Week 11: Rare Meters

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Resources:

Be Thou My Vision

Text: Traditional Irish, c. 750

The first English translation was by the linguist Mary Byrne, published in an Irish academic journal in 1905
Eleanor Hull, founder of the Irish Text Society, adapted Byrne’s translation into verse and published it in 1912 in her Poem Book of the Gael
Its first use in a hymnal came several years later in the 1919 Irish Church Hymnal

Tune: Traditional Irish, 1909

First published in Patrick Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs in 1909 as the tune for “With My Love on the Road”
Almost exclusively used with “Be Thou My Vision”, a few other texts have been written for this tune, including Jan Struther’s “Lord of all Hopefulness”
The name Slane comes from Slane Hill in Ireland where St. Patrick was said to have defied the pagan king Loegaire by lighting a fire to celebrate Easter in AD 433

The meter of this hymn is based on groups of three syllables rather than groups of two like most of the hymns we’ve studied so far. How would you describe the “feeling” of this meter? Does it match the content of the text?
To say this hymn is popular would be an understatement – a number of surveys in the past decade have consistently placed it in the top 5 “favorite” hymns. Why do you think this hymn has endeared itself to so many people? What features of the text or tune help in that regard?
- The text is aspirational (inspiring) in nature, and general enough to apply to a wide swath of people
- The tune is simultaneously both easy to sing and interesting melodically
  - The melody covers an octave and a half between its highest and lowest points – lots of melodic power
  - It uses mostly stepwise motion with no large jumps, and sticks almost entirely to the pentatonic scale

O Laughing Light

Text: Silvia Dunstan (1955–1993), 1987

Born in Simcoe, Ontario, raised by her Methodist and Salvation Army grandparents
Given a musical education from nuns at the nearby St. Joseph’s convent
Through the convent, she met well-known worship writer Sister Miriam Theresa Winter, who encouraged her to use her talents in songwriting
Studied theology at York University and Emmanuel College in Toronto, ordained in the United Church of Canada in 1980
Served as chaplain in a maximum-security prison for 10 years, in addition to traditional pastorates
In 1981 she made a transition from self-proclaimed “guitar-strumming, meter-mangling self-indulgence to form-following, tradition-loving classicism”
Died at the age of 38, less than four months after being diagnosed with cancer of the liver
She was prompted to write this text by her friend and mentor Alan Barthel, who was looking for a “fresh version” of the ancient Christian hymn “Phos Hilaron”

Said Dunstan of her approach to hymnwriting:

…‘meaningful thoughts’ in sloppy form are an impediment to the people’s prayer, causing an undue focus on the work itself, rather than pointing to the worship of God.

Tune: John R. Van Maanen (1958– ), 1998

Also from Simcoe, Ontario, works as a freelance musician
Has set a number of Dunstan’s texts to music, including another well-known hymn of hers, “You, Lord, Are Both Lamb and Shepherd”
The tune is named Phos Hilaron after the inspiration for Dunstan’s text

The meter used by this hymn is 11.11.11.5, known as “Sapphic” meter because of its relation to the ancient Greek poet Sappho who used the same syllable pattern. What problems can you see that make writing in this meter difficult? How does Dunstan work around them in the text? How does the music help support the words in this meter?
- Classical poetry in Sapphic meter includes the dactylic (triple) foot in the middle of the line, this is hard to work with in music
  - Almost all hymns in this meter place the triple foot at the start of the line, followed by four trochaic feet
- The last line is very short and risks becoming a kind of “afterthought”
  - The tune keeps motion in the melody line to connect the last phrase with the one before it
- The typical rhyme scheme is ABAB, but this can make the text feel unbalanced due to the truncated last line
  - One could use a rhyme scheme of AAAB instead, but this only accents the short line
  - Here, Dunstan forgoes rhyme entirely and uses a parallel structure on the final line to tie the hymn together
The opening phrase is certainly a unique one – “O Laughing Light”. Does it change your perception of God at all? Does it fit the mood and intention of the original “Phos Hilaron” text? What about the rest of the hymn?
- “Hilaron” in Greek is the root of our word “hilarious”
  - The same word is used in the New Testament passage of 2 Corinthians 9:7: “God loves a cheerful giver”
  - In the direct transliteration we see it as “gladsome”

Fairest Lord Jesus

Text: Anonymous, 1662

The original text “Schönster Herr Jesu” is recorded on a seventeenth-century manuscript in Münster, Germany
Only after it was re-published in 1842 in Schlesische Volkslieder, a collection of folk tunes, did it reach widespread popularity
The English translation we use today was written by Joseph Seiss in 1873

Tune: Anonymous, 1842

Originates from the same region of Silesia (in modern-day Germany and Poland) as the text
Legend has it the tune dates back to the crusades of the twelfth century, leading to its common name Crusader’s Hymn
Scholars, however, place the tune as originating in the early eighteenth century
The tune is also known as St. Elizabeth, after Franz Liszt’s oratorio “The Legend of St. Elizabeth” used it as a crusader’s march

Appropriately for a folk song from a rural area of Europe, the theme of nature figures prominently in this text. How does this compare to other hymns that talk about nature, such as “This is My Father’s World”, “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, or “How Great Thou Art”? What similarities are there? What is unique about “Fairest Lord Jesus”?
The meter used here is quite irregular, with a mixture of two-syllable and three-syllable groups throughout. Does that irregularity come across when singing the hymn? What factors help keep method in the madness?
- The tune uses repeated rhythms in measures 1-2, 9-10, and 11-12 (with 3-4 similar also)
- The final four measures help mask the strong beats in measures 12-13 with steady repeated melody notes which gives each syllable equal weight in a spot where the syllable accents would normally conflict with the musical emphasis