Recently I was reading and listening to music in the background, when the tune “Ashokan Farewell” came on; you may know it as the theme music to Ken Burns’ series on the Civil War.  It was so beautiful, that I gave it my full attention.  When it was over, I tried to think of other melodies that were as captivatingly beautiful.  Certainly, Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” is loved by many, and “Greensleeves” has been a popular melody for over five hundred years. I think that the music of the Beatles has been so long-lived because even though it is rock music, it also predominantly melodic.  John Rutter, who has composed many church choir anthems, has also composed a concerto based on their music. Sometimes a catchy melody gets caught in our brain, and we find ourselves annoyingly playing it over and over again in our heads.  We call these ear worms; I think the worst of these is Disney’s “It’s a Small World.”

            Melody is the part of music most like singing, and indeed if you hear a tune you like, and for which you know the words (and sometimes even if you don’t), you can’t help singing along.  In the case of church music, this has an even more important function; not only does a good melody encourage us to sing, but it strengthens the meaning of the words in our minds.  In contrast, if I sing a hymn that whose melody seems foreign or awkward, I can sing all the words to the hymn, and at the end still have no idea what the message of the hymn was.  Most hymns are poems, and most of us, going all the way back to our English classes, have trouble finding the meaning of poems; somehow, maybe through what the music emphasizes, the melody helps bring the meaning home to us.  For example, “Amazing Grace” is probably the favorite hymn of all time, and the words are deeply moving. It was written in 1772 and set to several different tunes, but it didn’t become the beloved hymn, meaningful to so many, until it was set to the American tune “New Britain” in William Walker’s shape note hymnal of 1835. The hymn “In My Heart There Rings a Melody”, which I don’t recall ever singing at Joy, implicitly speaks to this melodic strength.

            Here are a few of my favorite melodic hymns (as an exercise, please try to see what each brings to mind before reading the next): many Negro Spirituals, for example “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot;” “Be Still My Soul” whose melody was taken from the patriotic symphonic work “Finlandia”  by Jean Sibelius; “Be Thou My Vision”, which is said to be the favorite hymn of King Charles; “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky” by Dan Schutte (1982) – during the chorus you can just hear Isaiah responding, “Here I Am” to the Lord’s question, “Whom Shall I Send?” (Isaiah 6:8); no Christmas could be complete without “Silent Night;” and Easter is perfectly brought home by the Charles Wesley hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”  My favorite may be the Moravian hymn “Jesus Makes My Heart Rejoice.”

            Martin Luther said it best, “The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the Word of God through music.” It is a gift that helps us realize God’s unconditional love for YOU and me.

Jim

Below are the links to two of the hymns I mentioned. First “Ashokan Farewell” and then “Jesus Makes My Heart Rejoice.”