first book of choral pieces. He called it The New-England Psalm-Singer, and Paul Revere engraved the frontispiece for it. He published five more volumes and several pieces of sheet music.

The New-England Psalm-Singer was the first book of American music. It began a tradition of musical grass-roots choral singing in America and Billings knew what he'd done. He delayed publication over a year -- until he could print it on paper made in the Colonies. No English imports for Billings. The book included his song Chester, which rivaled Yankee Doodle as an anthem of revolution:

Let tyrants Shake their Iron rod
And slav'ry Clank her galling Chains
we fear them not we trust in god
New England's god for ever reigns.

Ben Franklin had said art would flow to the west -- to the new American Athens. What he got was Billings's grand idiosyncratic music -- no cultural continuity with anything. Billings's music emerged in the classical, rationalist age, with no trace of classical elegance. It's an artistic declaration of independence.

To know Billings, one should do more than just hear him; one should sing him -- four-square, almost-medieval harmonies, elaborate fugues, experiments with dissonance that foreshadow Charles Ives. He plays musical jokes, praises God, and dances into the erotic wonder of the Song of Solomon. Then he turns around and leaves us with one of the most exquisite short canons we've ever heard,

When Jesus wept, the falling tear
in mercy flowed beyond all bound ...

The essential genius of America, and of Billings, was recognizing that full independence of Europe would eventually be gained only after we'd formed our own cultural roots.



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From the writings of William Billings:

Perhaps it may be expected that I should say something concerning rules of composition; to those I answer that Nature is the best dictator, for not all the hard, dry, studied rules that ever was prescribed, will not enable any person to form an air... It must be Nature, Nature who must lay the foundation. Nature must inspire the thought... For my own part, as I don't think myself confined to any rules of composition, laid down by any that went before me, neither should I think (were I to pretend to lay down rules) that any one who came after me were in any ways obligated to adhere to them, any further than they should think proper; so in fact I think it best for every composer to be his own carver.

Perhaps some may think that I mean and intend to throw Art entirely out of the question. I answer, by no means, for the more art is displayed, the more Nature is decorated. And in some sorts of composition there is dry study required, and art very requisite. For instance, in a fuge, where the parts come in after each other with the same notes, but even here, art is subservient to genius, for fancy goes first and strikes out the work roughly, and art comes after and polishes it over.

Suppose a company of forty people, twenty of them should sing the bass, and the other twenty should be divided according to the discretion of the company into the upper parts. Six or seven voices should sing the ground bass, which sung together with the upper parts, is most majestic, and so exceeding grand as to cause the floor to tremble, as I myself have often experienced ... Much caution should also be used in singing a solo (sic); in my opinion 2 or 3 at most are enough to sing it well. It should be sung as an echo, in order to keep the hearers in agreeable suspense till all the parts join together in a full chorus, as sweet and strong as possible.

[samloveall]

The Christmas hymn, "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" has a strong link to the Civil War.  Composed during the war, the poem was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's reflections on the on-going war.  The five verses we find in our hymnals are usually in the wrong order, and they omit the two verses that actually make the poem make sense:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn, the households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

[and now THIS verse makes sense]

And in despair I bowed my head
"There is no peace on earth,

[gbShorty]

This board is very educational!  I loved seeing the missing verses.
:)