Did you know that, next to the Bible and perhaps a concordance, the hymnal has probably been, in a historical sense, the most useful devotional and doctrinal resource available for several centuries to the Christian?

Most of us Protestants know that the Reformation of the sixteenth century introduced (or re-introduced) congregational singing back into the church on a grand scale. No longer were the sung portions of the service performed only by trained choirs, in a language unintelligible to most laymen. You will recall stories of Martin Luther= s effective practice of taking well-known secular tunes of the day (tunes that his congregants knew by memory) and adding sacred words to them for use in worship.

Quality hymnals of today represent a vast improvement over their early predecessors. For years after the Reformation, hymnals as we know them were not available to the congregation. Often an organist, or other instrumentalist or singer, A lined out@ the hymn and the congregation followed, singing the texts by rote or from memory to a few well-known tunes. Congregations memorized a few well-known texts, often taken directly from Scripture. Many hymnals, even a century or less ago, contained text only and no music score (one reason for this was to make them small and portable. Hymnals were often bought and treasured by individuals, and were used at home as well as for corporate worship. They were highly-regarded resources. I recall, for instance, a notice printed by Benjamin Franklin requesting the return of his wife= s lost hymnal.)

The hymnal as we know it today became well established in the nineteenth century. Virtually all of the main Protestant denominations, and many other groups, issued hymnals, each emphasizing the group= s particular doctrinal focus. It is very interesting to compare these hymnals, in terms of the texts and tunes chosen, the order of the hymns, and (from a musician= s point of view) the particular musical arrangements, meters, and keys of the tunes chosen.

Presbyterians have always been known for scholarship, and this focus on scholarship early extended to hymns. Our newest Presbyterian Hymnal indeed reflects that excellent tradition. Not only does this book represent a low-cost (about $15) and lasting investment (it is made for years of use and will not easily wear out), but I hope to convince you that it is an invaluable resource that anyone can learn to use to a much greater degree. Although much can be said about hymnody, we will leave that topic until a later article and concentrate here on how we can use the hymnal more effectively.

Pick up your copy of The Presbyterian Hymnal and let= s walk through it briefly. Begin with the table of contents, called the A Organization of the Hymnal@ . You will note that most hymns are grouped according to their place in the Christian year, beginning with Advent (the announcement and expectation of the Messiah), giving the order a decidedly Christ-centered focus. Other groupings include Psalms and topical hymns (such as those relating to the particular members of the Godhead, evening songs, national hymns, etc.)

Now look at the Preface. As customary, the Preface usually cites the philosophy of a book= s author and provides some history of previous related efforts. You can see that, for better or for worse, a major emphasis of the hymnal committee was the selection of material from a wide variety of ethnic and historical resources, covering centuries of Christian practice. (You might want to consider what emphasis areas you would stress if you were the editor-in-chief.) More information on the perspectives of the hymnal committee, and some indications of how to use the book, follow in the Introduction.

Now let= s skip over the whole body of worship aids and hymns and move to the Indexes section beginning on page 677. There are a variety of indexes here, and they are all very useful. Probably the one used most frequently by the layperson is the A Index of first lines and common titles@ , which (as usually the case) is conveniently placed at the very end of the book. Using it, you can find a hymn if you know either the first few words of the text or the common name of the hymn. For most hymns, these two items will be the same; however, there are many exceptions. Note that the first verse of the second hymn listed, A A La Ru@ , begins with different words. Can you see why?

Moving backwards, the next list is the A Alphabetical Index of Tunes@ . As an organist, I use this index very frequently, because tune names are (in most cases) unique and identify the tune uniquely to the musician. Note that the well-known tune A Aberystwyth@ , for instance, appears four times in the hymnal, that is, it is A set@ to four different texts. (You might wish to look up these four entries and determine which of the texts you have sung to this tune.) More importantly, if I want to find an organ setting of that tune, I look in the master index I keep for my collection under A Aberystwyth@ . I probably have twenty or more settings of that particular tune, by different composers. I know that many tunes are used for a variety of texts. (Incidentally, if you want to know more about the background of that tune, or why the name A Aberystwyth@ was chosen, I will tell you below how to find such information).

As we become more sophisticated in the use of the Hymnal, one of the most important indexes is the A Metrical index of tunes@ . Few A people in the pew@ bother to use this, but it can be extremely useful. Let= s see how.

Did you ever wonder how a particular text becomes connected with a particular tune? In most cases, the tune and text are written by two different persons (poets are not always musicians, and vice versa!), and often originate in widely different cultures and time periods. In many cases, a tune is composed for a particular poem. In other cases, a text is fitted metrically by its author to a well-known tune, sometimes a tune from a major classical work.

Tune and text need to have the same meter; that is, the syllables of the text need to fit the flow of the music. This is easy to understand, but is in fact a complex subject. Let= s see how we might use this index.

Turn, for example, to the text A Love Divine, All Loves Excelling@ (number 376), which our congregation has sung frequently. The hymnal committee has chosen to set it to the powerful Welsh tune A Hyfrydol@ . Note that the text fits the tune perfectly. It is a tune that most of us know and love. However, many of us probably grew up singing this text to another tune. Let= s see if we can determine if that other tune is in this hymnal.

Note, right under the title on the page where the hymn appears, the entry A HYFRYDOL 8.7.8.7 D@ . This is not some strange cypher, but an indication of the grouping of the syllables of the text or tune. The A D@ means double. Thus, the tune can match eight groups of syllables: the first group having eight syllables, the second group seven, the third group eight, and so on. A poem that has the same group of syllables can probably (but not always) be matched to this tune. (Because of musical emphasis, and the flow of A strong@ and A weak@ beats, among other reasons, some texts will not sound right with particular tunes. As we said, this can become a complex subject, but it is fascinating. Perhaps we can have a Sunday-school class on it some day.) Before going on, think the text of A Love Divine, All Loves Excelling@ in your mind. Can you identify the groups of syllables as shown (8 7 8 7 8 7 8 7) as the meter of this hymn?

Now let= s look for that other tune that we wanted to find. Turn to the Metrical Index and look under A 8.7.8.7 D@ . You will find the tune Hyfrydol listed, as well as many others, including some (e.g., Austrian Hymn, Beecher, Bradbury and Converse) that most people know. If you read music, you can examine each of these tunes to determine what they sound like. (The tune we were looking for, to which A Love Divine, All Loves Excelling@ has been traditionally set in most earlier hymnals, is A Beecher@ , which we can find as hymn 343. What text is that tune set to in this hymnal?)

Unlike some texts, the A Love Divine@ text to which we have been referring is actually a relatively straightforward text to set to music. Just to show the possible variety of selecting an appropriate tune, you might try singing the text to the tune A Austrian Hymn@ (which we normally think of as A Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken@ ) and note how well it fits. Of course, we would expect to have to make some approximations to match the meter; for instance, the word A heaven@ in the first line of the first verse must be sung as one syllable.

Will this text work just as well with any other 8.7.8.7 D tune? As we said, this is a very popular meter, and it includes hymns such as A What a Friend we Have in Jesus@ , A Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us@ , A Come, Thou Fount@ , etc. Most of these can be interchanged, and some sound A not quite right@ . Fortunately, most hymns of this meter begin on a strong beat, which makes them more interchangeable. In contrast, the well-known tune to A The Church= s One Foundation@ begins on a weak beat, and if we wanted to choose another tune, we should probably choose one beginning on a weak beat. In contrast, the tune A St. Kevin@ (Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain@ ) is of the same (7.6.7.6. D) meter but begins on a strong beat, which immediately causes us problems with the first verse of A The Church= s One Foundation@ , as it emphasizes the word A the@ (there are other problems, too).

A little historical comment on tunes and texts is in order. Although in our minds, tunes often uniquely suggest a hymn (such as A Silent Night@ or A O Come, All Ye Faithful@ ), the original pairing of tunes and texts often represented convenience of the time and many such original pairings are no longer used. For example, the text A Just as I Am@ was widely used in the mid nineteenth century with the A Bridal Chorus@ tune by Wagner that we usually associate now with A Here Comes the Bride@ ! (That tune did not catch on for weddings until the forced marriage of the daughter of the socially-prominent New Yorker Alma Vanderbilt in the 1870's; but that= s another story for another time. Probably this use of the tune contributed to its dissociation with the A Just as I Am@ text.)

Incidentally, several shorthand abbreviations are found in the metric notations. They include CM (A common meter@ , so designated because of its frequent use), LM (A long meter@ ), and SM(A short meter@ ). Note that many hymns follow the first two of these metric patterns. Can you turn to one of these hymns (such as A Amazing Grace@ ) and work out the numerical pattern for A common meter@ ? (It is 8.6.8.6.)

After all that, there are still four more indexes to deal with! Fortunately, they are all easy to understand. The A Topical Index@ is just that; it helps us to find hymns for particular needs, in the same manner as a A Topical Bible@ . The A Scriptural Allusions@ index is useful if you want to find a hymn that relates to a particular Bible passage. And of course, the indexes of A Composers, Arrangers, And Sources@ and A Authors, Translators, and Sources@ are self-explanatory. They enable us to find, for instance, a hymn based upon a text by John Calvin or a tune by Beethoven.

Earlier, we raised the intriguing question of how to learn more about a composer or author, or to find out why a tune carries a particular name. We might even need to find a hymn containing a particular word or phrase, for which the first line has been forgotten. To do these kinds of things, two additional resources can be obtained for quality hymnals published by some of the larger denominations. A hymnal concordance is just that: like a Bible concordance, it allows us much more detail in finding hymns in which particular words are imbedded (not necessarily words in the title or first line). In contrast, a hymnal companion provides biographical and other information on composers, authors, arrangers, and translators, and often gives some history of the text or tune. Both of these resources are available for our hymnal (about $25 each) and are extremely useful to worship planners and other serious users of the hymnal. The Church has copies of these.

I hope this little excursion into the A insides@ of our hymnal will prove to be useful to you and help in placing the hymnal back into the important position it deserves in our Christian lives. It is ironic to note, in this day of so much emphasis on scholarship and learning, that so many Christians pick up a hymnal only a few times on Sunday morning, scarcely using the vast resources therein. Even more disturbing is the proliferation of technology such as the now-popular projection of texts on overhead screens in worship, which effectively causes the hymnal to remain in the pew rack, further reducing our exposure to the great and very relevant music and poetry of the Church. Such technologies have a valid place, but we should use them carefully and ensure that they do not come to dilute our use of the rich tradition of Christian hymnody at our disposal. May we, instead, learn to use the wonderful resources of our hymnals frequently and wisely!

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