After a brief break, we’re back with a short article! Welcome to lots of new readers! Enjoy!
The season of Christmas has passed; the time for Christmas carols has come and gone. But I saw an article that uses a Christmas carol to discuss an important aspect of worship and church music that we should consider.
The article is written by my friend and colleague, Dr. Stephen Presley. While teaching a class on Church history, Dr. Presley looked for hymns that refer to the Nicene Creed. He found the second verse of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" which encapsulates key elements of the creed, emphasizing the glorious truth of Christ's divine nature.
There’s only one problem: Almost all hymnals omit the verse; the same for recordings.
Why don’t people sing the verse?!
Presley’s (well-written) article is entitled “A Plea for the Second Verse of ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful.’” He speculates on the reasons for this omission, ranging from innocent oversight to deliberate attempts to sanitize the song for a broader, non-liturgical audience. It gets pretty dark as Presley, a historian, looks for historical answers.
Wanna know a secret? The actual reason people don’t sing that verse is even darker. It’s not a historical answer. It’s musical.
DIG INTO THE DARKNESS
To understand my point, recall the actual melody for the song, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” My argument will not make sense if you skip this part. Hum it to yourself (quietly!) if that will help. Got it? You need a clear mental awareness of the melody.
Sing with me! Under your breath is fine, but If you’re just skimming this article with your eyes, you’ll miss it. Here’s the first verse:
“O come, all ye faithful; joyful and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem!”
Got it? Good! I knew you could do it. Now on to the omitted verse:
“God of God, Light of Light;
lo, He abhors not the virgin’s womb;
very God, begotten not created;”
Could you sing it? Me neither.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
What’s the dark reason people don’t sing this verse? The truth is a glorious, and the creed is essential, but as a lyric with that melody, it is … a dud. Hymn editors omit the verse and people don’t sing it because it’s bad. It doesn’t fit.
Think about it. The best hymns feature the lyrics which fit the music (or vice versa). In a good song, the meter of the syllables fits the rhythm of the melody. Additionally, the rising and falling of the melody fits the emphasis of lyrics. Drawing on these tools, the music provides the lyric with some emotional specificity.[1]
EXAMPLE
As an positive example, consider how the melody of “Amazing Grace” delightfully fits John Newton’s lyric. For people who don’t read music, I will use capitalization to demonstrate which words are sung during longer notes. See if you can follow along.
a-MAZE-ing GRACE, how SWEET the SOUND,
that SAVED a WRETCH like ME,
i ONCE was LOST but NOW am FOUND
was BLIND but NOW i SEE.
Can you see how the melody fits the lyric? The rhythm of the melody emphasizes the most important truth by highlighting (lengthening) the most important words of the lyric. Do you see them? “Maze Grace, sweet sound. Saved wretch me. Once lost, now found; blind, now see.”
Now imagine how different melody might emphasize the other syllables. (If you’re a hymn-nerd, imagine the melody to “Glorious things of Thee are Spoken.”)[2] That melody might emphasize “A, zing, how, the, that, a, like; I was, but am was but I.”
The fitting melody emphasized the essential words, the heart of the song, while the alternative melody emphasized the filler words, the connective tissue. Thus, a good melody makes the song more meaningful.
Can you see the difference? Once blind to the interplay of text and music, do you now see? Or more accurately, hear? The omitted verse of “O come all ye faithful” is a dud because it fails to match its syllables with the melody’s rhythm and emphasis.
CONCLUSION
Much contemporary study of hymns involves an emphasis on the doctrinal content of the songs our congregation sings. I applaud those efforts, writing my dissertation and recent articles on those themes.
Songs, however, are not merely containers for doctrinal truth. American songwriter, Yip Harland, wrote many songs in the early 20th century, including the songs for The Wizard of Oz. He said, “Words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling, but a song makes you feel a thought.”
At their best, Christian songs help you feel biblical truth. They explode with abundance. Skillful hymn writers combine true lyrics (delighting the mind) with beautiful melodies (delighting the heart). Congregations use their entire bodies to sing these true and beautiful songs with loud voices, smiling faces, and tearful eyes.
The result is greater than the sum of its parts. Healthy congregational singing is marked with an abundance.
So may the Lord bless every songwriter who tries to skillfully combine theological truth with delightful melodies. And may Jesus Christ—God of God, Light of Light—be praised!
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[1] I’m using categories from Wolterstorff here. See the discussion in Art in Action, 116.
[2] True hymn-nerds know that tune is named AUSTRIA, or even “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser.” :)
There have been some additional translated versions of that verse that scan slightly better. Here's the one we sing every year with our church:
True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal
Lo, He shuns not the Virgin’s womb
Son of the Father, begotten, not created
Diving in with Hymnary's text comparison tool, there's some tracing that can be done to see roughly when some of these textual changes were first published, but it's hard to ascertain who specifically made each contribution as hymnals tend to consistently word the translation attribution something like, "Frederick Oakeley & others." To be transparent, I wasn't aware of the true but clunky earliest version, nor did I realize that other churches were leaving out perhaps the best verse of the song!
I’m so glad for the emphasis on biblical and doctrinal soundness seen in the modern Hymn movement of the last 25–30 years. But we fail our congregations if our hymn-writing is too far removed from basic songwriting principles like the one you’ve elucidated here. Good job, Dr. W. Also, that Harland quote is worth the whole article!