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.