DISCOVERING MUSIC
Stephen Johnson gets to grips with classical music’s technical terms
IN THE ORIGINAL 1967 film Bedazzled, Peter Cook’s Satan perches on a mailbox and invites Dudley Moore to praise him. After a while, Moore rebels: ‘Here, I’m getting a bit bored with this. Can’t we change places?’ There’s the modern, post-nietzschean ‘death of God’ position in a nutshell. But even the über-egocentric Nietzsche admitted there were times when he missed having a god to praise. And it seems the urge to worship something greater than ourselves – especially in song – runs deep in our nature, as a visit to the football terraces should loudly affirm.
The ancient Greeks hymned either Apollo (radiant order) or Dionysus (dark disorder) in their public rites. The early Christian church opted for something closer to Apollo, preferring literally to demonise Dionysus. But like the Greeks, the Church Fathers recognised the twofold value of hymns: not only did they counteract self-inflation in individuals, they fused them together into a community by focusing their collective attention beyond themselves.
The earliest Christian hymns date from the fourth century. They could be metrical (based on regular rhythmic patterns), or more like modern free verse: a striking example of the second type being the Te Deum (‘We praise thee, O God’) – which, according to a charming legend, was supposed to have been improvised antiphonally by saints Ambrose and Augustine after the latter’s baptism. If the metrical regularity of type one was reflected in the musical setting, this made the hymn more memorable. A congregation used to singing them might therefore recognise and identify with them when they were woven into the more elaborate polyphonic church compositions of the Middle Ages.
These would still be in Latin however, which means some members of the congregation would have sung the words without much idea of what they meant. It was after the Reformation, and the translation of the Bible into everyday language, that hymns too were written in the vernacular, often to simple, characterful tunes. Arch-reformer Martin Luther was influential here, on everyday worship, and on high art: the use of Lutheran hymns in the music of JS Bach can still be stirring today, even for the most resistant hearts. Some of Luther’s hymns (or ‘chorales’) are still sung in churches all over the Christian world, holding their own against soft-pop, theology-light modern confections like ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’. Or is that just wishful thinking?
#78 HYMN