HYMN

TUNES. 275

rather progressing—or gliding when such transitions
are desirable—by the use of the most natural intervals,
and of these according to their true grade of perfection.
Hymn tunes which are continually jumping up and down
the scale, or fleeing from one imperfect interval to
another, never can be popular, but, on the contrary, will
always insure rejection for those more nearly allied with
natural order and progression.

In Church music it is the custom, now-a-days, for “ every
man to do that which is right in his own eyes,” and this
principle, or rather want of principle, is a fertile source of
bad hymnody. The interchangeable theory of hymn-tunes

-is a grave error. No two hymns should be sung to the
same tune, for every hymn tune ought to be written to
one set: of words, and never divorced from them. There
need be no objection to having, if thought fit, even
hundreds of different tunes to each set of words, so that a
tune should be made for each hymn, but where the same
tune does duty for a dozen or more hymns, it cannot, by
any chance, be equally applicable to all; for the only rule
that can be the guide, under such circumstances, is the
metre,—so many longs and shorts per line,—but to
suppose each of these lines maintain oné unbroken
characteristic of expression, is to imagine a fallacy and, if
they differ, the same musical strain will not adequately
represent them. If we take up an old hymnal we shall
never see the grand hymns of Christendom shifted and
changed, now to this tune then to that. Each has its
proper tune and no one would think of singing another
hymn to it any more than setting the words of Handel's
“Hallelujah,” to his “Dead March” in “Saul.” Hymn
tunes, then, to be popular, must be made for the words.
There can be no objection to as many tunes being com-
posed to every hymn as there are syllables in the lines,
because if the composer feels the subject his music will
fit the hymn to which he weds it, and no other.

As musical editors generally deem it necessary to
include a large proportion of their own compositions,
and will not recognize the simple conditions under which
hymn tunes should be admitted, we have—and no doubt
shall long continue to hayve—hymunals of every guise, and
yet, strange to say, editors in general are obliged to
admit their defective supervision, for no collection that
appears dares to ignore the old-fashioned tunes which are,.
nationally considered, parts of our birthright. And it is
equally evident that where new tunes, modelled upon
correct principles, have secured popular adoption, what-
ever may be the conflicting interests of the various pub-
lishers, these new tunes are paid for and “inserted by
permission,” or duly “acknowledged with thanks ;” and
this because the people can sing them and will not buy
books from which their national melodies are excluded.

The purest and earliest, as well as the most beautiful,
portion of all that comes in to make up what is under-
stood in one generic term, music, is melody. It is at
once the beginning and end of all sweet sounds, the most
simple, yet refined, of all its various parts, and speaks
alike with a precision and intelligence, both to the learned
and unlearned.

After speech comes language, and with language inflec-
tion. This is Gop’s melody given to His creature, man,
to render our utterance impressive, and stir our auditors
to a lively participation of the emotions of the speaker's
mind. In melody we hymn our praise to Gop, in melody
we offer up our prayers. By it we convey to each other

our hopes and fears, our loves and hates, our sorrows and
our joys. Without inflection all our words would fall
upon the ear alike, and nothing but elaborate phraseclogy,
—chosen with difficulty, and then very often wofully
defective—could express the meaning we desire, but not
the feeling we would impart.

Melody is to the human voice what the eye is to the
countenance. Both supplement speech and give it an
interpretation of their own. A look is often more eloquent
than words, and a tone will, as frequently, turn the most
commonplace expression into an exquisite thrill of joy
or wail of grief.

In the present highly artificial state of our hymn tunes,
our Church composers appear most studious to neglect this
natural and wonder-working power, lying ready made at
their command, and prefer seeking, in abstruse harmonies
and uncongenial combinations, some curiously entangled
phrase that can be loaded to overlading by art. Nature
no longer charms them, for art is their goal. They
ignore the former and cherish the latter. By-and-by,
when the fashion in hymn-tunes has worn itself out, and
worshippers have grown tired of the hurly-burly of the
“hearty” school, there may, perhaps, be a revival and a
weleome accorded to the ecclesiastical melodist.. At

‘present the latter are of the scareest and can be counted

on the fingers of one’s hands. A glance at our old hymn
tunes will show us we had sterling church melodies, full
of tune, which people could sing, play, and remember.
Now all that is changed, melody is sacrificed, and nature
is suffocated in the folds of art.

To the Church musician, gifted with a love of the beau-
tiful and true, a brilliant path is open, if he will but follow
nature and its melody. Such an one must feel that to
make music which shall bear comparison with the com-
positions of “The English Palestrina,” Dr. Gauntlett, he
must avoid caricaturing instrumental music by vocal
means, and look, first, upon speech as melody in its
primitive form, and then he will realize that nations and
peoples,—ay ! even counties and districts,—each have a
peculiar melody of speech of their own. So, to be suc-
cessful with the people he must study not only the accent
of those for whom he would write, but the inflections
which they naturally use, these being the key to the
national or provincial tune, and then the natural melody,
so given, will be characteristic of the nation, or locality,
and enforce such attention that there will be no with-
standing it. His next step, in writing hymn tunes, will
be to arrange his ideas in the most simple, graceful forms,
and in this lies the test. The national tune should have full
play, but the scholastic rhythm, or accent, will have no
place; for true melody depends on the taste of the com-
poser, and the closer he keeps to the natural inflection and
emphasis of those he desires to sing his tunes, the more
popular his music will be.

After having identified his strains with the melodic
tune of the locality, employed his best: taste in grouping
those sounds together, he must bear several things in
mind, and of these the two most important are, that re-
iterations of one note do not constitute melody. The
second principle, which is also of great moment, is,
that although a series of strictly even notes,—7.e. even
in duration,—if varied by different intervals, will cer-
tainly make a melody, yet, unless the emphasis of the

locality is enlisted, common-place monotony will be the

only result. The local word-tune once obtained, the

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