The Story of the Hymns and Tunes | Page 4

Commission. Their
magnificence and purity revealed to the censors the possibilities of
contrapuntal music in sanctuary devotion and praise. The sanction of
the cardinals was given--and part-song harmony became permanently
one of the angel voices of the Christian church.
Palestrina died in 1594, but hymn-tunes adapted from his motets and
masses are sung today. He was the father of the choral tune. He lived to
see musical instruments and congregational singing introduced[1] in

public worship, and to know (possibly with secret pleasure, though he
was a Romanist) how richly in popular assemblies, during the
Protestant Reformation, the new freedom of his helpful art had
multiplied the creation of spiritual hymns.
[Footnote 1: But not fully established in use till about 1625.]
Contemporary in England with Palestrina in Italy was Thomas Tallis
who developed the Anglican school of church music, which differed
less from the Italian (or Catholic) psalmody than that of the Continental
churches, where the revolt of the Reformation extended to the
tune-worship as notably as to the sacraments and sermons. This
difference created a division of method and practice even in England,
and extreme Protestants who repudiated everything artistic or ornate
formed the Puritan or Genevan School. Their style is represented
among our hymn-tunes by "Old Hundred," while the representative of
the Anglican is "Tallis' Evening Hymn." The division was only
temporary. The two schools were gradually reconciled, and together
made the model after which the best sacred tunes are built. It is Tallis
who is called "The father of English Cathedral music."
In Germany, after the invention of harmony, church music was still felt
to be too formal for a working force, and there was a reaction against
the motets and masses of Palestrina as being too stately and difficult.
Lighter airs of the popular sort, such as were sung between the acts of
the "mystery plays," were subsidized by Luther, who wrote
compositions and translations to their measure. Part-song was
simplified, and Johan Walther compiled a hymnal of religious songs in
the vernacular for from four to six voices. The reign of rhythmic hymn
music soon extended through Europe.
Necessarily--except in ultra-conservative localities like Scotland--the
exclusive use of the Psalms (metrical or unmetrical) gave way to
religious lyrics inspired by occasion. Clement Marot and Theodore
Beza wrote hymns to the music of various composers, and Caesar
Malan composed both hymns and their melodies. By the beginning of
the 18th century the triumph of the hymn-tune and the hymnal for lay
voices was established for all time.

* * * * *
In the following pages no pretence is made of selecting all the best and
most-used hymns, but the purpose has been to notice as many as
possible of the standard pieces--and a few others which seem to add or
re-shape a useful thought or introduce a new strain.
To present each hymn with its tune appeared the natural and most
satisfactory way, as in most cases it is impossible to dissociate the two.
The melody is the psychological coëfficient of the metrical text.
Without it the verse of a seraph would be smothered praise. Like a
flower and its fragrance, hymn and tune are one creature, and stand for
a whole value and a full effect. With this normal combination a
complete descriptive list of the hymns and tunes would be a historic
dictionary. Such a book may one day be made, but the present volume
is an attempt to the same end within easier limits.
CHAPTER I.
HYMNS OF PRAISE AND WORSHIP.
"TE DEUM LAUDAMUS."
This famous church confession in song was composed A.D. 387 by
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, probably both words and music.
Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur Te aeternum Patrem
omnis terra veneratur Tibi omnes angeli, tibi coeli et universae
potestates, Tibi cherubim et seraphim inaccessibili voce proclamant
Sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
In the whole hymn there are thirty lines. The saying that the early
Roman hymns were echoes of Christian Greece, as the Greek hymns
were echoes of Jerusalem, is probably true, but they were only echoes.
In A.D. 252, St. Cyprian, writing his consolatory epistle[2] during the
plague in Carthage, when hundreds were dying every day, says, "Ah,
perfect and perpetual bliss! [in heaven.] There is the glorious company
of the apostles; there is the fellowship of the prophets rejoicing; there is

the innumerable multitude of martyrs crowned." Which would suggest
that lines or fragments of what afterwards crystalized into the formula
of the "Te Deum" were already familiar in the Christian church. But it
is generally believed that the tongue of Ambrose gave the anthem its
final form.
[Footnote 2: [Greek: Peri tou thnêtou], "On the Mortality."]
Ambrose was born in Gaul about the middle of the fourth century and
raised to his bishopric in A.D. 374. Very early