Draw nigh, Emmanuel

The hymn we now know as “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is variously attributed to 9th and 12th century Latin texts. The tune “Veni Emmanuel” is more reliably attributed to a 15th or 16th century French tune.

However, the English translation of these texts is known to be by John Mason Neale and his 1851 book, Medieval Hymns and Sequences. The Google online PDF of the book Hymns of the Breviary and Missal says this about the Rev. Neale:

Dr. Neale was an eminent hymnologist and a most felicitous translator of Greek and Latin hymns. His translations of Latin hymns appeared in his Mediæval Hymns and Sequences, 1851, and in the Hymnal Noted, 1852 and 1854, in which 94 out of the 105 hymns therein are translated from the Latin by Dr. Neale.

Somewhere along the line, Neale’s “Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel” became the now familiar Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” (More on this some other time).

Vicar Josh (with help from his blushing bride) suggests the use of a “word cloud” to analyze the text of a hymn. Below is the cloud for the Cyberhymnal version of “O Come, O Come,” analyzing all the words as they would be sung:


I think this map shows why (to apply the Vicar’s test) Neale’s (adapted) translation of medieval Latin texts does a better job of celebrating Advent than the ego-centric approach of typical CCM praise music.

Update: For more detail, “Veni Emmanuel” is the subject of November 1959 article in The Musical Times.

Baby Jesus' greatest hits

An entire blog has been started to discuss the most popular Christmas carols. “Liberal Baptist” blogger Leland Ross lists the 12 “greatest hits” for Advent and Christmas carols, as measured across 24 hymnals:

• Angels from the realms of glory
  
• Angels we have heard on high
  
• Away in a manger
  
• Hark the herald angels sing
  
• It came upon the midnight clear
  
• Joy to the world
  
• O come, all ye faithful
  
• O come, O come, Emmanuel
  
• O little town of Bethlehem
  
• Silent night, holy night
  
• The first Noel
  
• What child is this

I understand all of them except “Angels from the Realms of Glory.” Why is that ahead of these next four?

• While shepherds watched
  
• Go tell it on the mountain
  
• Come thou long-expected Jesus
  
• We three kings of orient are

The last of these is obviously for Epiphany.

Next hymnal: Schism II without Schism I

Exactly a year ago, (following Peter Toon), I asked “A new US church - a decade away?” Looking at the progress of Common Cause Partners, I said “Five years seems like a best case.”

But exactly a week ago, the recent TEC and ACC defectors held a ceremony in Wheaton, Illinois to form a new Anglican province (hereafter NAP). AnglicanTV has a wide assortment of videos from the event.

While this is just a milestone en route to a full ecclesiastical authority — not to mention recognition in the broader Anglican Communion beyond the GAFCON bishops who visited Canterbury last week — it’s obvious that things are moving much more quickly than I predicted in December 2007. So if it takes a few years to become fully legal, then 2009 or 2010 (as I said in September) seems more likely.

However, this paragraph from David Virtue’s report caught my eye:

Asked about what Prayer Book would be used, [ACN Moderator Robert] Duncan said that that would be left to the various diocese and networks. There would no official Prayer Book, some will use the 1662 and others will use the 1979, he said.

This is troubling on two levels.

First, why continue to use the deeply flawed, revisionist PECUSA prayer book? As Peter Toon notes, it has so seriously broken the continuity with the original BCP that it should be called A Book of Alternative Services (1979). In fact, these alternative (Rite II) services that are exactly the services that the Evangelicals are using and why they adopted the 1979 prayer book.

Second, AMiA and Toon produced a 1662 prayer book with modern words. So if theology and words and beliefs matter, why continue to perpetuate the flawed theology of TEC née PECUSA?

But what really bothered me is what’s missing: the 1928 BCP. Yes, I know there are arguments about whether it is a faithful interpretation of 1549 or 1662, but those arguments are fewer than for the 1979 prayer book. More seriously, the earliest generation of Anglican rejectionists — who I term “Schism I” — formed around their rejection of the 1979 prayer book and its associated theology.

And back to the theme of this blog, what does this say for our next hymnal, one that does not enrich the TEC retirement fund? Alas, traditionalists are happy to continue using (and reinforcing the themes) of the TEC Hymnal 1982.

From a liturgical standpoint, I would think that the FiFNA (anti-WO) part of NAP should partner with Schism I parishes to create a traditionalist hymnal that is a worthy successor to Hymnal 1940, my favorite hymnal. If so, sign me up!

However, my fear is that NAP will make a watered-down, compromise hymnal in an attempt to maintain bureaucratic control and span the gulf that separates its Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings. This will bring us politically correct hymns that mangle doctrine, rather than building upon tradition and liturgy that reach out to us across the centuries.

Christmas hymns before December 24?

Jim Bonewald, Presbyterian minister in Iowa who is also a blogger has posed the question: “When should churches start to sing Christmas hymns?” He’s running an online poll with these choices:

1. It's ok to sneak in an occasional Christmas hymn or two during the season of advent, just don't make it a regular practice.
   
2. Be strict about Advent - no Christmas hymns until Christmas Eve.
   
3. Who cares? Dive right in and start singing Christmas hymns on the 1st Sunday of Advent.
   
4. What? You mean there is a difference between Advent and Christmas hymns? 
   
5. Wait with the Christmas hymns until the third or fourth Sunday of Advent.
   

The comments section at the bottom of the poll are interesting, in that they represent a cross-section of Christian thought on the subject.

Pastor Bonewald himself comes down on the side of #1. But what I find interesting is that in reviewing his blog, he has a flurry of activity every year connected with Advent. So he takes the season seriously, also also evidenced by this exchange in the comments:

Bonnie
December 1st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Interesting conversation, but please excuse me for asking the dumb question. What’s the difference between Advent and Christmas songs? Can you give me some examples and explain why they fall into those catagories? I’ve never heard there was a difference!

Personally, I think any song that helps someone feel the love of Christ is a good song, no matter what season. I love listening to the Go Fish version of Little Drummer Boy all year long. It’s a great rocking song that makes me remember God’s sacrificial entry into the world with great awe.

Jim
December 1st, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Bonnie, great question….If you take a close look at our blue hymnal, you will notice that the very first section of songs is referred to as “advent,” the next section is then “christmas.”

The advent songs play on themes of advent (coming, waiting, preparing the way) they allude to the hope and promise of the Messiah, but they don’t sing about or celebrate his coming as a reality. The two most prominent and best known advent songs are “O come O come Emmanuel” and “Come Though Long Expected Jesus.”

Christmas songs tell the story of the nativity and birth of Christ and celebrate the reality of his coming. “joy to the world” and “o come all ye faithful” announce the arrival of christ and call us to worship him.

This is a surprisingly clear and traditionalist viewpoint for a co-leader of the postmodern, emergent church group called Presbymergent.

To me, this is one of the starkest examples where the canon of hymns compiled into a hymnal intersect liturgy, if not theology. Familiar hymns serve to put us in the mind of the meaning of a given season in the liturgical calendar, whether All Saints Day, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost or Trinity Sunday. In some ways, the messages of the hymns are more stirring and effective than anything said from the pulpit: hymn singing is a participatory event, the music strengthens the emotional impact, and we repeat the exercise every year using the same message.

So botching the choice (or wording) of Advent or Christmas hymns at best misses a great opportunity to prepare the faithful for the meaning of Christmas and the coming of the Christ child, at a time when the secular world has expressed either hostility to the Christian message or has turned it into the year’s largest marketing push.

To enable the latter, we get Christmas songs (nowadays Christian carols are rare) playing as Muzak in every shopping mall from mid-November through December 24. In other words, the retail world deliberately violates the liturgical calendar by promoting Christmas cheer during (and before) Advent. Because there’s no money to be made, they stop the Christmas message exactly when the 12 days of Christmas begin.

For several years, the local Christian radio station used to run billboards proclaiming “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Advent carols — kept apart from the Christmas message being exploited by secular marketers — are a powerful way of reminding us of this truth by preparing us for the true meaning of Christmas.

Hat tip: Vicar Josh

Beginning at the beginning

Today is the first day of the liturgical year, and (as with last year) the first hymn at the first service of the year was Hymn #1, “Come thou long expected Jesus.” The 18th century melody includes words by Charles Wesley, four of the eight verses he wrote in 1744 or 1745.

Prominent in Hymnal 1940, the hymn is buried as #66 in Hymnal 1982, but given all its failings as to political correctness, it’s a relief it’s still there. Strangely, the CoE wasn’t much interested in Wesley’s ditty (due to some sort of Anglican-Methodist split?) It’s nowhere to be found in the 1869 (Hymns Ancient and Modern), 1906 (The English Hymnal) or 1933 (Songs of Praise, Enlarged Edition) CoE hymnals. It does show up in their 1986 Hymnal (New English Hymnal) as Hymn #3, although with tunes unfamiliar to American ears.

The liturgical index at the back of Hymnal 1940 recommends for morning services three other hymns from the Advent section: #7 (which we sang), #8 and #9 (which we skipped). It turns out we skipped the wrong one.

We began the service with the Advent I collect from the 1928 BCP (also found in the 1789 and 1892 BCP):

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever.

Apparently this is a collect from Thomas Cranmer himself.

Our rector emphasized “cast away the works of darkness” as the theme for his sermon and for all of Advent 2008. That familiar phrase sent me flipping pages in my hymnal. Sure enough, Verse 1 of Hymn #9 contained a parallel phrasing:

Hark, a thrilling voice is sounding:
“Christ is nigh,” it seems to say.
“Cast away the dreams of darkness,
O ye children of the day!”

The Complete Book of Hymns (by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen) attributes the text to Malachi 4:2, Matthew 3:1-3 and 1 Thessalonians 5:2-5. None of these have the “cast away” metaphor of Cranmer or the hymn.

Hymnal 1940 attributes to a 6th century Latin text, translated by Edward Caswall. Other books on hymns and hymn writers don‘t discuss the hymn, perhaps because its origins are lost to history.

However, The Hymnal 1940 Companion says that the original Latin text has been attributed (non-authoritatively) to St. Ambrose (340-397). Let me pick up the story

In the Sarum and other English liturgies, it was assigned to Lauds for the First Sunday in Advent and then daily until Christmas Eve. It is found at this point of the litrugy in many manuscripts from the tenth century, although it may be somewhat older.

The companion also notes that the 1850 tune (Merton by William Henry Monk) “has been firmly wedded to this hymn since the original musical edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1861.”

Finally, our communion hymn was #199, which uses a 1263 text by Thomas Aquinas for the Vespers on the Feast of Corpus Christi. The tune, termed Pange Lingua, is a Mode III plainchant from the Sarum liturgy, and is also use for Hymn #66, which uses a 6th century text by Venantius Honorius Fortunatus. My references don’t provide a date for this tune, but the Sarum rite (from the great Norman cathedral in Salisbury) was written down (based on prior practice) sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries.

Both Hymns (#9 and #199) are examples of the liturgical continuity cast aside by CCM and other modern worship. In our Anglo-Catholic worship, we are not just linking to Wesley 250 years ago or Luther some 500 years ago, but also to Christians going back 1000 or even 1500 years. We do not have accurate missals and hymnals from the 1st century Christian church, but we do have many texts (and a few tunes) from ancient and medieval sources that clearly capture early church practice.

Such linkages cannot be used to justify requiring that every church service everywhere be filled with Sarum or Gregorian chant of Latin texts. However, it does strongly argue for a form of worship that includes these ancient texts and tunes in everyday use.