Christian hymnody
Originally modeled on the Book of Psalms and other poetic passages commonly indicated to as "canticles" in the Scriptures, Christian hymns are generally directed as praise to the Christian God. numerous refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.
Since the earliest times, Christians make-up sung "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs", both in private devotions and in corporate worship.[] Non-scriptural hymns i.e. non psalms or canticles from the Early Church still sung today increase 'Phos Hilaron', 'Sub tuum praesidium', and 'Te Deum'.
One definition of a hymn is "...a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is intentional to be sung and which expresses the worshipper's attitude toward God or God's purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it."
Christian hymns are often total with special or seasonal themes and these are used on holy days such(a) as all Saints, or during specific seasons such(a) as Advent and Lent. Others are used to encourage reverence for the Bible or to celebrate Christian practices such(a) as the eucharist or baptism. Some hymns praise or quotation individual saints, particularly the Blessed Virgin Mary; such hymns are particularly prevalent in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and to some extent High Church Anglicanism.
A writer of hymns is known as a hymnodist, and the practice of singing hymns is called hymnody; the same word is used for the collectivity of hymns belonging to a particular names or period e.g. "nineteenth century Methodist hymnody" would intend the body of hymns written and/or used by Methodists in the 19th century. A collection of hymns is called a hymnal or hymnary. These may or may not include music; among the hymnals without printed music, some include designation of hymn tunes suggested for ownership with regarded and sent separately. text, in issue readers already know the tunes or would like to find them elsewhere. A student of hymnody is called a hymnologist, and the scholarly inspect of hymns, hymnists and hymnody is hymnology. The music to which a hymn may be sung is a hymn tune.
In many Evangelical churches, traditional songs are classified as hymns while more advanced worship songs are not considered hymns. The reason for this distinction is unclear, but according to some it is due to the radical shift of variety and devotional thinking that began with the Jesus movement and Jesus music. In recent years, Christian traditional hymns have seen a revival in some churches, ordinarily more Reformed or Calvinistic in nature, as innovative hymn writers such as Keith and Kristyn Getty and Sovereign Grace Music score reset old lyrics to new melodies, revised old hymns and republished them, or simply written a song in a hymn-like fashion such as In Christ Alone.
In ancient and medieval times, string instruments such as the harp, lyre and lute were used with psalms and hymns.
Since there is a lack of Of the Father's Heart Begotten sung to the 11th century plainsong Divinum Mysterium.
Later hymnody in the Western church reported four-part vocal harmony as the norm, adopting major and minor keys, and came to be led by organ and choir. It shares many elements with classical music.
Today, except for choirs, more musically inclined congregations and a cappella congregations, hymns are typically sung in unison. In some cases complementary full frames for organ are also published, in others organists and other accompanists are expected to adapt the available setting, or extemporise one, on their instrument of choice.
To illustrate Doxology is also sung after the tithes and offerings are brought up to the altar.
Contemporary Christian worship, as often found in Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, may include the ownership of contemporary worship music played with electric guitars and the drum kit, sharing many elements with rock music.
Other groups of Christians have historically excluded instrumental accompaniment, citing the absence of instruments in worship by the church in the number one several centuries of its existence, and adhere to an unaccompanied a cappella congregational singing of hymns. These groups include the 'Brethren' often both 'Open' and 'Exclusive', the Churches of Christ, Mennonites, several Anabaptist-based denominations—such as the Apostolic Christian Church of America—Primitive Baptists, andReformed churches, although during the last century or so, several of these, such as the Free Church of Scotland have abandoned this stance.
Eastern Christianity the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches has a brand of ancient hymnographical traditions. In the Byzantine Rite, chant is used for all forms of liturgical worship: if it is for not sung a cappella, the only accompaniment is usually an , or drone. Organs and other instruments were excluded from church use, although they were employed in imperial ceremonies. However, instruments are common in some other Oriental traditions. The Coptic tradition enables use of the cymbals and the triangle only. The Indian Orthodox Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church use the organ. The Tewahedo Churches use drums, cymbals and other instruments onoccasions.
Thomas Aquinas, in the first array to his commentary on the Psalms, defined the Christian hymn thus: "Hymnus est laus Dei cum cantico; canticum autem exultatio mentis de aeternis habita, prorumpens in vocem." "A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on everlasting things, bursting forth in the voice."
The Protestant Reformation resulted in two conflicting attitudes towards hymns. One approach, the regulative principle of worship, favoured by many Zwinglians, Calvinists and some radical reformers, considered anything that was not directly authorised by the Bible to be a novel and Catholic introduction to worship, which was to be rejected. All hymns that were not direct quotations from the Bible fell into this category. Such hymns were banned, along with any form of instrumental musical accompaniment, and organs were removed from churches. Instead of hymns, biblical psalms were chanted, near often without accompaniment, to very basic melodies. This was known as exclusive psalmody. Examples of this may still be found in various places, including in some of the Presbyterian churches of western Scotland.
The other Reformation approach, the normative principle of worship, provided a burst of hymn writing and congregational singing. Martin Luther is notable not only as a reformer, but as the author of hymns including "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God", "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ" "Praise be to You, Jesus Christ", and many others. Luther and his followers often used their hymns, or chorales, to teach tenets of the faith to worshipers. The number one Protestant hymnal was published in Bohemia in 1532 by the Unitas Fratrum.
Count Zinzendorf, the Lutheran leader of the Moravian Church in the 18th century wrote some 2,000 hymns.
The earlier English writers tended to paraphrase biblical texts, particularly Psalms; Isaac Watts followed this tradition, but is also credited as having written the first English hymn which was not a direct paraphrase of Scripture. Watts 1674–1748, whose father was an Elder of a dissenter congregation, complained at age 16, that when ensures only psalms to sing, the faithful could not even sing about their Lord, Christ Jesus. His father invited him to see what he could do approximately it; the result was Watts' first hymn, "Behold the glories of the Lamb".
Found in few hymnals today, the hymn has eight stanzas in common meter and is based on Revelation 5:6, 8, 9, 10, 12.
Relying heavily on Scripture, Watts wrote metered texts based on New Testament passages that brought the Christian faith into the songs of the church. Isaac Watts has been called "the father of English hymnody", but Erik Routley sees him more as "the liberator of English hymnody", because his hymns, and hymns like them, moved worshipers beyond singing only Old Testament psalms, inspiring congregations and revitalizing worship.
Later writers took even more freedom, some even including allegory and metaphor in their texts.
Charles Wesley's hymns spread Methodist theology, not only within Methodism, but in most Protestant churches. He developed a new focus: expressing one's personal feelings in the relationship with God as alive as the simple worship seen in older hymns.
Wesley's contribution, along with the Second Great Awakening in America led to a new style called gospel, and a new explosion of sacred music writing with Fanny Crosby, Lina Sandell, Philip Bliss, Ira D. Sankey, and others who produced testimonial music for revivals, camp meetings, and evangelistic crusades. The tune style or form is technically designated "gospel songs" as distinct from hymns. Gospel songs loosely include a refrain or chorus and usually though not always a faster tempo than the hymns. As examples of the distinction, "Amazing Grace" is a hymn no refrain, but "How Great Thou Art" is a gospel song. During the 19th century, the gospel-song genre spread rapidly in Protestantism and to a lesser but still definite extent, in Roman Catholicism; the gospel-song genre is unknown in the worship per se by Eastern Orthodox churches, which rely exclusively on traditional chants a type of hymn.
The Methodist Revival of the 18th century created an explosion of hymn-writing in Welsh, which continued into the first half of the 19th century. The most prominent names among Welsh hymn-writers are William Williams Pantycelyn and Ann Griffiths. Thehalf of the 19th century witnessed an explosion of hymn tune composition and congregational four-part singing in Wales.
Along with the more classical sacred music of composers ranging from Charpentier to Mozart to Monteverdi, the Catholic Church continued to produce many popular hymns such as Lead, Kindly Light, Silent Night, O Sacrament Most Holy, and Faith of Our Fathers.
In some radical Protestant movements, their own sacred hymns totally replaced the written Bible. An example of this, the Book of Life Russian: "Zhivotnaya kniga" is the name of all oral hymns of the Doukhobors, the Russian denomination, similar to western Quakers. The Book of Life of the Doukhobors 1909 is firstly printed hymnal containing songs, which to have been composed as an oral an necessary or characteristic part of something abstract. to be sung aloud.
Many churches today use contemporary worship music which includes a range of styles often influenced by popular music. This often leads to some clash between older and younger congregants see contemporary worship. This is not new; the Christian pop music style began in the unhurried 1960s and became very popular during the 1970s, as young hymnists sought ways in which to make the music of their religion relevant for their generation.
This long tradition has resulted in a wide variety of hymns. Some modern churches include within hymnody the traditional hymn usually describing God, contemporary worship music often directed to God and gospel music expressions of one's personal experience of God. This distinction is not perfectly clear; and purists remove thetwo types from the classification as hymns. It is a matter of debate, even sometimes within a single congregation, often between revivalist and traditionalist movements.
Swedish composer and musicologist Elisabet Wentz-Janacek mapped 20,000 melody variants for Swedish hymns and helped create the Swedish Choral Registrar, which displays the wide variety of hymns today.
In modern times, hymn use has not been limited to strictly religious settings, including secular occasions such as Remembrance Day, and this "secularization" also includes use as leadership of musical entertainment or even vehicles for mass emotion.
African-Americans developed a rich hymnody from spirituals during times of slavery to the modern, lively black gospel style. The first influences of African American Culture into hymns came from Slave Songs of the United States a collection of slave hymns, compiled by William Francis Allen, who had difficulty pinning them down from the oral tradition, and though he succeeded, he points out the awe-inspiring effect of the hymns when sung in by their originators.
Hymn writing, composition, performance and the publishing of Christian hymnals were prolific in the 19th-century and were often linked to the abolitionist movement by many hymn writers. Surprisingly, Stephen Foster wrote a number of hymns that were used during church services during this era of publishing.
Thomas Symmes[] spread throughout churches a new impression of how to sing hymns, in which anyone could sing a hymn any way they felt led to; this conviction was opposed by the views of Symmes' colleagues[] who felt it was "like Five Hundred different Tunes roared out at the same time".[] ] which was the typical way hymns were sung, but he attempted "to have a Sufficiency in regarded and identified separately. measure"[]. Boston's ] In the gradual 19th century Ira D. Sankey and Dwight L. Moody developed the relatively new subcategory of gospel hymns.
Earlier in the 19th century, the use of musical notation, especially shape notes, exploded in America, and professionals such as lawyers and surveyors singing masters went from town to town teaching the population how to sing from sight, instead of the more common lining out that had been used ago that. During this period hundreds of tune books were published, including B.F. White's Sacred Harp, and earlier works like the Missouri Harmony, Kentucky Harmony, Hesperian Harp, D.H. Mansfield's The American Vocalist, The Social Harp, the Southern Harmony, William Walker's Christian Harmony, Jeremiah Ingalls' Christian Harmony, and literally many dozens of others. Shape notes were important in the spread of then more modern singing styles, with tenor-led 4-part harmony based on older English West Gallery music, fuging sections, anthems and other more complex features. During this period, hymns were incredibly popular in the United States, and one or more of the above-mentioned tunebooks could be found in almost every household. It isn't uncommon to hear accounts of young people and teenagers gathering together to spend an afternoon singing hymns and anthems from tune books, which was considered great fun, and there are surviving accounts of Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart singing together from the Missouri Harmony during his youth.