Amen! to the plagal cadence

There were four papers related to Anglican music at this week’s annual conference of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, held at St. Michael’s College in Toronto. One paper looked at the metrical psalm translation of Abp. Matthew Parker, another the BBC’s weekly broadcasts of choral evensong.

A third paper was my ethnographic study of hymn singing at six Episcopal/Anglican parishes. At the beginning of my session, Jason Terry of Bradley University presented the other Anglican paper — a summary of his 2016 doctoral dissertation, “A History Of The Plagal-Amen Cadence.”

Dr. Terry only had time to present about 10% of his 133-page dissertation. However, a sense of it can be seen in the beginning of his dissertation abstract:

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, most hymns in the Anglo-American tradition ended with the congregation singing amen following the original stanzas, almost always framed within a plagal cadence. Helping this tradition take root was Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861), an Anglican hymnal that published the “amen” cadence after every modern hymn. This practice was heavily adopted among other denominational hymnals throughout England and the United States, peaking around the turn of the century. By the middle of the twentieth century, a decline in the number of hymnals including this cadence was noticeable; however, it would take until the end of the century for the plagal-amen cadence to disappear from hymnals.

In his talk, he traced both the origin of the “Amen” and then the plagal (IV-I) chord progression for the Amen.

Historic use of “Amen”

The oral presentation skipped over the text of his dissertation that summarizes the use of the “Amen” in the first 1500 years of Christianity:

In contemporary worship, amen is most frequently heard as a closing to a prayer. … Interestingly, no prayer in the New Testament Gospels concludes with amen, including the recorded prayers of Christ. Neither is it suggested anywhere in the New Testament that worship leaders added amen to their own prayer except after a doxology. Rather, when the prayer finished with “through the Lord Jesus Christ,” the response was amen.

Thus in New Testament writings, amen was used more commonly as an approval or confirmation of the leader’s prayer, not as a concluding word to the prayer itself. This convention was altered some centuries later when communal prayers with their established texts included the congregational amen as a part of the text. Such formulae were loved by early Christians and they “used them as an expression of greeting, a token of union, a sign of recognition, almost as a password.

The practice of concluding prayers with amen has become so popular in Church history that, since the standardization of worship elements (i.e., collect prayers, spoken formulae, etc.), it was quite rare to hear a prayer without a prominent amen. By the time the Reformers decided to alter worship templates, it would have been unlikely that they would alter the place of amen within worship.

Which is the hymn which authentically requires an “Amen”?

Ambrosian hymns—hymns in the style of Ambrose, though not necessarily penned by him—have continuously been sung by the Church since their conception. While all of the hymn’s text would have been important to the worshipers, the part most relevant to the present research is the doxological endings. The template of Ambrosian hymns was to end with a Trinitarian doxology (and consequently a concluding amen). Erik Routley assumes the custom to have been that most Christians “within earshot of the hymn being sung would shout out amen.”By this, the shouters would affirm their belief in what had just been sung and implicitly repudiate the heretical doctrines of the day 

The Plagal Cadence

For the plagal cadence, a key antecedent was John Merbecke’s Book of Common Praier Noted (1550), as in this collect from page 60 of Merbecke (p. 16 of Terry’s dissertation):

Since I decades removed from my last composition class, Terry had to remind me that the plagal cadence assumes that the melody of the “Amen” remains on the root, as opposed to a rising half step (ti-do) or falling step (re-do) would typically resolve V-I (“authentic” cadence).

Two decades later, Thomas Tallis’ Preces and Responses (1570) [a musical setting of key texts in sung Morning Prayer] includes both plagal and authentic cadences.

A Plague of Amens

To understand the trend in the use of the “Amen,” Terry told the conference that he spent 3.5 years looking at more than 1,000 hymnals. In short form, what happened was

• Thomas Helmore adopted plagal cadences, both in his Manual of Plainsong (1850) and as music editor of Hymnal Noted (1851)
• As in so many other aspects of 19th century hymnody
• Hymns Ancient & Modern copied/adapted Hymnal Noted
• English hymnody quickly copied Hymns A&M assuming the Anglicans were the liturgical experts
• In the mid- to late-20th century, the Anglicans started phasing out Amens
• Eventually most hymnals followed suit

Conclusion

The dissertation includes discussion of the use of “Amen” in the ancient and medieval period. In his talk, Terry also alluded to the various alternate theories of transmission that he investigated (and ruled out) between 1570 and 1850.

It still is a complicated story. Because this is such a common area of confusion (or at least interest) by Anglican laity, I am hoping that he will publish a summary version in a form that is suitable for a church adult education class.

Veni Emmanuel out of sync thanks to Hymnal 1982

Differences between hymnals — either in updates or between dominations — usually cause confusion due to the change in words. Differences in harmony are also widespread, but only impact those who sing parts (in my experience, less than 10% of those in the pews in most churches).

Earlier this week I witnessed a train wreck that I’d never seen before — due to a difference in the melody that everyone sings. Specifically, the congregation at an Anglican church was confused due to a unique change in the meter made by Hymnal 1982 to the oldest — if not the greatest† — Advent hymn of all time: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

To cut to the chase, today there are four different meters used for the tune Veni Emmanuel:

1. There is the original version by John Mason Neale and Thomas Helmore in Hymnal Noted, published from 1851-1854.
2. There is the way used by Hymns Ancient & Modern, The English Hymnal, the New English Hymnal, and any CD or YouTube video of English choristers that you might listen to. This also appears to be the way that most American Protestant hymnals do it: I’ve looked at Baptist, Lutheran and Methodist hymnals, and they all match this.
3. There is the version of Hymnal 1940 and its recent update, the REC’s Book of Common Praise 2017.
4. There is the unique version of Hymnal 1982.

At Sunday’s service, the organ and instruments were doing #4, while the choir and most of the congregation (largely ex-Baptist and Methodist) were doing #2 (perhaps some doing #3). After two verses, everyone gave in to the organ, but the confusion was clearly something that any parish would want to avoid.

1. Hymnal Noted

Earlier this year I published an academic article in The Hymn on the impact of Hymnal Noted upon 20th century American hymnody. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” was the second most popular hymn in the American hymnals, with Neale’s translation credited in 16 of 24 hymnals; four hymnals included the hymn, but used a updated translation (based on Neale’s) that did not credit Neale.†† Here is how I summarized the origins of the text:

Neale translated “Veni Emmanuel” by selecting five daily Advent antiphons that date to the eighth century, compiled in the twelfth century and later published in a 1710 Cologne Latin psalter.  Neale re-ordered the final (Dec. 22) antiphon to be the first verse…

All versions of the hymn used a version of the tune arranged by Helmore. Here is how I summarized the tune:

All of these hymnals use the tune Veni Emmanuel from Volume 2 of HN (Figure 1). It was adapted by Helmore from a French missal discovered by Neale in Portugal, a manuscript that others have been unable to locate. In the 1960s, a parallel fifteenth-century processional from a French nunnery was rediscovered in the National Library in Paris and subsequent discoveries suggest that the tune may have originally been a Franciscan funeral chant.¶ However, the characteristic refrain that begins “Rejoice! Rejoice!” was of Helmore’s own creation.

Here is the first phrase. Note that each phrase of the chant ends with a two-beat note:

2. English Hymnals

The hymn was quickly picked up by Hymns Ancient & Modern, the most influential (and commercially successful) of all Victorian English hymnals. The text was slightly modified, most notably by changing Neale’s “Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel” to the now-familiar “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”

It was hymn #36 in the original A&M, while the much revised 2nd edition of 1875 lists it as #49. (The same numbering was retained in the 1889, 1916 and 1924 editions). Below is how the first phrase appears in the 1889 edition:

Note that each phrase ends on a three-beat note. Later on, in the refrain Helmore’s original “Rejoice, Rejoice” had 1,1,1,2 beats, while A&M uses 1,3,1,3.

In The English Hymnal (1906), the phrases of hymn #8 are counted as in A&M. The rejoice is counted the same, but the “joice” is listed as a two beat note with a one beat rest. Musically this is different, but for the purposes of congregation singing it would count the same.

Update: I found my copy of New English Hymnal, and Hymn #11 is almost like HN: one beat at the end of the first phrase, and two beats for the final note of 2nd, 3rd, 4th phrases — with the “Rejoice” matching TEH. (1 beat, 2 beat, 1 beat rest). I have recording of this hymn by three English cathedral choirs (King’s College Cambridge, Salisbury, Wells) that usually sing hymns as written in the NEH. In the KCC and Wells, they are clearly singing the NEH words but not rushing through the first phrase as NEH implies.

For this blog posting, I didn’t have a chance to look at all 24 hymnal. However, in the Baptist Hymnal 1991, Baptist Hymnal 2008, The Lutheran Hymnal (1940) and the United Methodist Hymnal (1989), all seem to follow the A&M pattern.

3. Hymnal 1940

In Hymnal 1940, hymn #2 goes back to Helmore’s two beat phrase endings rather than the three beat of the English (and subsequent American Protestant) hymnals:

The two beat pattern is also used on each Rejoice.

I won’t argue it’s morally superior to the English/Methodist/Lutheran approach — it’s just the way we’ve done it. In fact, it doesn’t feel all that different. If were singing from H40 (or BCP17) with an ecumenical audience, I might be inclined to add a breath (lift) after each phrase, to give the visitors a chance to keep up.

The one non-standard change, however. In the Helmore, A&M, TEH, Baptist and other versions of this hymn, the first syllable of “exile” is two beats. H40 changes it to one beat:

I believe that’s why the H40/BCP17 version was not used Sunday, and thus indirectly caused the train wreck.

4. Hymnal 1982

Hymnal 1982 made the most dramatic changes to the hymn of any hymns I’ve seen. Here I’ll respond to the effects of the changes in text and music — the cause of Sunday’s problems — and not to the reasons they chose to do so. 

In updating H40, H82 changed the words here and there (as they loved to do). They also repeat verse 1 as verse 8. In this case, with the words printed in the program, they were not the source of confusion.

For the music, they use a non-standard chant notation — neither modern Western nor the medieval neumes. However, anyone who’s opened H82 has seen it, and it’s easy enough to get used to — certainly easier than Helmore’s notation from Hymnal Noted. (Fortunately, the accompaniment uses conventional notation).

The even number phrases and the Rejoice match Hymnal 1940 by ending on a two-beat note. The extra beat of “exile” is restored from the English originals.

However, the odd number phrases (#1, #3) do not have any extra beat:

Whenever I sang from H82, this always rattled me — if for no other reason than I needed a breath. This certainly is what caused Sunday’s problem — the musicians went on without the choir and the congregation until eventually people figured out what was going on.

Since the very first time I sang it, this part of H82 seemed to be what IT people would call a needless incompatibility. I’m sure the editors had their reasons; to be fair, I would need to consult the Hymnal 1982 Companion, but I don’t have the $600 for this four volume set. And perhaps it makes sense if you’re going to get every ECUSA church in the country to buy your new hymnal (as most denominations try to do to make money). But for our current era of weakened denominational loyalty, today it appears to have been a mistake. For congregations that use H82, it would be more welcoming to add a breath or lift after the odd (or all) phrases to make the hymn more visitor-friendly.

Summary

To avoid problems like this in the future, here’s a summary of the different meters:

• Breaks at the end of the phrase: 2 beats in Hymnal Noted, Hymnal 1940; 3 beats in Hymns A&M, The English Hymnal and (apparently) most modern Protestant U.S. hymnals. Hymnal 1982 does 1 beat for odd phrases, 2 beats for even phrases
• The first syllable of “exile” has an extra beat in every hymnal except Hymnal 1940 (and the similar REC’s Book of Common Praise 2017)
• The refrain “Rejoice, rejoice” has two beats for “joice” in H40/H82/BCP17, while the others have three beats. The original HN only lengthened the second “Rejoice”

References

• J. M. Neale and Thomas Helmore, Hymnal Noted: Parts I & II (London: Novello, 1851, 1856), available at https://books.google.com/books?id=2E3Dya5ON5oC
• J. West, “Neale’s Hymnal Noted and its Impact on Twentieth-Century American Hymnody,” The Hymn, 69, 3 (Summer 2018): 14-24.

Footnotes

† Yes I know the Lutherans would say “Wake, awake, for night is falling” by Philip Nicolai. And obviously many Protestants are partial (as am I) to “Come, thou long expected Jesus”, justifiably the first hymn in my favorite hymnal.

†† The most popular hymn was the Palm Sunday processional “All glory, laud and honour,” found in 22/24 hymnals — excluding only the Southern Baptist The Broadman Hymnal (1940) and The Lutheran Hymnary (1913)
¶ See Mother Thomas More, “O Come O Come, Emmanuel,” The Musical Times 107, no. 1483 (Sept. 1966): 772; C. E. Pocknee, “Veni, veni, Emmanuel,” Bulletin of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland 118 (Spring 1970): 65-69; Chris Fenner, “VENI EMMANUEL and its Manuscript Sources,” THE HYMN 65, no. 1 (2014): 21-26.

New research on John Mason Neale

My first papers on church music were published last month, and one is now online. Both are on John Mason Neale, who — as I mentioned in January — is being honored in this the year of his bicentennial.

Neale’s Hymnal Noted

The main paper is about his most influential hymnal, Hymnal Noted, published with music editor Thomas Helmore. As the second paragraph summarizes:

In Hymnal Noted, Neale (1818-1866) and his colleagues compiled 210 hymns, with 105 unique texts translated from medieval Latin sources; many of these translations were later included in the major English hymnals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. AB this paper will show, the influence of Hymnal Noted also extended to the United States. Of the 105 texts, twenty-six were adopted by one or more of the twenty-four twentieth-century hymnals from the largest American Christian denominations, with hymns such as “All glory, laud and honor,” and “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”

The paper reviews the history of hymnody in the Church of England before the Oxford Movement, Neale’s career, his contribution to hymnody, and then specifically Hymnal Noted and its impact. It was published in The Hymn, the main US journal for scholarship on hymn music. I had presented the original version at the 2017 Society for Christian Scholarship in Music conference — my first appearance at any academic conference for religion, liturgy or music — and got great feedback, a sense of the norms of the field, and met some of today’s established and up-and-coming scholars.

The published paper benefitted greatly from the editorial process. In particular, I greatly appreciate the patience of interim editor Robin Knowles Wallace, an endowed chair at the Methodist seminary near Columbus.

How Cambridge and John Mason Neale Continued the Oxford Movement

Stained glass window in St Swithuns
Source: Forward in Christ, Oct. 2018

In writing the original paper, I felt that the Neale bicentennial should not go unremarked among American Anglo-Catholics; because of my involvement in the Forward in Faith church planting task force, I reached out to the Forward in Faith magazine, Forward in Christ. The editor, Fr. Michael Heidt, graciously agreed to run 1,650 words on Neale in the October issue.

While in my January blog post, I emphasized Neale’s hymns, I felt this audience would also be interested in Neale’s impact in other areas. One part was about how Neale and his Cambridge colleagues created the gothic revival in English church architecture — including in their showpiece Victorian Gothic church, All Saints’ Margaret Street, which I was fortunate to visit in June. The other was how Neale was among those who pushed the envelope of liturgical practice — sometimes at great risk to his career and livelihood – to reinstate medieval practices decried as “Romish” by many English Protestants. While incense and the chasuble remain controversial, it’s hard to remember that choir vestments, candles, and singing the communion service were also controversial 150 years ago.

The article appeared in the printed glossy magazine, and the full text is available for free on the Forward in Christ website. The website includes one of the pictures from the magazine: the stained glass window showing John Mason Neale and two others at St Swithuns, East Grinstead, where he was laid to rest on August 10, 1866. The other picture in the magazine is a recent interior picture of All Saints’ Margaret Street, which is available on their website.

References

• J. M. Neale and Thomas Helmore, Hymnal Noted: Parts I & II (London: Novello, 1851, 1856), available at https://books.google.com/books?id=2E3Dya5ON5oC
• J. West, “Neale’s Hymnal Noted and its Impact on Twentieth-Century American Hymnody,” The Hymn, 69, 3 (Summer 2018): 14-24.
• J. West, “How Cambridge and John Mason Neale Continued the Oxford Movement,” Forward in Christ 11, 4 (October 2018): 18-20, URL: http://bit.ly/FIC-Neale-2018

Thank you to everyone for their help and encouragement. I would be glad to email a scan of the printed copy of either article to anyone who’s interested — please contact me.