Please do check out an article that appeared in Touchstone magazine, "No More 'Hims' of Praise". It's a little sarcastic, but proves a good lesson on why we should exercise much more care in editing hymns--or why we should keep our hands off the hymn editing altogether!
"Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven" is the subject. The author takes us through a contemporary version of the hymn and compares it to the original, with commentary, stanza by stanza.
4 comments:
There are some things that just make me break out in a stupid grin as I'm singing at the siliness perpetrated when the words are changed.
There is one song that goes:
"I sought the Lord and He answered me"
Was changed to:
"I sought the Lord and God answered me"
Every time I sing that I think about a phone call to heaven.
"Hello... Heaven, God speaking."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number, I was looking for the Lord."
Thanks for the comment, Tony!
I like the name of your blog, "Catholic Pillow Fight".
Did that song ("I sought the Lord and God answered me") show up in a revised Catholic liturgy? Which songbook?
I've been working for a couple months now on evaluating the three official supplements of the Episcopal church and am struck by how the editors deal with gender issues: sometimes they edit out all mention of gender (Wonder, Love, and Praise), other times they assert the femininity of God (Voices Found). That probably should be a blog post...
Actually, Rebecca, to be fair, the song was trying to "cut the baby in two".
It appeared like this.
"I sought the Lord and He (God) answered me"
Our music director had taken a pencil to the "He" and asked us to use "God".
It made the line sound silly.
I'll try and hunt up the octavo and let you know which one it was.
Thanks for your reply!
That's OK, no need to look up the song title. I was interested to know if it was PUBLISHED with that change, but it sounds like the music director verbally requested the change.
Ironically, my own choir will be singing "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven" this month in an edition that was published with those same gender-neutral words discussed in the article! But since I'm the music director, I'm going to change all the words back. :) (That edition was purchased by the previous musical director.)
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