Good Good Friday hymn

Tonight I ended Lent the same way it began — by worshiping at the local LCMS parish that I once attended. (Due to a schedule mixup, we missed the service at our Anglican parish.)

It reminded me of my days in their choir, particularly the good days when we got to sing Bach and other traditional four part harmonies. Out of The Lutheran Hymnal, we sang “Jesus, I will ponder now” — something I’ve never heard in a ECUSA/Anglican service but was very familiar from my LCMS period.

My former section partner drafted me to the choir to help him with another local favorite — “God so loved the world” by John Stainer.

However, the musical highlight of the Tenebrae service was the hymn I consider the quintessential Good Friday hymn: “O sacred head now wounded.” It was sung in between passion lessons as the candles were extinguished.

The original 12th century Latin text (Salve caput cruentatum) is attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, but the hymn owes its origins to the German Lutheran reformers: a German adaptation by Paul Gerhardt, the melody (Passion Chorale) by Hans Leo Hassler (1601).

Despite its Lutheran bonafides, it’s also a familiar tune among Anglicans. Oremus lists the hymn as being in all the major Anglican hymnals: Hymns Ancient and Modern, The English Hymnal, Songs of Praise and New English Hymnal in England, Hymnal 1916, Hymnal 1940 and Hymnal 1982 in the US, as well as hymnals from Ireland, Canada and Australia.

The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) uses their own harmonization while ironically the Anglicans seem to use the Bach harmonization (with many more passing notes). The Lutheran Service Book (2006) lists both harmonization.

The other major difference is in the German to English translation. Hymnal 1940 (#75) and Hymnal 1982 (#168) use an English translation by Robert Seymour Bridges that begins:

O sacred head, sore wounded
Defined and put to scorn.
O kingly head, surrounded,
with mocking crown of thorn.

while the American Lutherans use an unattributed translation from the TLH that’s slightly different:

O sacred Head, now wounded,
With grief and shame weighed down.
How scornfully surrounded
With thorns, Thine only crown.

I’ve sung both so at this point both seem OK. A more serious difference is that the Lutherans keep all 10 verses, while the ECUSA hymnals only keep 4 and 5 respectively (a rare example of where H82 is an improvement). Alas, the LSB drops down to 4 verses for Bach and 7 verses for the TLH harmonization.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a hymn more appropriate for Good Friday. It would be a “must sing” hymn for Good Friday if I were a Continuing Anglican music director, just as it is at this LCMS parish. The only other hymn that comes to mind is the Negro spiritual “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” (H40: #80) which we used as an anthem one year at this LCMS parish.

Update Saturday 3:30 p.m.: Catching up on Issues Etc., I found that on Friday it broadcast an interview with Pastor Will Weedon on this very hymn. Quoting Dr. C. Matthew Philips of Concordia U Nebraska, Pastor Weedon attributes the Latin text to Arnulf of Louvain, a 13th century poet and abbot.

A quick search on Google Scholar reveals a 2005 article that says:

Gerhardt could still use medieval models for his hymnody, including Arnulf of Louvain, whose 'Salve caput cruentatum' lies behind the well-known 'O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden' ('O sacred head surrounded').

Singing the praises of Issues Etc.

As noted in earlier postings, I’m been a big fan of Issues Etc. It’s played a tremendous role in acquainting me with Lutheran theology and also the efforts of traditionalist Christians to push back against a secular culture.

The LCMS radio show hosted by Todd Wilken has done shows on specific hymns and more broadly on the role of music in liturgy in 2008 and 2007.

However, in catching up on some broadcasts earlier this year, I want to call attention to two shows on famous German Lutheran church musicians

• July 28, 2009: J.S. Bach, interview with Rev. Paul McCain (a LCMS blogger, pastor and publishing exec)
• May 15, 2009, Georg Friedrich Händel — specifically the most famous English-language religious oratorio of all time — discussed by Dr. Joseph Herl of Concordia University Nebraska

Time does not permit me to summarize the two shows, but I commend them to those interested in religious music — available either via the links above, the archive webpage or iTunes podcasts.

What about those Germans?

Music columnist B.L. Scherer wrote a delightful article (subscription required) in today’s Wall Street Journal about annual Bethlehem Bach Festival, hosted by the local Bach Choir (www.bach.org — love that URL). Both the festival and the review were almost (not quite) enough to make me wish I lived on the EastCoast.

[T]he Bach Choir represents a musical culture that was once a vital part of American life.

Post-Civil War America shared with Victorian England a love of choral music, and, oddly enough, choral societies and major choral festivals often sprang up in industrial areas like Leeds, Huddersfield and Birmingham in England's sooty midlands, American mill towns like Worcester, Mass., and places with large German-immigrant populations, like Cincinnati and Milwaukee.

Why this link between choral music and heavy industry? At that time, most industrial towns offered few pastimes for their working-class populace beside taverns and blood sports. Hence the founding of amateur choruses, with their regularly scheduled rehearsals, offered men and women an opportunity for respectable social interaction, combined with the positive aspect of learning and performing music.

I can’t verify the claimed link to heavy industry; after all, choirs today often tend to be filled with adults that have a love of classical music, which now is a decidedly elite orientation. However, from years of thumbing through my hymnal, I certainly recognize the links between the late 19th century choral renaissance in England and the US.

With my focus on “Anglican” (née Episcopal) hymnody, Scherer reminds me of the profound influence that Germans had upon both British and American hymnals (notwithstanding some ill-will between the two groups from 1914-1945). No one can dispute that J.S. Bach is the father of the four-part chorale, and some (including me) would argue its most sublime composer. While I haven’t whipped out my Piston to analyze those great 19th century hymns, from singing most seem to owe more to Bach than 19th century composers like Berlioz or Bruckner.

The direct German contributions to Anglican hymnals are easy to measure. The composer index of the 1940 Hymnal lists 16 hymns by J.S. Bach — tied with R. Vaughan Williams and ahead of the entire Wesley family (mainly S.S. Wesley). It also lists 16 tunes under the category of “German Melody” (which have a publisher) or “German Traditional Melody” (which don’t), as well as 5 by Mendelssohn, 2 by Handel (a German in England), 1 by J.C. Bach, and various hymns from local Gesangbücher.

There is also the influence of Martin Luther — both upon the Anglican church and its music. Anglican churches perform a large body of Lutheran church music — beginning with Luther but also Johann Crüger (10 hymns) of the Berlin Nikolaikirche and then Bach with his chorales and sacred cantatas. Of course, 19th German immigrants to the U.S. created the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod (now Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod), the 2nd largest Lutheran group in the U.S. (but still larger than TEC).

I have yet to trace the flows of hymns between Anglican and Lutheran hymnals. In some cases, there are obvious direct linkages, as when Sine Nomine written for the 1906 The English Hymnal became hymn #463 in the (US) 1941 The Lutheran Hymnal. In other cases, there are common antecedents, as with so many Christmas hymns and probably most of the Bach.

Still, Anglican worship borrows a lot in both theology and liturgical music from the the Germans, something Americans (focused on our debt to England) tend to forget.

Credit: painting of J.S. Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, as archived by Wikipedia.