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Well, there you are.
I would not, of course, presume to disagree with even the lightest of Dr Berry's utterances; and I quite agree that Helmore's choice of melody for Veni, Veni showed a touch of genius.
At the same time, it's important to recognise that the 'picking up' of tunes from all sorts of odd places was quite a feature of English Hymnody, particularly in the 19th Century; and that many of them show an equal genius for fitting words and music.
As just a couple of examples, and although I accept that they're not exactly 'liturgical', the old French tune 'Branle de l'Official' ('The Butler's Brawl') for the carol 'Ding Dong, Merrily on High', and 'See the Conquering Hero' (from Handel's 'Judas Maccabeus') for 'Thine be the Glory' could, surely, hardly have been bettered.
It must also be remembered that Ralph Vaughan-Williams (musical editor of The English Hymnal) did a lot of it - many of his greatest hymn tunes are adaptations of traditional English folk melodies : so that although the tune itself is not specifically identified as a traditional one, it nonetheless has a legitimate - and often very long - pedigree.
It is perhaps also worth mentioning, if only for completeness, that the habit continues . . . I have heard 'O Immaculata' set to Scarlatti's 'Gia il sole dal Gange', and 'O King Most High, of earth and sky' (for Ascension day) set to the one of the tunes (I cannot remember which) from Parsifal.
As General Booth once said 'Why should the devil have all the best tunes ?'
The late Canon Brian Brindley did exactly what Quentin described in the 60s-80s, in his parish in Reading, but with uneven results. I think he was responsible for pairing "The Happy Birds Te Deum Sing" (a May Marian hymn) to the Lincolnshire Poacher. Less successful would have been "I'll Sing a Hymn to Mary" set to the Eton Boating Song, though the latter surely deserves a fitting hymn text.
It is hard to think of a hymn or mass setting that could be based on any modern pop tune. God forbid we should ever sing any hymn to "You Light Up My Life" or worse, be inflicted with a Missa della "You Can Stand Under My Umbrella, Ella Ella Eh Eh Eh"
Yes, fitting text and tunes tunefully is an art. I would, for example, love to see "My Country 'Tis of Thee" sung to the tune MOSCOW (eg, "God Whose Almighty Word") but not the "God Save The Queen".
Tunes are not empty vessels.
Musical form isn't empty of content or significance.
An excellent example of a skillful and sublime fit of text to tune was posted on this blog last year - singing the Tantum Ergo to Austria. I'm grateful for that find. Another good, but atypical, pairing is "O Saving Victim opening wide" (in English) to Samuel Sebastian Wesley's Hereford.
I think I've sung that 2-voice version - the description fits exactly. But all I have, or had, is a photocopy of a ms transcription the college choir used, and what I can reconstruct from memory. It is beautiful, very simple, and easy to teach to kiddies and not-very-advanced singers.
A transcription of the trope from "Libera me" that she describes can be downloaded here:
http://amiens.pwch.dk/Amiens01.pdf
The "Veni, veni" melody with the countermelody she describes appears on p. 17 of the document.
... from the sublime:
I was haloscan'ing in to say I'd love to get my hands on a copy of that MS. So, Robert and the internet, thanks!
... to the ridiculous:
At our parish we sing the Lord's Prayer to the tune of "Song for a Winter's Night" by Gordon Lightfoot.
"this great Advent hymn-tune was not, in the first instance, associated with Advent at all, but with a funeral litany of the saints in verse, interspersed between the sections of a well-known responsory. Perhaps it is a measure of Helmore's genius that he detected in this melody an appropriate Advent sound as well"
I was told that the Dies Irae is actually a piece of music for Advent, which was adapted for use at Requiems. I wonder what other mutual borrowings exist between the two.
I understood Veni Emmanuel, or the tune anyway, to be Welsh. It is still a popular hymn with Welsh Choirs: 'O tyred di Emmaniwel, ddaw ata ti o Israel'.
Richard,
Nice to know how we'll sing it in Heaven.
Patrick;
to be fair to Brian, most of his combinations (and I remember many from my years at MHT) were quite felicitous : using the 'Lincolnshire Poacher' for the May Carol started at S. Pauls' Oxford years ealier; and the use of the Boating Song for 'I'll sing a hymn to Mary' also predated him - indeed, Parish tradition had it that that particular pairing was created by Fr Archdale King when he was there in his Anglican days !
However; I admit to pinching the 'Why should the devil have all the best tunes' line from 'The Best Tunes'; one of his articles in The Catholic Herald - and I am sure he'd have loved this particular thread of discussion !
Singing the 'Tantum Ergo' to 'Austria' is delightful, on the right occasion.
Sadly, I can also remember Solemn First Vespers of Corpus Christi, when after an entirely chant service - including 'O Salutaris' - when we got to the 'Tantum Ergo' the organ pealed forth with 'Cwm Rhondda' . . . definitely NOT a felicitous combination, at least in those circumstances : and for the record, that was at the London Oratory, in the mid-1970s !
Thank you for this enlightening post.
It is popular here in Texas to sing the Our Father in Spanish Masses to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence."
At mass on Saturday this was done in chant and I found it so beautiful and conducive to my worship. It made me wonder the history of the song. Well, now I know! Thanks NLM.
As it is only twenty-two days away from us, let it not be forgotten that all good old style Anglo-Catholics sang/sing Tantum ergo [Therefore we before him bending] to the tune of Once in Royal David's City in Christmas-tide. A far better tune for The Happy Birds Te Deum Sing, is the (Hymns Ancien and Modern) The Holy Well,as was used,I was told, at St Paul's, Brighton. Who wrote the words ? Many of those old hymns appear without authorship in the English Catholic Hymnbook,published by W.R.Knott.They existed on income from the sales of the English Missal and they were put out of business by The Changes.Alan Robinson
o.h.: With respect to the practice of the Pater Noster sung to a Simon & Garfunkel tune:
That was the rage here in Puerto Rico a few years back until the bishops spoke out against it.
From the diocesan directory:
“Se reprueba el uso en la Liturgia, de melodías populares comerciales con letra “religiosa” y de melodías provenientes de otras confesiones religiosas.”
My translation: “The use in the Liturgy of popular comercial melodies with “religious” lyrics and melodies originating from other religious confessions is condemned.”
http://www.diocesisdeponce.org/
d...ctorio2008.html and scroll down to “Musica Sacra”.
t lopez;
part of the topic of this thread, of course, is the fact that tunes move around and cross-fertilise, in a remarkable way - as witness the tune for 'Veni, veni' which began the discussion.
Obviously the use of 'pop' tunes is conspicuous (and frequently/usually inappropriate); and I can understand the logic of the Bishops; but to identify with reasonable certainty 'melodies originating from other religious confessions' would, I suspect, require a depth of scholarship well beyond the range of most Episcopal Conferences.
To give a single example, the tune 'Austria' referred to above was originally adopted as a hymn tune by protestants; but the tune itself, being Haydn's Imperial Anthem before it became the tune of 'Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles', clearly has an impeccable Catholic pedigree.
Also, given that the use of 'non-Catholic' tunes has had extensive papal sanction, I think the Peurto Rican bishops may be being 'more Catholic than the Pope' on this point !
The Puerto Rican bishops probably mean "really really obviously originating".
"The Sound of Silence" and the Our Father in Spanish. Not an pairing that leaps to mind. Probably one of those cases where the limited number of tunes the guitarist knew how to play determined the setting....
Quentin, Maureen and other friends:
I was not defending (nor was I condemning) the PR bishops' statement, I was just submitting it to the board for your consideration!
t lopez;
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was criticising you; or even suggesting that you had a position on their remarks.
What I was trying to suggest was that I thought that perhaps the phenomenon under discussion was more common than perhaps they'd realised, and might well be more difficult to legislate than they imagined !
For your amusement, may I point out - something which would no doubt have shocked the PR bishops ! - that I once went to a Mass in Pasadena, CA, where the Kyries were sung to what I can only call a 'boot camp chant' - and whilst that may not be commercial, exactly, I'm not sure that it could reasonably be described as 'Catholic' either !
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