Streamlining the Blog

We're in the process of moving this blog from Blogger to Wordpress. The URL will not change; you'll still access the blog as "www.hymnnotes.com." My husband pointed out, however, that Wordpress would more easily enable you to receive any new posts via email. We expect to have it up and running in time for the first "regular" post on January 29. These are the technical details akin to an artist crushing ingredients for paint, setting up the easel, making preliminary sketches, setting up the easel: eleven days to go!

Where "Hymn Notes" Is Heading: A City Near You?

Dearly Beloved Readers of Hymn Notes, Having children upset my plans. I stopped writing and started surviving. However, now that the little angels are more independent and now that a babysitter is coming twice per week, I intend to resume posting on a regular basis. This will begin on January 29, after I complete several commitments to individuals and institutions. Please "follow" Hymn Notes if you want to stay engaged because I do have a plan for this blog. In the meantime, would you consider hosting a lecture-concert in your home or church? "Joining the Party: Celebrating Two Thousand Years of Congregational Song" is a walk through church history with a representative song from each era, about one-third talk and two-thirds performance and audience participation. Along the way we'll explore why we need chronological breadth as well as global breadth in our songs! My family (me, one husband, and two daughters) will be traveling May 20-June 3, 2015, to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. If you decide to host a lecture-concert, your commitment would be to provide room and board for my family for one night and $150 for a house concert or $300 for a church concert; if you choose a house concert, you would receive $50 back to reimburse you for some of the food costs for your guests. I will bring a digital piano, if needed, for house concerts, and could use either that piano, your church's piano, or your church's pipe organ for church concerts. Happy New Year to all of you! Keep singing. Rebecca

The Holly and the Ivy

This Christmas you can learn an ancient carol more simply by creating a visual tag. Practice looking at a piece of holly and slowly singing or listening to the first stanza of "The Holly and the Ivy." Eventually, every time you look at a piece of holly, you'll think of this song. Here's a contemporary recording of the hymn. I think they're singing "merry harp" instead of "merry organ."

Hymn Society Annual Conference: July 13-17, 2014

The Hymn Society's Annual Conference will be held in Columbus, Ohio, this year, July 13-17. I'll be speaking in the first round of sectionals: "Hymns for a Crisis: Communal Preparations for Small to Large Calamities."

Integrating Children in Worship

I was surprised to receive two separate queries this month about a post from last year on children's sermons. Having worked a little more with children this year and having read a lot more about children, here are the two very best titles I've found for integrating children into worship:

The Church of All Ages, ed. Howard Vanderwell (Herndon, Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2008)

A Child Shall Lead: Children in Worship, ed. John D. Witvliet (Garland, Texas: Choristers Guild, 1999)

They include some discussion of the development of the children sermon; the historical role of children in worship; philosophical and theological perspectives; and LOTS of practical ideas.

Merry Christmas!

"A Mighty Fortress": The Reformation Lives On

Note: This was originally printed for a September bulletin.

On October 31, 1517, twelve years before he wrote this hymn, the Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power of Indulgences to the door of a Wittenberg, Germany, church, effectively sparking the Protestant Reformation with his critique of indulgences sold by the Catholic church. Out of this Reformation, celebrating its 490th anniversary next month, was born all of the other churches (besides Roman Catholic and Orthodox) that we know today: Lutherans, Presbyterians (including the branches of the Reformed Church), Anabaptists (predecessors of the Baptist denominations)--and Anglicans [that's the church I'm currently serving]!

One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was the five "solas", meaning "alone":

Sola gratia (we are saved "by grace alone")
Sola fide (through "faith alone")
Sola scriptura ("Scripture alone" is the source of Christian doctrine)
Solus Christus ("Christ alone" is the mediator between God and man)
Soli Deo Gloria (all glory is due to "God alone")

Two of the ways Luther expressed the idea of sola scriptura were by encouraging ordinary people to read Scripture for themselves and to sing scriptural ideas in their own languages, rather than merely hearing scriptural ideas sung in Latin. Because of his emphasis on ordinary people participating in the service, Luther was a father of congregational singing.

"A Mighty Fortress" expresses the strength of ordinary people's devotion in the face of much resistance, and since its words and tune were both written by the founder of the Protestant Reformation, it has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation." For a while, it is the last hymn we will sing that was written by a monk--because ordinary people learned to read, write, and praise God with hymns in their own languages. May we sing it today with vigor, knowing we stand with generations of ordinary people to praise an extraordinary God.

"Be Thou My Vision" 4: Valuing the Tune

Not only the words to the church's hymns but the tunes themselves are gifts from the Holy Spirit, to be treasured and passed down from one generation to the next. The tune of Be Thou My Vision is known as SLANE (hymn tune names are typically capitalized), and refers to a very dramatic event that occurred on March 26, AD 433 (Easter Sunday), on the Hill of Slane in Ireland.

Oral tradition relates that at the command of Leoghaire, the Supreme Monarch of Ireland, the druids and Irish chiefs were to meet in full number...

"...and the decree went forth that... the fires throughout the kingdom should be extinguished until the signal blaze was kindled at the royal mansion. ... [The druids] would muster all their strength to bid defiance to the herald of good tidings and to secure the hold of their superstition on the Celtic race, for their demoniac oracles had announced that the messenger of Christ had come to Erin. St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, at the opposite extremity of the valley from Tara, on Easter Eve...and on the summit of the hill kindled the Paschal fire [as an Easter fire, it was a sign of the presence of Christ, the Light of the world]. The druids at once raised their voice. 'O King', (they said) 'live for ever; this fire, which has been lighted in defiance of the royal edict, will blaze for ever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished.' By order of the king and the agency of the druids, repeated attempts were made to extinguish the blessed fire and to punish with death the intruder who had disobeyed the royal command. But the fire was not extinguished and Patrick shielded by the Divine power came unscathed from their snares and assaults. On Easter Day the missionary band having at their head the youth Benignus bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels, and followed by St. Patrick who with mitre and crozier was arrayed in full episcopal attire, proceeded in processional order to Tara. The druids and magicians put forth all their strength and employed all their incantations to maintain their sway over the Irish race, but the prayer and faith of Patrick achieved a glorious triumph. The druids by their incantations overspread the hill and surrounding plain with a cloud of worse than Egyptian darkness. Patrick defied them to remove that cloud, and when all their efforts were made in vain, at his prayer the sun sent forth its rays and the brightest sunshine lit up the scene. Again by demoniac power the Arch-Druid Lochru, like Simon Magus of old, was lifted up high in the air, but when Patrick knelt in prayer the druid from his flight was dashed to pieces upon a rock.
"Thus was the final blow given to paganism in the presence of all the assembled chieftains. It was, indeed, a momentous day for the Irish race" (from "http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm", accessed July 25, 2007).

The Irish folk song Slane was written about this occasion, and became the hymn tune SLANE when it was matched appropriately to the Irish monastic prayer of protection, Be Thou My Vision, in the early 1900's.

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If the tunes themselves are gifts, we should treat them well!

If you are singing this tune at home, here is a hint to help you find the correct rhythm in one difficult place: for the words to match the tune, one syllable in the third line usually gets two beats instead of one.

The syllable that gets two beats is capitalized in the following illustrations.

1. Thou my best THOUGHT, by day or by night....
2. Thou my great FA-ther, I Thy true son....
3. Thou my soul's SHEL-ter, Thou my high tower....
4. Thou and Thou ON-ly, first in my heart....
5. Heart of my own heart, whatever befall.... (here the syllables match the tune, beat for beat)