I remembered reading somewhere that the Pilgrims liked the tune to “Old Hundredth” because it was lively — not the modernized, plain vanilla, 4/4 version found in most hymnals these days, but the original version that trips up modern singers on the last line because of the change in rhythm. I convinced Amy that we should sing the original version in the intergenerational Thanksgiving service this past Sunday — sure enough, at the 9:30 service all of us (including me!) got tripped up on the rhythm of the last line. At the 11:00 service, I was smart enough to warn people to watch out for that last line, and we sang it without a hitch.

Later I realized I should have created a half-sheet insert of the sheet music for the order of service. Even though fewer and fewer people read music these days, there are still enough music readers that they could have helped keep everyone else on track. (Plus when you provide an insert, it can serve as a teaching and outreach tool — music readers might take it home and learn one of the harmony parts to the music.) Since someone else might actually use such an insert, below is a link to a PDF. The text is a common humanist version of words by Isaac Watts: “From all that dwell below the skies, / Let songs of hope and faith arise, / Let peace, good will on earth be sung, / Through every land by every tongue.”

Old Hundredth (original form).

The Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois, sings their doxology to Old Hundredth every week — but they use different versions of the tune, including the original version above, and a version by Susan Conant with more modern harmonies and even more interesting rhythms. If you’re going to sing the same thing every week, you might as well make it interesting! In that spirit, here’s yet another version of Old Hundredth — William Walker’s arrangement of Old Hundredth from The Southern Harmony (1835), laid out in classic shape-note fashion on a half-sheet size suitable for an insert into an order of service:

Old Hundredth arr. by William Walker.

One of the best short essays on singing in worship just went up at the Alban Institute Web site. In the essay, titled “Singing an Eclectic Repertoire,” authors Bruce G. Epperly and Daryl Hollinger point out that singing in church “is not about aesthetics — about what we like or dislike. It is about singing our faith in our local community while opening ourselves to new possibilities for singing and worship.” With that principle in mind, they offer some really great ideas for singing a wide-ranging repertoire that includes the following types of sacred song: early American, Irish folk, Hebrew traditional, African American spiritual, gospel, African, Latino, Asian, and contemporary musics.

For example, check out this suggestion for singing Irish folk melodies: “Most people don’t know that the origin of the song ‘Be Thou My Vision’ was an Irish folk tune. If you play it directly from most hymnals, it will sound more like a traditional Germanic hymn. When we simplify the harmonies and change chords primarily only once a measure, the mood changes drastically. The tempo can be lively. Adding a triangle, tambourine, and hand drum will enhance the Irish flavor.” Obviously, you could use similar ideas with English folk melodies as well.

Epperly and Hollinger don’t cover every type of music we sing as sacred song. They don’t cover Welsh tunes, medieval music, or contemporary North American chant, for example. But the authors don’t need to give us precise instructions on singing (and leading) every different type of sacred song. Once we realize that most congregations tend to make every song sound either like (a) old Germanic hymns, or (b) contemporary praise music — we can deal with that tendency, transcend our present narrow approaches, and become truly eclectic singers.

How about Tuvan throat singing in church? Would that be going too far? Umm, OK, I guess something like this might drive some people out of a worship service.

I’m bored with contemporary liberal religious hymnody. (Remember, hymns are the words that we sing, not the music itself.) We have a bunch of 19th century hymns which are pretty good, but which tend to carry the 19th century curses of sentimentality and niceness. We have some singer-songwriter hymns, and some praise-band songs, all of which I find vapid and overly individualistic, and sometimes cloyingly sweet, as if you’re drinking a glass of molasses. I like some of the old African American spirituals, but we religious liberals tend to remove some of the best imagery and the most striking word choices.

Recently, I’ve been reading Isaac Watts’s hymns. I find that I like many of his translations of the psalms in his Psalms of David: his verse is solid and sometimes poetic, his rhymes are fun to sing, and his imagery is often striking. But I don’t like his limitarian, non-Universalist theology one bit, and I don’t like the way he plays fast and loose with the Psalms — e.g., there is absolutely no mention of Jesus in the Psalms, yet Watts is constantly dragging Jesus into his hymns which are supposedly based on the psalms.

Before Watts, there was The Bay Psalm Book, another metrical translation of psalms from the Hebrew Bible, used by many of the 17th and 18th century New England churches that later became Unitarian congregations. In the first edition of this psalter, the translators tried to make as literal a translation as possible. This can make for awkward singing. Yet awkward though it may be, it has a directness and an immediacy that I find refreshing; and it retains all the vivid imagery of the Hebrew Bible psalms.

Scott Wells of the blog Boy in the Bands recently pointed me to Elhanan Winchester’s The Psalms of David. Winchester was a Universalist, so I’m much more comfortable with his theology. His verse is pretty good, too. He has his problems — like Watts he plunks Jesus down in the middle of old Jewish psalms that really have nothing to do with Jesus — but he’s a nice example of what good traditional Universalist hymnody could look like.

On the Unitarian side, there’s the 1865 Hymns of the Spirit by Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson. Some of these hymns are quite good, certainly better than anything written by later Unitarian or Unitarian Universalist hymnodists — we still sing some of these hymns today. These are definitely 19th century hymns, which means a little too sentimental and nice at times, but the verse is pretty good, and some of the images are also pretty good.

I don’t want to resurrect these old hymnals; I’ve been reading them to help me understand what I want in a new hymnody. I have no talent for writing hymns myself, but I know what I wish for in a new liberal religion hymnody. I wish we had hymns that addressed big religious issues like death, grief, illness and healing, ultimate reality, and religious ecstasy. I wish our hymns were in vigorous metrical verse with interesting rhymes and vivid imagery. I wish our hymnodists knew at least some basic theology so they could give us some real intellectual content (Watts was a Doctor of Divinity, and his knowledge of theology made a difference).

Most of the contemporary debate in this area has centered on musical styles. Maybe we should let go of the music for a bit, and focus instead on hymnody — on the words that we sing. Instead of encouraging musicians, maybe it’s time to encourage our poets and hymn writers. Once we have a body of good hymns, then we can work on finding the best composers to set the new hymns to music.