Matching Text and Tune


Praise to God, Immortal Praise (VU 521) sung to Forty Days and Forty Nights. (VU 114)
The French folk melody used for Hymn 521, in Voices United, was originally used as a part of a satricial cycle of songs for advent. This tune, specifically, was intended as a song that was intended to greet the donkey that delivered the Christ child. This transference of something that was intended to mock sentimentality, into something explicitly sentimental is a problem. 1 One of the ways of solving the problem is to move the tune away from its history and into something more discreet. The Martin Herbst' tune that is used with the hymn Forty Days and Forty Nights has a sensuality, and a sophistication, that is musically rich enough to simultaneously under-gird notions of bounty, and notions of love, without moving the tune into historical traps.


O God of all the Many Lands (VU 523) sung to Kingsfold.

Kingsfold is thought to be an archetypal English tune, though ironically it is the exact tune as the Irish folk tune Stars of the Country Town, which suggests that borders might be more pliable then we like to think of. It would be a bit of an inside joke, but for a hymn about the failures of national borders, it is one that fits. There are also less insidery reasons to make this switch. Kingsfold is a rousing anthem , whose energy matches the wonder and awe of the natural world found in the lyrics. As well, t here is a modesty, and an ease to singing that provides a useful correction to some of the other options triumphalism.