God and Culture . . .

CHURCH MUSIC AND THE CULTURAL EXPLOSION
by JACKSON HILL

The United States is currently experiencing a great cultural explosion. In the last several years a vast awakening of interest in history, literature, art, the drama, and music, has resulted in changing the artistic tastes of a large segment of our nation. For example, today nearly twice as many Americans are attending concerts as are going to baseball games, a fact which is evidenced by the existence of over 1,200 symphony orchestras in the United States. It seems clear that the cultural explosion is a product of the liberal arts education and the increasingly greater number of young people going to college every year.

Although this cultural awakening is encouraging art and fostering artistic creation to a degree never before seen in this country, it poses several difficult problems for the church and the current status of church music. Many people are thinking more seriously about the music they sing, and many congregations are being held back in their musical growth by song leaders who are less perceptive than those being led.

It may be significant, too, that practically every religious group in the United States has recently revised the body of its music. The Churches of Christ have not. In the 19th century the Restoration church borrowed its music from the groups from which its members came. Most of the music used in Restoration services was composed by Americans to suit the American situation. These were primarily the rousing folk-like songs of the Baptists and frontier Methodists. Few of the noble hymns of the Scotts’ Psalter survived the days of Alexander Campbell, for most of the Restoration flock came from less “dignified” frontier groups. It is rather the “gospel songs” that today make up the bulk of the music in the Churches of Christ.

In addition, today there is a growing feeling that the eleven o’clock service of the church should be devoted more to worship than to evangelism and that the gospel songs are not particularly worshipful in character. It has been suggested that these songs have more meaning when sung at gospel meetings or prayer meetings than at services of worship.

We may observe, too the increase in the number of college students turning from non-liturgic bodies such as the Baptist and Methodist groups to participate in the more solemn and stately services of the Episcopal church, whose liturgy is enriched by a tradition of over 350 years of Anglican chant and anthem.

Likewise, we may have difficulty in attracting arts-centered members of the current rising generation to certain of our own services. For it is often the case that the person who is even an occasional concert-goer and who listens to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven at home, will probably not be satisfied with singing “There Shall Be showers of Blessing” and “Pow’r in the Blood” in worship. His liberal arts education has provided him with certain standards of music and poetry, and unless these are met to some extent in the song service, he cannot derive from worship a full measure of spiritual edification and uplifting.

The problems posed by trying to improve the state of our music and out attitude toward sacred song may be approached, if not solved, by our becoming aware of the two traditions which make up the greater body of sacred music. The first of these is that frontier tradition which accounts for the “gospel songs” which we sing. The second is that continuous thread of sacred music which springs from the ancient synagogue and passes through the Middle Ages into and beyond the great era of Palestrina and J. S. Bach. It is this tradition of which we are least informed.

Despite the fact that the scriptures do not provide much information as to the nature of music in the early church, other ancient writings, musicological scholarship, and archaeology have provided answers to many questions. We know, for instance, that the bulk of the music employed by the early church was adopted from the liturgy of the synagogue. In fact, the first half of a Syriac communion service, as documented in the 2nd century, is nearly identical to the contemporary Jewish synagogue services. Without doubt, the Psalms played the most important role in the music of the early church. These psalms were most often performed responsorially, that is, with each line being divided between leader and congregation. We know that the hymns were originally poems of praise, although no Christian hymns survive from the very earliest period. The “spiritual songs” were the canticles adopted from Jewish liturgy, with scriptural (or Apocryphal) texts, such as the canticles of Daniel (Dan 3), Isaiah (Is 12), Tobit (Tobit 19), Judith (Judith 16), Moses (Deut 32), and so forth. These “spiritual songs” should by no means be equated with the “gospel song” of the American frontier. In terms of purely musical style, the “gospel songs” would probably relate more closely to the music used in the worship of Dionysus.

As Christianity spread, its chant was colored by the traditions of the peoples which it encountered. Greek elements, as well as Egyptian, Syrian, and many others, crept into the music in various locations and made for varying musical styles and practices. The tradition of Christian chant, adopted initially from the Jewish synagogue, can be readily traced through the Middle Ages within the enormous body of Gregorian chant. Many of these Gregorian tunes date far back into the Jewish tradition (for example, the basic melody of “When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross”).

After a long period of increasing musical complexity during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the European reformers attempted to bring music back to the congregation through the Psalters—collections of metrical settings of the Psalms with simple tunes which all could sing. Most denominations make considerable use of this great wealth of song; at most, only three or four of these songs survive in Church of Christ hymnals. Out of the tradition of the Psalter came the Lutheran chorale, the Presbyterian psalm tune, and the modern European hymn.

The native hymns sung in America, west of the Appalachians and in the South, were stylistically derived from folk culture—a culture which little differentiated musically between song and dance. For the first time since the late Middle Ages, hymns appeared in bouncing 6/8 and 12/8 dance rhythms, the meters traditionally associated with the “jig.”

With the eventual passing of the frontier tradition, most American denominations have returned to the more noble stately hymns of the European tradition. Yet we, along with a few other (mainly Southern) groups have continued to make the “gospel hymn” the mainstay of our musical diet.

In order to reach people who have not been reared on “Bringing In the Sheaves” (and there are many!), and in order to add greater meaning to our worship, we should make greater use of our more noble and worshipful hymns, such as those which one of our standard hymnals denotes as its “Part II: The Hymns.” It is time, especially in our urban areas, for us to realize in our worship the passing of a frontier tradition, in favor of taking advantage of the best hymns at our disposal, and thereby being more in tune with contemporary attitudes and higher standards of literature, art, and music, not to mention the added reward of giving of our best to the Lord.

The tendency toward making greater use of the stately hymns has already become quite pronounced in many localities. Here, the standard “invitation” songs, at least at the 11:00 hour, are being replaced by songs which serve not only as invitations but also as hymns of rededication and devotion, such as “O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee”, “Take My Life and Let It Be” (Mozart’s), and “Thou Art the Way.”

It is not to say that there is no place for “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb”, or “Showers of Blessing”, or “Standing on the Promises”, for there most assuredly is; it is rather to say that there is a greater place for “Crown Him with Many Crowns”, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” (St. Anne), and the response, “Glory Be to the Father”, in our worship.

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—Jackson Hill is an Instructor of Music at Duke University, Durham, N. C.