Music has long been used to inspire and encourage. Chapter
20 of II Chronicles recounts the story of an unprovoked attack on the southern
kingdom of Judah by several neighbouring countries. The good King Jehoshaphat of
Judah famously tells his people (verse 15):
"Don't be afraid. Don't
be paralyzed by this mighty army. For the battle is not yours, but God's"
(The Living Bible).
Furthermore, he enlists a choir to lead the march! And it
was at this point that the enemy began fighting each other and that
was the end of the war.
I do wonder what sort of music the choir sang. Possibly a
hymn?
Shortly after reading this story this morning, I tuned into
ABC Classic FM radio and was delighted to hear a program about hymns. A quick
Google search offers the following definition of what a hymn is:
HYMN. (from Greek hymnos,
"song of praise"), strictly a song used in Christian worship usually
sung by the congregation and characteristically having a metrical, strophic
(stanzaic) nonbiblical text.
While I tuned in, the radio program included Italian
composer Antonio Vivaldi's Mass Gloria (probably written 1715)
and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius' Finlandia (1899) - both
the hymn and the tone poem from which the hymn has been extracted.
First performed in July 1900, Finlandia served
as a protest against Russian encroachment on the autonomy of Finland.
Writing on the blog site Interlude in 2022, Dr. Georg
Predota has this to say about the symphonic tone poem from which the hymn
is taken:
For Sibelius, Finlandia was
“the song of our battle, our hymn of victory.” From the very beginning, Finlandia proved
hugely popular, and the magnificent closing hymn tune became an international
hit. Often incorrectly cited as a traditional folk melody, the hymn actually
sprang from the composer’s mind. It was sung around the world with such words
as “Be Still My Soul,” “At the Table,” “Land of the Pine,” and “Our Farewell
Song.” The composer had mixed feelings about these versions: “It is not
intended to be sung… It is written for an orchestra. But if the world wants to
sing it, it can’t be helped.”
Well, we do want to sing it! And the 2017
Christian Science hymnal gives us two versions of the glorious tune.
The first is hymn 469, "Eternal God, the Cause of
All Creation", where we sing words (adapted) by Oak E. Davis. This
hymn is in F major and could conceivably work well for four-part harmony.
The second setting is hymn 561, "Our heavenly Father-Mother Love abiding", with words by Richard D. Row (altered), paraphrasing Matthew 6:9-13, which is of course the Lord's Prayer. This hymn is in the slightly lower key of E flat major and has a slightly more active accompaniment, above which the melody soars.
My preference is for the first setting
- somehow the long dotted minims held over the bar line to the crochet in the
next bar provide a sense of both stillness and movement which results in an anticipation that stirs the heart.
I’m now thinking about the joy of congregational singing
and its potential to end wars!
Julie Swannell
1 comment:
How very uplifting Julie, thanks for the update. Pip Pfyne
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