The Story of the Hymns and Tunes | Page 5

Ambrosian mode of music, with its slow movement and unmetrical lines, seems strange to us, but it was new--and conservatism is the same in all ages.
The great bishop carried all before him. His school of song-worship prevailed in Christian Europe more than two hundred years. Most of his hymns are lost, (the Benedictine writers credit him with twelve), but, judging by their effect on the powerful mind of Augustine, their influence among the common people must have been profound, and far more lasting than the author's life. "Their voices sank into mine ears, and their truths distilled into my heart," wrote Augustine, long afterwards, of these hymns; "tears ran down, and I rejoiced in them."
Poetic tradition has dramatized the story of the birth of the "Te Deum," dating it on an Easter Sunday, and dividing the honor of its composition between Ambrose and his most eminent convert. It was the day when the bishop baptized Augustine, in the presence of a vast throng that crowded the Basilica of Milan. As if foreseeing with a prophet's eye that his brilliant candidate would become one of the ruling stars of Christendom, Ambrose lifted his hands to heaven and chanted in a holy rapture,--
We praise Thee, O God! We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord; All the Earth doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting.
He paused, and from the lips of the baptized disciple came the response,--
To Thee all the angels cry aloud: the heavens and all the powers therein. To Thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, "Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth; Heaven and Earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory!"
and so, stave by stave, in alternating strains, sprang that day from the inspired lips of Ambrose and Augustine the "Te Deum Laudamus," which has ever since been the standard anthem of Christian praise.
Whatever the foundation of the story, we may at least suppose the first public singing[3] of the great chant to have been associated with that eventful baptism.
[Footnote 3: The "Te Deum" was first sung in English by the martyr, Bishop Ridley, at Hearne Church, where he was at one time vicar.]
The various anthems, sentences and motets in all Christian languages bearing the titles "Trisagion" or "Tersanctus," and "Te Deum" are taken from portions of this royal hymn. The sublime and beautiful "Holy, Holy, Holy" of Bishop Heber was suggested by it.
THE TUNE.
No echo remains, so far as is known, of the responsive chant actually sung by Ambrose, but one of the best modern choral renderings of the "Te Deum" is the one by Henry Smart in his Morning and Evening Service. In an ordinary church hymnal it occupies seven pages. The staff-directions with the music indicate the part or cue of the antiphonal singers by the words Decani (Dec.) and Cantor (Can.), meaning first the division of the choir on the Dean's side, and second the division on the Cantor's or Precentor's side.
Henry Smart was one of the five great English composers that followed our American Mason. He was born in London, Oct. 25, 1812, and chose music for a profession in preference to an offered commission in the East Indian army. His talent as a composer, especially of sacred music, was marvellous, and, though he became blind, his loss of sight was no more hindrance to his genius than loss of hearing to Beethoven.
No composer of his time equalled Henry Smart as a writer of music for female voices. His cantatas have been greatly admired, and his hymn tunes are unsurpassed for their purity and sweetness, while his anthems, his oratorio of "Jacob," and indeed all that he wrote, show the hand and the inventive gift of a great musical artist.
He died July 10, 1879, universally mourned for his inspired work, and his amiable character.
"ALL GLORY, LAUD AND HONOR." Gloria, Laus et Honor.
This stately Latin hymn of the early part of the 9th century was composed in A.D. 820, by Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, while a captive in the cloister of Anjou. King Louis (le Debonnaire) son of Charlemagne, had trouble with his royal relatives, and suspecting Theodulph to be in sympathy with them, shut him up in prison. A pretty story told by Clichtovius, an old church writer of A.D. 1518, relates how on Palm Sunday the king, celebrating the feast with his people, passed in procession before the cloister, where the face of the venerable prisoner at his cell window caused an involuntary halt, and, in the moment of silence, the bishop raised his voice and sang this hymn; and how the delighted king released the singer, and restored him to his bishopric. This tale, told after seven hundred years, is not the only legend that grew around the hymn and its author, but the fact that he composed it in the cloister