Dear Lord, we give thanks for Hubert Parry

In doing my research this past year on Anglican parish hymn singing, I made up a list of litmus questions to ask music directors, all of which got at a tension in the American interpretation of English hymn-singing. One was “Hail thee, Festival Day!” — which is both the great Vaughan Williams tune from The English Hymnal and a difficult hymn to sing.

Another was using Repton for Whittier’s text “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” When it was mentioned this month on our favorite Facebook group, my daughter had never realized that it was missing from the hymnal she grew up on (her dad’s favorite hymnal) but was instead a later addition.

Two years ago I blogged on this combination — one of five tunes used for this text by Anglican hymnals — because the music director at my current church loves Repton. It was only in the past month that I realized how rare — and recent — the pairing is. Hymnary lists the hymn text as appearing in 434 hymnals, with tune names for 134. Of these 134, only 23 list Repton.

Songs of Praise

The first example of this pairing was in Songs of Praise (1925), where it was the first tune of Hymn #481 in both SOP and Songs of Praise, Extended Edition (1933).

SOP had Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams as music editor, and Percy Dearmer as text editor. This hymnal is little known among Americans, but it was the key English hymnal between The English Hymnal (1906) and the New English Hymnal (1986). If you look at writing about 20th century British hymnody, the only other seminal hymn book during this period is the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols — with the same three editors.

Vaughan Williams and Dearmer had played the same roles in The English Hymnal, the most influential English hymn book of the 20th century. This is ironic, since (according to Wikipedia quoting a Dearmer biography) SOP was created by the two men (plus Shaw) because TEH was too “high church”. I don’t have direct knowledge of early 20th century COE politics, but clearly TEH was less high church than Hymns Ancient & Modern, which is undeniably among the most high church English-language hymnals of all time.

We could just take the editors at their word. Here is how the newer preface in SOPEE (1933) begins

When Songs of Praise was first published in 1925, the object to make, so far as then possible, a collection of hymns that should be national in character; and a hope was expressed in the Preface that the book might be of use to those who bear the responsibility of our national education.

The preface then elaborates on how the original SOP was adopted in British schools, and how the editors of SOPEE sought to incorporate their feedback in the revision.

Parry’s Tune Repton

This is what the hymnal companion to SOP (Songs of Praise Discussed, 1933) says about the tune

repton, by Sir Hubert Parry, is from his oratorio Judith (1888), where in Scene ii, a dialogue between Meshollemeth and a Child, it is sung by the former to the words beginning ‘Long since in Egypt’s plenteous land’. The tune is typical of the composer in its broad melody, and especially in the elliptical rhythm of the last three lines. In its present form it makes a fine, strong unison tune.

Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) was the English composer who was an Oxford music professor from 1900-1908, succeeding John Stainer.  Unlike the other tunes, the lilting pastoral melody drives to a conclusion. Note that with Repton, the last phrase (“In deeper reverence praise”) is repeated but not with the other tunes (Rest, Nicolaus, Hammersmith).

The Parry-Whittier Combination

As elsewhere in SOP, the new tune for words previously in TEH retained the TEH text — in this case, the same five verses as TEH #383, beginning with

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways;
reclothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper reverence, praise.

The original text also continued in later hymnals through the 1980s.

The use of Repton in SOP was ignored by Hymnal 1940 (#435). The Hymnal 1940 Companion (pp. 270-271) says Whittier’s text was written in 1872, first published as a hymn in 1884, and first published in an ECUSA hymnal in Hymnal 1916. The H40C notes the second tune (Rest) was written for this specific text in the Congregational Hymnal (1887).

Cantate Domino, #922

However, the next three American hymnals did include Repton:

• Cantate Domino (#922), the 1979 Anglo-Catholic supplement to Hymnal 1940 (sequentially numbered from H40) that was prepared by the ESCUA diocese of Chicago. It has a simplified version of the SOP harmonization.
• Hymnal 1982 (#653), simplified to unison — with the accompaniment printed only in the organist accompaniment edition.
• Book of Common Praise 2017 (#602), with a slightly more complex version than the 1979 hymnal. This is the only edition not marked “unison”, with the implication the harmonization can be sung — but (as with much of BCP17) not all that singable by a congregation or unrehearsed choir.

The first three staves of the arrangement
in the New English Hymnal.

In the second half of the century, Repton was the preferred tune of most Anglican hymnals:

• Hymn Book of the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada
(1971), #249
• Australian Hymn Book with Catholic Supplement (1977), #519 (2nd tune)
• New English Hymnal (1986), #353, with the same harmonization as SOPEE
• Common Praise (2000), #411, with a simplified harmonization

Despite the longstanding respect for Whittier’s text, later hymnals rewrote the text to serve their sociopolitical goals. The aggressive inclusivity in 1995 of The New Century Hymnal by the United Church of Christ bowdlerizes Whittier’s opening phrase as “Dear God, embracing humankind.”

Meanwhile, the 1998 English Common Praise twists it to become “Dear God, compassionate and kind.” The harmonization is the same as the subsequent 2000 edition of Common Praise with the original words.

Conclusions

This is a clear case where the original (arguably most authentic) tune has become obsolete — the revised pairing 40 years later (by Vaughan Williams and/or Shaw) has become the new standard. Sometimes the adoption of a new tune is (arguably) an inferior choice, but — according to the consensus of music directors that I interviewed for my study — this is clearly a better choice.

References

Percy Dearmer, Songs of Praise Discussed, London: Oxford, 1933.

Percy Dearmer, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, eds., Songs of Praise, London: Oxford, 1925.

Percy Dearmer, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, eds., Songs of Praise, Enlarged Edition, London: Oxford, 1933.

Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Cantate Domino: Hymnal Supplement G-2264, Chicago: GIA, 1979.

New English Hymnal, London: Canterbury Press, 1986.

The Hymnal 1940 Companion, 3rd rev. ed., New York: Church Pension Fund, 1951.