Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands, III

Handel was a notorious plagiarist. He didn’t give a second thought to pinching pieces penned by other composers, retrofitting them to his own purposes, and plopping them down in his works as if they were his own invention. As a graduate assistant I once caught an undergrad in a music theory class plagiarizing on his final composition project. I think he failed the class. It was December. Merry Christmas.

Handel lived in different times and the idea that your work must be fully original or else the bits you borrow must be fully and correctly cited (thanks, Kate Turabian) came later.

What we may indignantly call theft, for Handel is a badge of honor. Donald Francis Tovey put it this way: “Handel, like Bach and other great masters, differs from his predecessors and contemporaries in that he is a composer, as most of them are not.”^[1] By this he means that the composer doesn’t merely put notes down because, by golly, we’ve got to have some music. Rather a composer takes musical ideas and materials and shapes them into something grand. A composer starts with an eye for what is possible and then goes to work. Tovey demonstrates that it is this je ne se quoi that in have made Handel, Bach, and the other greats rise to the top in history while scads of their contemporaries have been lost in obscurity.

Tovey makes these observations in a discussion of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, which he says is “found to be perhaps one of the most composite and heterogenous works of art in the history of music.”[2] This oratorio, if we can call it that, is generated from so many influences it doesn’t really surprise us that—kitchen sink included—there are hymn tunes in there, and Lutheran ones to boot.

Johann Sebastian Bach is really the champion of using Lutheran chorales in his compositions. Probably the most striking example comes with the discovery of hymn tunes imbedded in the chaconne of the D minor Violin Partita. But other composers got caught up in the act as well. Handel used Lutheran hymns frequently in his works and, what is interesting to me, did so without the audience having the foggiest idea that it was happening. Put a piece in front of a German audience and they’d catch the references. An English audience? Probably not.

So why refer to Lutheran church music in a piece for Londoners? To move people. Tovey insists that Handel “must be judged as a rhetorician, exactly as we would judge of a master of prose or a speaker.”[3] Handel’s music is nothing if it isn’t understood as an eloquent oration intended to persuade listeners of something. In the Baroque period—and other times too—musicians developed all kinds emotionally evocative musical effects, often referred to as the Doctrine of Affections. Handel used musical figures to fantastic effect, knowing what ideas would move an audience which way. Thus when it came to recycling melodies Handel resourcefully used materials he determined would invoke a desired, appropriate result in the listener.

One of my mentors once pointed out that the opening chorus in Israel in Egypt paraphrases the first phrase in Luther’s “Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands.” The text of the chorus samples from Exodus chapters 1 and 2:

And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage;

And their cry came up unto God.

They [the Egyptians] oppressed them with burdens and made them serve with rigor.

The effect is at once a lament and cry for mercy. Handel takes advantage of the minor key to portray languishing and exhausted Israelite slaves. To him—and this shows his Lutheran upbringing—the hymn tune is the perfect vehicle for the idea of bondage, which is really the whole point of the hymn in the first place. But for Luther, and Handel too, the bonds are just a set up. Israel’s slavery is an opportunity for Moses to liberate the people. Crucifixion leads to the possibility of Resurrection.

This hymn tune, placed in medias res-style at the beginning of the oratorio, foreshadows the final deliverance at the end, when after Pharaoh is drown, the people sing “the horse and his rider has He thrown into the sea.”

---

[1] Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis: Concertos and Choral Works (London: Oxford University Press, 1981), 318.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 320.

Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands, II

One of the hallmarks of a great hymn is the number of spin offs it inspires over time.

A hymn--a song of praise--by nature is corporate in its reach. Not only is it shared among a people in the present while they celebrate some thing but it has the power to endure, engaging the memory singing it in church as a kid and with grandmother peeling potatoes. A hymn is a folk song, a song of a people--an identifier of who they are and what they believe is important.

To Martin Luther if all God's people were to live out God's grace through faith, they would have to be full participants in worship and this certainly included singing. The Latin Mass was exclusive in that regard. But if illiterate German Christians were more or less silent when they went to church, they weren't silent after, especially on festal occasions. The people sang many faithful songs in their own language. These folk hymns were Luther's inlet to congregational song in worship. By taking vernacular hymns and fitting them with new words the modern notion of hymnody came to be.

By the time Luther wrote "Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands" this hymn's ancestry had spread into a mighty tree. It has two predecessors: one a Latin Easter hymn, "Victimae Paschali laudes," Praise the Paschal Victim, the other a German vernacular song, "Christ ist erstanden," Christ is Risen. Both these songs have long histories of their own. Suffice it to say Luther was not intent on abandoning these songs but wanted rather to bask in the light of their tradition. These are faithful songs, why toss them out? Are they honorable? Then honor them. Build on them and extend their reach. The Master gave you a talent. Don't bury it.

But to build and invest necessarily will bring change and even improvement. With "Christ ist erstanden" improvements were needed, if only for the sake of clarity. An early English translation by Miles Coverdale reads:

Christe is now rysen agayne

From his death and all his payne:

Therfore wyll we mery be

And reioyce with Him gladly.

Kirieleyson.

The problem with this is the incongruity between the merriment celebrating the Resurrection (that parties with Jesus Himself) and the phrase "Kirieleyson," Lord have mercy. 

Really there's nothing wrong with that. We beseech Mercy in everything. But the ordinary connotation is that we need mercy to cover our sins. And since Christ is risen we are no longer in our sins (1 Corinthians 15:17).

See the problem? 

To make a clearer response to the Resurrection, Luther proposed this first verse as an alternative:

Christ Jesus lay in death's strong bands,

For our offenses given;
But now at God's right hand He stands
And brings us life from heaven;
Therefore let us joyful be
And sing to God right thankfully
Loud songs of hallelujah. Hallelujah!

The party is still there. Christ is risen. Indeed. But the refrain is different. Let's not sing loud songs of "Lord have mercy," but "Hallelujah."

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, NKJV)

In biblical tradition leaven is a metaphor for the infectiousness of sin. During Passover unleavened bread was eaten to symbolize the haste with which the meal was prepared and eaten. There was no time for waiting around for bread to rise. There is a readiness lived out in the life of faith, not complacency which often can lead us down sinful paths. Later in the Bible, where Paul exhorts the Ephesians to have their feet “shod with the readiness of the Gospel,” he may have the Israelites in mind who ate the Passover with shoes on and staff in hand.

That Paul invokes feasting connects his command to the Communion meal and a celebration at table is what Martin Luther sets down in this Easter hymn:

Then let us feast this joyful day

On Christ, the bread of heaven;

The word of grace hath purged away

The old and evil leaven.

Christ alone our souls will feed,

He is our meat and drink indeed;

Faith lives upon no other. Hallelujah!

We come to Christ hungry. Wallowing in rebellion we saw no need of Him and grasped after bread that could not satisfy. With that bread spent up we now come to the Bread of Life to feed our famished faith.

Hymns are a food for our faith and hymns like this have nourished the faith of generations of Christians. The minor key of the hymn tune is a sign of its heartiness, like seedy loaf full of crackle. This is no sad song. Crusty bread lacks no nourishment and satisfies our bellies.

Church Music and Nashville

I applaud Keith Getty in his dedication to the idea of hymnody, but what he writes is a far cry from what we've received from the evangelical hymn tradition. For one thing English hymn writers Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, John Newton were clergymen, not Nashville singer-songwriters. Getty is selling a product. Certainly older writers promoted and published their stuff. Nothing wrong with that. But their's holds a very different ethos than what's produced in today's church music climate.

A Question

Why do Keith Getty's hymns sound like Twila Paris ripoffs?

A Place for Choir and Organ in Liturgy

In considering whether organs and choirs have a place in liturgy, you could say that the burden of proof lays with our Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran brother's who've relied on their use for hundreds of years.  Because the Bible doesn't command them, the Calvinist stands on surer ground.  Nevertheless, organ and choral music are useful to enhance congregational singing and lend majesty and splendor to worship which ought to be present.

Nicholas Wolterstorff has written a very honest article articulating the Reformed position on choirs and organ in liturgy.  He seems to assume the Regulative Principal rather than explaining it outright.  His closing point about simplicity is very good and I think acknowledges the flow of redemptive history.  Christ's redemptive work has drawn us nearer to God than rich outward signs of the OT were ever able to do.  Going out on a limb, we might say that "the look" of our worship should mimic (and prepare us for) the glorious scenes in Revelation even more than OT ceremony.

Ethnocentric Church Music

For all that evangelicals say condemning racism, it remains present in contemporary church music.  Grasping at idol of relevance inevitably leads to marginalizing slices of the populace.  Certainly we ignore the covenantal (i.e. multi-generational) aspect of worship when we turn to pop music as a model for worship song.  But perhaps more subtly, a lot of contemporary church music I know tends to appeal to white people, finding its inspiration often in rock or celtic styles.  Church music can and should have its own local flavor, but for the sake of unity, church music should also have broad appeal: "there is one Church, one Lord, one Baptism..."

Old hymns (texts and tunes together), particularly from the 16th century until the Second Great Awakening, remain the best congregational music the church has created.  These hymns teach Biblical truth in a way that is rather easy to sing and sing together as a body of believers; they move the affections while avoiding unhelpful sentimentality.  This style ought to form the model of new worship song.