I have the privilege of working with a church that grants me study leave. Our church is one of those visionary places that recognizes when its leaders are given (sanctioned) opportunity to unplug, reflect, read, and process, we’re better at what we do. I naturally gravitate toward introverted, cerebral activities, so I purposefully plan aspects of study leave to be connecting with others in my field and learning from them. This past week, I went down to visit some new … Read More
iworship hymns…c’mon, let’s think differently about how to “redo” hymns
Check out the album.
If you’ve been checking me out, you know me by now. You know that I’m an odd lover of traditional hymns and modern worship. So I usually pick up anything that says “hymns” on it and looks remotely modern, to see what kind of work is going on in that field. I therefore picked up “iworship hymns” from Integrity music. They’ve been putting out this iworship series for a while now, and they’re latest issue is an album dedicated to hymns. It is a compilation of previously-recorded, previously-released tracks from great Integrity artists like Paul Baloche, Gateway Worship, Hillsong, New Life, etc.
The album is a good one. It’s a great listen and has great production. The texts of the songs are wonderful, and the worship leaders are all great, authentic people, passionate about God’s glory. But I’m discouraged about what’s going on in modern worship with regards to “resetting” hymns, and this is a prime example.*
I’ll begin my analysis with a vignette of a typical conversation I often have with people when I tell them about what I’m trying to accomplish with The Glad Sound. I’m sure my friends at Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, and Sojourn Community Church have had similar dialogues.
Person: So what’s your project about?
Zac: We’re taking the texts of old hymns and setting them to new music…new melodies, chord structures, and instrumentation.
Person: Oh, I LOVE that! I love it when we sing “updated” hymns in our church.
Zac: Tell me about that a bit more.
Person: You know, when they take an old hymn and “jazz it up” by adding drums or guitars or something. They just make those outdated hymns contemporary.
Zac: Oh, cool. (sigh…) [the conversation continues as I try to explain how what we’re doing is different, and hopefully better]
I don’t know how many times I have had this conversation. People don’t understand that when we’re “resetting” hymns, we are not keeping the music, at all. We are not “updating” or “jazzing up” the melodies and chord structures. It’s as though we’re taking a written poem and setting music to it for the first time. The old tune and the new tune have nothing to do with each other, except that they can be affixed to the same text. I’m not completely against this type of re-hymn setting. I think in some cases it works and sounds great (for some reason, I’ve felt that songs in 3/4 and 6/8 work better for this). But more often than not, it sounds forced, canned, and a bit artificial. There’s a good reason for this. The music was composed in a different style and genre (often block chord writing) that doesn’t easily and naturally import to modern styles (melodies with fewer chord changes between). Often, I feel that the original composers are rolling over in their graves when their music is bent out of shape. (Again, I’m not totally against it…I plan on at least attempting to jam the plainsong chant melody of “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” into a modern groove on our next album…traditionalites, don’t shoot me, please).
These types of conversations, and these types of “updated hymns” albums like “iworship hymns,” betray a myopia quite pervasive in mainstream evangelical music: the only way to do hymns in modern worship settings is to take the original melodies and affix a new instrumentation, syncopation, and beat to them. Friends, THERE IS ANOTHER WAY! And this other way is something that’s been going on for centuries (see my previous post on this for more detail). For centuries, musicians have sought to re-clothe an old hymn in the current musical vernacular. Almost any time you look in a hymnal and see a text written in one year and the music written much later, that’s usually the case.
Why is it that we only think we have one option here? Why is it that new modern worship “hymns” projects deliver to us the same thing again and again? Please don’t take me as complaining about these projects. I’m more observing and lamenting the fact that there aren’t more who are “updating” hymns in ways which feel more natural to everyone. In conversations where I’m talking to a lover of old hymns who actually gets what I’m doing, they’re appreciative, not only that I’m giving modern worshipers a taste of old hymns, but that I’m not tampering with the musical integrity of the tunes previously used for these hymns.
I just know that there is so much more to be done in re-setting hymns, but every time I pick up a new “hymns” album, it’s just the same old concept, recycled. There are SO many hymns to be brought back to the church, and there are SO many great songwriters out there! Step up! You can have so much more freedom with these hymns than you might realize!
Peace, love, dove.
*One mild exception to my discussion on the iworship hymns album is “When I Survey,” by Kathryn Scott, re-set to the tune to “O Danny Boy.” It’s actually a beautiful setting and brings out some different nuances of the text that I’m interested in exploring.
old hymns, new music…NOT a new thing
Every innovative endeavor is bound to receive some backlash…
And I’ve certainly had my share of less than enthusiastic comments about my re-setting of old hymn texts to new music. Tonight is an evening where I feel like proffering a response.
Sometimes I encounter old hymn lovers who give off the air (or say explicitly) that they don’t appreciate old hymns being tinkered with, tampered with, even desecrated. Perhaps some are aware (but I find that many are not) that such a practice of setting old texts to new melodies for modern ears and new generations of Christian assemblies has seen many iterations over church history. Even more ironic is that some of the beloved hymns that I and my hymns movement cohorts are accused of desecrating are already once-over desecrated texts. Perhaps, then, for the person unfamiliar with the history of hymnody, I’ll crack open the door of just how historic re-hymning truly is by offering a brief sketch of one man, Lowell Mason (1792-1872).
Mason was a Massachusettes-born Georgia boy, banker turned church musician. After the explosive heyday of Watts and Wesley (when they shifted in the eyes of the church from being the contemporary movers and shakers to being the more staid, “traditional” hymns…funny how that works), notwithstanding some notable hymns and hymnwriters in between, church song was growing stale. The old hymns felt tired, and worshipers wanted more fresh hymns for a new era in evangelicalism. The flurry of the first Great Awakening had come and gone, and the revival dust was settling. Mason observed American congregations, saddened by the lifelessness in the singing. He commented:
“Go where we may into the place of worship…when the singing commences…the congregation are either on the one hand gazing at the select performers to admire the music, or on the other expressing their dissatisfaction by general symptoms of restlessness.”*
Mason was dissatisfied with lifelessness and decided to do something about it. He did so, not by shirking the traditions but by re-expressing them in modern ways. He began affixing new tunes, melodies, and chord structures to glorious old hymn texts…a musical garb he believed modern listeners in his day would appreciate and resonate with. Check out the impressive list that the nethymnal offers of over 80 new tunes Mason composed here. Let me point out a few hymns that Mason re-hymned:
Joy to the World! A Watts hymn written in 1719…the original tune of which was certainly not what we sing today! Mason took the music of G. F. Handel and arranged it for congregational singing…a tune that is now immortally tied to this text.
There is a Fountain Filled with Blood. William Cowper’s 1772 hymn saw new light when Mason re-energized it and hymns of the same meter for modern ears. Interestingly, the tune that we often sing with it today (not Mason’s tune) is a 19th century camp song (ah, those silly youth and their wild music!).
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. This beloved 1707 Watts hymn was not sung to the tune we know and love, until Mason came along and wrote “Hamburg” in 1824, blessing the church in perpetuity.
The list could go on.
In the light of this, it’s quite ironic when hard and fast hymn-lovers criticize folks like myself who attempt to clothe old hymns in new music. Were it not for the members of the “hymns movement” of old, like Lowell Mason, they would not have some of their most beloved hymns! Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, Sojourn Community Church, Sovereign Grace…they’re not doing anything new. They’re recycling a repeated practice in church music history–giving back historic hymns to the modern church by re-setting them with new tunes and instrumentation.
Though some traditional hymn lovers criticize this practice, at the end of the day we join hands with the same burden. It’s a burden to see to it that great hymns don’t lose their place in the changing church. Some hymn lovers believe that the only way to relieve this burden is to dig one’s heels in and keep singing them the way they’ve always been sung. Re-tuning them is a transgression too far across the line. I humbly disagree, because, though I share their burden not only for the texts but the music, I find that the loss of music is by far and away the lesser of two evils (and sometimes the loss of music is not an evil at all, but a great good…as some of those horrid tunes need to be put in the grave! :)). I’ve waded long enough in the stream of modern worship to know that “sing em our way or the highway” will only polarize, divide, and push away. For now, modern worship, for better or worse, is tied to a certain set of musical priorities and parameters, and the music is not ancillary to the worship expression but part of the DNA of what draws worshipers to that style (which, as history tells, will change, too).
So all we’re doing in the hymns movement is attempting to be 21st century Masons. We believe in the power of these old texts. Therefore, with our musical ability, we’ll attempt to smuggle them in modern music, so that perhaps some might give them a hearing and be pleasantly surprised when a poetic profundity socks them in the gut, drawing them deeper into knowledge, insight, wisdom, and the worship of God.
And if this little post can’t convince some of my criticizers that what I’m doing is worthwhile, at least perhaps it can take some of the blinders off, curing historical myopia.
*Thomas Hastings, Biblical Repertory, July 1829, pp. 414, 415
the christian calendar for modern worship?
Let me talk about the Christian calendar, and then discuss how worship leaders in modern settings can utilize it without compromising what makes modern worship so beautiful.
Why use it
Not every church follows the church year, also called the “liturgical cycle.” Why does our church spend time doing so, observing seasons such as Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost? For one thing, it links us to practices of Christ’s church which are very ancient. We know that primitive forms of the church calendar were emerging as early as A.D. 57. Secondly, observing a uniquely Christian calendar reminds us that we are a peculiar people set against a world that doesn’t necessarily follow “God’s time.” The January-December / Sunday-Saturday calendar we follow ultimately has roots in the pagan Roman empire, and the use of a Christian calendar within the church reminds us that all our time and living revolves not around what the larger world has to offer, but around Christ Himself. Notice that all the seasons symbolically center around Christ. Advent refers to Christ’s advent on earth. Lent refers to Christ’s time of fasting and humiliation. Pentecost refers to the outpouring of Christ’s Spirit on all kinds of people. In Christ spin all the gears of time, and we acknowledge that when we worship through a Christian calendar.
How it can be used in modern worship
You don’t have to be a “liturgical” church to incorporate and observe the Christian calendar. You don’t have to change your service’s structure to walk through the church seasons (though some change might help!). First, I’d suggest just becoming educated about the Christian calendar. The least expensive, most accessible, and generally reliable way to start is wikipedia. They have a decent article on the liturgical year which will branch you to other articles that help you understand the big picture and the smaller aspects of each season. Second, once you become aware of the year, cater your song selections (or at least some of them) to the season. Songs on the Spirit during Pentecost. Songs of repentance during Lent. Eschatological songs during Advent or Epiphany. Third, use your technology to color the ambience of that season. Each liturgical season has its color. Maybe you can have a graphic designer create slide backdrops with those colors and dream up icons or thematic symbols to accompany those visuals.
Hopefully some of these suggestions can break the ice. But sky’s the limit when it comes to creative ways to help your people–even in modern worship settings–embrace the church year. And trust me, when modern worshipers with very little liturgical roots grab onto the church year, they CAN’T GET ENOUGH. It’s balm for the soul (only a slight exaggeration). Our postmodern milieu cries out for roots. The Christian calendar can be a start at providing that.
Grace & peace.