Tag Archives: Music

O For a Thousand Tongues, Text & History

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Charles Wesley, Hymns, Uncategorized

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O FOR a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of his grace!
2 My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad,
The honors of thy name.
3 Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
’Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’Tis life, and health, and peace.
4 He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me.
5 He speaks, and, listening to his voice,
New life the dead receive;
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice;
The humble poor believe.
6 Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come;
And leap, ye lame, for joy.

Charles Wesley.

This fine hymn has stood at the head of the Wesleyan Hymn Book since 1779, and has led the procession in the official book of the Methodist Episcopal Church from near its organization, in 1784. Its history is very interesting.
The author’s title was: “For the Anniversary Day of One’s Conversion.” It was written in 1739 to celebrate the first anniversary of his spiritual birth, and was published in Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1740.
Charles Wesley gives an account of his conversion in his Journal. He says:
“Sunday, May 21, 1738. I waked in expectation of His coming. At nine my brother and some friends came and sang a hymn to the Holy Ghost. My comfort and hope were hereby increased. In about half an hour they went. I betook myself to prayer, the substance as follows: ‘O Jesus, thou hast said, “I will come unto you;” thou hast said, “I will send the Comforter unto you;” thou hast said, “My Father and I will come unto you, and make our abode with you.” Thou art God, who canst not lie. I wholly rely upon thy most true promise: accomplish it in thy time and manner.’ … Still I felt a violent opposition and reluctance to believe, yet still the Spirit of God strove with my own and the evil spirit till by degrees he chased away the darkness of my unbelief. I found myself convinced, I knew not how nor when, and immediately fell to intercession.”

The anniversary poem contained eighteen stanzas, beginning:

Glory to God, and praise, and love
Be ever, ever given.

The hymn is composed of verses 7 to 12, unaltered except for a single word. The author wrote the second line “My dear Redeemer’s praise.” This was changed by John Wesley to “My great Redeemer’s praise.”
The rapture and extravagance of the first verse are explained by the preceding stanzas, especially verses 2 and 5:

2 On this glad day the glorious Sun
Of Righteousness arose;
On my benighted soul he shone,
And filled it with repose.
5 I felt my Lord’s atoning blood
Close to my soul applied;
Me, me he loved—the Son of God;
For me, for me he died.

Charles S. Nutter and Wilbur F. Tillett, The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church: An Annotated Edition of the Methodist Hymnal, vol. 1 (New York; Cincinnati; Nashville: Eaton & Mains; Jennings & Graham; Smith & Lamar, 1911), 1.

How to Weed Out Nonsense in Christian Music

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Music, Uncategorized

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[I can’t put a picture here of a contemporary “worship leader”.  I’m a lawyer and I know I’d probably get sued! So here is this picture of the dead singing]

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I have a problem with “Jesus is my Boyfriend” songs. They typically creep me out. Well M.W. Bassford has the same problem:

One of the primary criticisms of many praise-and-worship songs is their lack of doctrinal content. They’re so filled with glowing generalities that they aren’t particularly Christian at all, other than containing the names of God and Jesus. Songs in this genre sound like they’re about a teenage girl’s latest crush (long on “love”, short on specifics), so they have earned the descriptor of “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs.

Therefore, he has provided a helpful test to weed out these noxious plants. Read it and then send it to your music leader (but be very polite!)

Popular Contemporary Music

03 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in Music, Uncategorized, Worship

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I one time saw a popular “preacher”, a young man with more enthusiasm than wisdom , say “It’s an oxymoron, like a sad Christian.” He was apparently unfamiliar with “Blessed are those who mourn ….” Anyway, this same nonsense, the inability to realize that are not yet in the New Heavens and New Earth has infected was passes for Christian current music (I will not repeat the idiocy of “Beautiful Day”, it makes me cringe):

The upbeat lyrics of “Beautiful Day” aren’t exceptional. I took a look at the last five years of Billboard’s year-end top 50 Christian songs1 to see whether Christian pop is unrelentingly cheerful. I looked at pairs of concepts across the entire collection of lyrics2 (life and death, grace and sin, etc.)3 and calculated the ratio of positive to negative words. For every pair I checked, positive words were far more common than negative ones.

There were 2.5 times as many mentions of “grace” as “sin” in the songs’ lyrics. Other pairs were even more lopsided: There were more than eight mentions of “life” for every instance of “death,” and “love” was more than seven times as common as “fear.” (For the record, John 4:18 — “perfect love casts out fear” — is advice for spiritual formation, not lyrics writing.) Parishioners may find too much positive language dispiriting. When Christian pop songs and hymns are “excessively positive or wholly positive,” they often “come across as cotton candy and inauthentic,” said Richard Beck, a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University and the author of several books on the intersection between theology and psychology.

Read the rest

Of course Christianity has the most profound promise of call for joy. But it shouldn’t make me feel like I’m buying soap.

George Herbert: On Christian Worship in Song

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in George Herbert, Music, Uncategorized, Worship

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This is a fascinating poem — which makes a profound point on the importance of singing in Christian worship. First, his poem “A True Hymn” begins with the observation –which any Christian has had– of singing joyfully partial lines and fragments of hymns. (The singer has created series of short phrases which he sings repeatedly):

MY Joy, my Life, my Crown !
My heart was meaning all the day,
Somewhat it fain would say,
And still it runneth muttering up and down
With only this, My Joy, my Life, my Crown !

Herbert tacitly concedes that the few lines are not great, but he then turns around and says “they may take part/Among the best in art”.  What makes the “few words” great is that the words perfectly accord with the soul:

Yet slight not those few words ;
If truly said, they may take part
Among the best in art :
The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords
Is, when the soul unto the lines accord.

Herbert is not saying that the songs of gathered worship should be poorly drafted (Herbert is one of the finest poets of the English language).  He is speaking about the joyful heart spontaneously bursting out lines. I think it would be turning Herbert on his head to argue that he would support poorly written songs as part of gathered worship.

But, we also must not make worship hang solely upon the artistry of the expression:

He who craves all the mind,
And all the soul, and strength, and time,
If the words only rhyme,
Justly complains that somewhat is behind
To make His verse, or write a hymn in kind.

Because, artistry is not alone the true measure of worship:

 

Whereas if the heart be moved,
Although the verse be somewhat scant,
God doth supply the want ;
As when the heart says, sighing to be approved,
“O, could I love !” and stops, God writeth, “Loved.”

An analogy may help here: Imagine two men who each write a letter to a young lady. One man writes without true love, without any actual desire for the woman, but he writes as well as Shakespeare. The second man writes with far less artistry, but he writes as well as his bursting heart can manage. The young lady knows the truth of both men: which man has successfully expressed love?

 

 

 

 

Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Isaiah, Music, Uncategorized

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Isaiah 53:1–12 (ESV)

Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2  For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

3  He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4  Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

6  All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

7  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

8  By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

9  And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

11  Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

12  Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Of Mice and Men: Singing

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Proverbs, Psalms, Revelation

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The sheer amount of music in the world is striking. Not only do black holes and crickets make music, it turns out that mice do as well:

It’s true: Mice actually sing, especially when they’re looking for a mate. That’s not anything new. But unlike birdsong, mouse-song is much too high-pitched for humans to hear. So no, it’s not exactly Cinderella-esque, as you can hear for yourself in the above video. But it is shockingly intricate.

God seems utterly delighted with music. While not exhaustive, here a few things to consider

First, it is the mark of a righteous man:

Proverbs 29:6 (ESV)

6  An evil man is ensnared in his transgression,

but a righteous man sings and rejoices.

Continue reading →

Culture and Love Songs

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Culture

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I remember a course at UCLA which looked at correlation between culture and popular literature: why is a western popular at one time and not another? Why is the American hero an outsider?  

Art both reflects and informs the broader culture – especially so when it comes to popular music. Thus a study of love songs is bound to be interesting. Terry Teachout reviews Ted Gioia’s book Love Songs: The Hidden History:

Gioia shows that song lyrics about love, sex, marriage, and fertility can be traced all the way back to the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, and that once Jewish and Christian religious leaders came to terms with the iron determination of their own people to write and sing about romantic love, it quickly emerged as the dominant subject matter of Western popular music.

This tendency became overwhelming in 20th-century America. Both in the freestanding commercial pop songs of Tin Pan Alley and in musical-comedy lyrics, love is the near-universal theme. One can almost count on the fingers of both hands the number of standard ballads written between 1920 and 1960 that are not about romantic love, whether failed or successful. Even among such chronically disillusioned lyricists as Lorenz Hart, it is the singer’s desirable but unattainable ideal: This funny world/Makes fun of the things that you strive for/This funny world/Can laugh at the dreams you’re alive for.What is more, most of these perennially popular songs presuppose marriage as the natural consequence of love, sometimes implicitly but just as often explicitly, as in Ira Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”: He’ll build a little home,/Just meant for two,/From which I’ll never roam,/Who would, would you?

Read the rest

Desire and Sanctification 

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by in Exegeting the Heart, Fear of the Lord

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How can we even hope for sanctification when our desire goes no deeper than the sound of the words?  Here is palpable desire – you can touch it and feel it in your bones.

 

Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32:26

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