Hearty tunes, not happy-clappy, please

“MANY THANKS to the correspondents who solved my hymn tune puzzle,” writes the Craigie contributor who originally raised the issue of the tune “Whitburn”.

“No wonder I could not find it in my desperate last-minute search through our various hymn books as the organist played the opening verse. So ‘Whitburn’ has another name – ‘Hesperus’? No wonder I was shipwrecked and had to sing the bass part from memory and by ear. I found it in the Church of Scotland’s ‘Revised Hymnary’.

“I agree with John Gove of Gourdon. ‘Winscott’ is a far better tune for ‘Lord, speak to me’.

“Two factors work against me these days in church: I sang tenor for more than 40 years, then switched to bass as my voice deepened with age; the other is that more and more well-loved hymns are being dropped from modern church services or sung to inferior tunes.

“The result is that a tune like ‘Whitburn’ which I have not been given the opportunity to sing for years is more familiar to me in the tenor part than the bass.

“The dire hymn choice of ‘Songs and Praise’ and most ministers these days has me falling back on recordings played at home of the wonderful old hymns sung by magnificent Welsh choirs or played by spirit-uplifting brass bands.

“Why do ministers cater for the happyclappy, boom-boom tastes of the young when they so silence the hearty singing of the old as to tear the heart of our services? It’s not fair!”