I am a musical ignoramus. For those who are intimately acquainted with the hymns of the ‘Golden Bells’ era, please don’t read this article — it will cause you to say, ‘that’s what I’ve wanted these young upstarts to realise all along’. I’m now over 40, but I still feel like a young upstart, even if I don’t look it.
For those who are more used to a Dudley-Smith/Kendrick/Townend/Getty repertoire, I’m happy to go back in time with you to re-discover some classics that have disappeared from our modern-day song lists.
The Golden Hymnal
I’m going through a bit of a Fanny Crosby renaissance at the moment. It all happened because of an office move. I had to get rid of all the stuff I didn’t need, so I found myself leafing through some of the old hymn books that had been gathering dust. One was The Golden Hymnal. I opened it randomly and came across a corker. It’s called, ‘Oh, wonderful Word’. Here’s the last verse:
Oh, wonderful, wonderful Word of the Lord!
The hope of our friends in the past;
its truth, where so firmly they anchored their trust,
through ages eternal shall last.
Oh, wonderful, wonderful Word of the Lord!
Unchanging, abiding and sure;
for we know that when time and the world pass away,
God’s Word shall forever endure.
The hymn is actually attributed to Julia Sterling, but after a bit of research I found out that this name was one of about 100 pseudonyms that Fanny Crosby used. She wrote over 8,000 hymns, making her probably the most prolific hymn-writer ever. She was blinded by a doctor’s mistake when she was only six months old, but in a statement later in life said that she wouldn’t even accept her sight back if it was offered to her, because, ‘I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me’.
Crosby also wrote ‘Blessed Assurance’, the words of which appear on her tombstone in Bridgeport, Connecticut and ‘To God be the glory’, which is attributed to Frances J. Van Alstyne (Crosby’s married name).
New tune!
Back to ‘Oh, wonderful Word’. Having discovered the hymn, I did what all we ‘youngsters’ do, and looked at the tune with a disappointed and furrowed brow. Then I did what genuine upstarts do (and here I’m really hoping that Crosby/Sankey aficionados are looking away) — I wrote a new tune. It wasn’t that Sankey’s was a bad one, it’s just that I thought a bit more could be made of the ‘wonderful, wonderful’ phrase. I used the same musical device as Charles Gabriel used in ‘How marvellous, how wonderful’ — a short, repeated, rising phrase instead of the downward movement of Sankey’s tune.
We tried it last Sunday. It got mostly positive reviews (it helped that the song has been out of our repertoire for so long that not even the oldest members of the congregation could remember the old tune).
However, here’s an email (word for word) that I received on the same day:
Hi Simpo,
Hope you’re well.
I was just wondering if there might be another tune for that new song we sang this morning (‘Oh wonderful word of the Lord’)? The lyrics are absolutely fantastic but wasn’t so sure about the music...
Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Why fix what’s not broke?’
Treasures old
One of the other ways of discovering treasures old is at thanksgiving services for those who have died believing. We recently held a service where we gave thanks for the life of a very much loved sister to us all. It’s often at these occasions when you find out what people really want to be singing every week rather than the songs foisted upon them by me. We sang two hymns I’ve never heard of in my life before – ‘Jesus, thou fount of loving hearts’ (Bernard of Clairvaux) and ‘With harps and with vials’ (Arthur Tappan Pierson). The second of these two was especially good, and I was glad to have it brought to my attention.
I was also glad to clear up a misunderstanding about the words in the first line. Most of the people who knew the song had grown up assuming that the vials mentioned alongside harps were musical instruments — they’d just thought that it was a mis-spelling of viols, I expect.
Actually, the spelling is correct — the line is referring to the harps and vials (bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints) that are held by the four living creatures and the 24 elders in John’s vision (Revelation 5.8).
If you can get hold of a copy of The Golden Hymnal, go for it. There are some absolute pearlers in there.
Just remember though, if you try to write new tunes: that dreaded email could well be winging its way to your inbox sooner than you think.
