The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 8

Holy! holy! holy! merciful and mighty, G.o.d in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.

Holy! holy! holy! all the saints adore Thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the gla.s.sy sea; Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before Thee, Which wert, and art, and evermore shall be.

_THE TUNE._

Grand as the hymn is, it did not come to its full grandeur of sentiment and sound in song-wors.h.i.+p till the remarkable music of Dr. John B. d.y.k.es was joined to it. None was ever written that in performance ill.u.s.trates more admirably the solemn beauty of congregational praise. The name "Nicaea" attached to the tune means nothing to the popular ear and mind, and it is known everywhere by the initial words of the first line.

Rev. John Bacchus d.y.k.es, Doctor of Music, was born at Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1823; and graduated at Cambridge, in 1847. He became a master of tone and choral harmony, and did much to reform and elevate congregational psalmody in England. He was perhaps the first to demonstrate that hymn-tune making can be reduced to a science without impairing its spiritual purpose. Died Jan. 22, 1876.

"LORD OF ALL BEING, THRONED AFAR."

This n.o.ble hymn was composed by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, born in Cambridge, Ma.s.s., 1809, and graduated at Harvard University. A physician by profession, he was known as a pract.i.tioner chiefly in literature, being a brilliant writer and long the leading poetical wit of America.

He was, however, a man of deep religious feeling, and a devout attendant at King's Chapel, Unitarian, in Boston where he spent his life. He held the Harvard Professors.h.i.+p of Anatomy and Physiology more than fifty years, but his enduring work is in his poems, and his charming volume, _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. Died Jan. 22, 1896.

_THE TUNE._

Holmes' hymn is sung in some churches to "Louvan," V.C. Taylor's admirable praise tune. Other hymnals prefer with it the music of "Keble," one of Dr. d.y.k.es' appropriate and finished melodies.

Virgil Corydon Taylor, an American vocal composer, was born in Barkhamstead, Conn., April 2, 1817, died 1891.

CHAPTER II.

SOME HYMNS OF GREAT WITNESSES.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS.

[Greek: Erchesthe, o pistoi, Anastaseos Hemera.]

John of Damascus, called also St. John of Jerusalem, a theologian and poet, was the last but one of the Christian Fathers of the Greek Church.

This eminent man was named by the Arabs "Ibn Mansur," Son (Servant?) of a Conqueror, either in honor of his father Sergius or because it was a Semitic translation of his family t.i.tle. He was born in Damascus early in the 8th century, and seems to have been in favor with the Caliph, and served under him many years in some important civil capacity, until, retiring to Palestine, he entered the monastic order, and late in life was ordained a priest of the Jerusalem Church. He died in the Convent of St. Sabas near that city about A.D. 780.

His lifetime appears to have been pa.s.sed in comparative peace. Mohammed having died before completing the conquest of Syria, the Moslem rule before whose advance Oriental Christianity was to lose its first field of triumph had not yet a.s.serted its persecuting power in the north. This devout monk, in his meditations at St. Sabas, dwelt much upon the birth and the resurrection of Christ, and made hymns to celebrate them. It was probably four hundred years before Bonaventura (?) wrote the Christmas "Adeste Fideles" of the Latin West that John of Damascus composed his Greek "Adeste Fideles" for a Resurrection song in Jerusalem.

Come ye faithful, raise the strain Of triumphant gladness.

'Tis the spring of souls today Christ hath burst His prison; From the frost and gloom of death Light and life have risen.

The n.o.bler of the two hymns preserved to us, (or six stanzas of it) through eleven centuries is ent.i.tled "The Day of Resurrection."

The day of resurrection, Earth, tell its joys abroad: The Pa.s.sover of gladness, The Pa.s.sover of G.o.d.

From death to life eternal, From earth unto the sky, Our Christ hath brought us over, With hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil, That we may see aright The Lord in rays eternal Of resurrection light; And, listening to His accents, May hear, so calm and plain, His own, "All hail!" and hearing, May raise the victor-strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful, Let earth her song begin, Let all the world keep triumph, All that dwell therein.

In grateful exultation, Their notes let all things blend, For Christ the Lord is risen, O joy that hath no end!

Both these hymns of John of Damascus were translated by John Mason Neale.

_THE TUNE._

"The Day of Resurrection" is sung in the modern hymnals to the tune of "Rotterdam," composed by Berthold of Tours, born in that city of the Netherlands, Dec. 17, 1838. He was educated at the conservatory in Leipsic, and later made London his permanent residence, writing both vocal and instrumental music. Died 1897. "Rotterdam" is a stately, sonorous piece and conveys the flavor of the ancient hymn.

"Come ye faithful" has for its modern interpreter Sir Arthur Sullivan, the celebrated composer of both secular and sacred works, but best known in hymnody as author of the great Christian march, "Onward Christian Soldiers."

Hymns are known to have been written by the earlier Greek Fathers, Ephrem Syrus of Mesopotamia (A.D. 307-373), Basil the Great, Bishop of Cappadocia (A.D. 329-379) Gregory n.a.z.ianzen, Bishop of Constantinople (A.D. 335-390) and others, but their fragments of song which have come down to us scarcely rank them among the great witnesses--with the possible exception of the last name. An English scholar, Rev. Allen W.

Chatfield, has translated the hymns extant of Gregory n.a.z.ianzen. The following stanzas give an idea of their quality. The lines are from an address to the Deity:

How, Unapproached! shall mind of man Descry Thy dazzling throne, And pierce and find Thee out, and scan Where Thou dost dwell alone?

Unuttered Thou! all uttered things Have had their birth from Thee; The One Unknown, from Thee the spring Of all we know and see.

And lo! all things abide in Thee And through the complex whole, Thou spreadst Thine own divinity, Thyself of all the Goal.

This is reverent, but rather philosophical than evangelical, and reminds us of the Hymn of Aratus, more than two centuries before Christ was born.

ST. STEPHEN, THE SABAITE.

This pious Greek monk, (734-794,) nephew of St. John of Damascus, spent his life, from the age of ten, in the monastery of St. Sabas. His sweet hymn, known in Neale's translation,--

Art thou weary, art thou languid, Art thou sore distrest?

Come to Me, saith One, and coming Be at rest,

--is still in the hymnals, with the tunes of d.y.k.es, and Sir Henry W.

Baker (1821-1877), Vicar of Monkland, Herefords.h.i.+re.

KING ROBERT II.

_Veni, Sancte Spiritus._

Robert the Second, surnamed "Robert the Sage" and "Robert the Devout,"

succeeded Hugh Capet, his father, upon the throne of France, about the year 997. He has been called the gentlest monarch that ever sat upon a throne, and his amiability of character poorly prepared him to cope with his dangerous and wily adversaries. His last years were embittered by the opposition of his own sons, and the political agitations of the times. He died at Melun in 1031, and was buried at St. Denis.

Robert possessed a reflective mind, and was fond of learning and musical art. He was both a poet and a musician. He was deeply religious, and, from unselfish motives, was much devoted to the church.

Robert's hymn, "Veni, Sancte Spiritus," is given below. He himself was a chorister; and there was no kingly service that he seemed to love so well. We are told that it was his custom to go to the church of St.

Denis, and in his royal robes, with his crown upon his head, to direct the choir at matins and vespers, and join in the singing. Few kings have left a better legacy to the Christian church than his own hymn, which, after nearly a thousand years, is still an influence in the world: