Introduction

In 1761, the Methodist co-founder John Wesley give this instruction for hymn singing:

Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, then when you sung the songs of Satan.

One of my favourite musical activities is participating in twice-a-month singings held by Victoria Sacred Harp where we mostly sing old-style four-part harmony arrangements from a songbook called the Sacred Harp. The above poster invites you to a special singing school that we will be having this February here in Victoria to introduce folks to participating in singing the style of choral music represented in today’s set.

We are not a performance oriented choir, but a casual local group that sings this way for fun, and part of an international movement reviving historical part-singing that does not follow the standard rules of choral harmonization. We mainly sing from a book called the Sacred Harp.

The above poster invites you to join us a for a day of such singing, with a potluck lunch, coming up in February. You do not need to know how to read music, although admittedly that is helpful. You can learn the songs by ear. Although what we sing are Christian hymns, most of us do not view this as a religious experience. It is participation in an authentic choral folk-singing tradition.

Here’s some background: The latter half of the 17th century was the peak of the English Reformation - it was a time when even the singing of religious songs conflicted with Puritan beliefs and only monophonic congregational singing of the Psalms was permitted by the Church of England. All else was considered to be blasphemy.

The words “sacred harp” are a reference to the argument for the alternative concept - that the human voice is God’s musical instrument and it is meant to be used.

Our hymnbook is a collection of 4-part hymn arrangements composed in the style of choral singing that emerged shortly after the Puritan stranglehold over morality had loosened in New England in about 1750. There was a sudden and huge public demand to participate in harmony singing of what came to be called “hymns”. But after over a century of suppression of singing, there were no music teachers, choir masters, or hymn books. There were also no hymn-writers who had been trained in the classic rules of harmony that had been fine-tuned (sorry about the pun!) back during the Baroque era.

The need for someone to write hymns, and lead congregations in the singing of them, was filled by self-taught amateurs who either did not know the classic rules of harmony or chose to ignore them in accordance with the above-quoted instruction. That is the kind of hymns that are in our Sacred Harp songbooks, and which are in today’s music set. As you can hear in these Christmas hymns, the styles of singing that developed back then were rhythmically more varied and had more robust harmonies than what most people associate with hymn singing today.

Playlist

* Cranbrook (While Shepherds Watched) - Vinyl Café Orchestra - 2:34

* Sherburne (While Shepherds Watched) - 1959 Lomax remastered - 1:50

* Shiloh (Methinks I See an Heav’nly Host) - The Elastic Millennium Choir - 3:06

* Herald Angels - The Oxford Waits & The Mellstock Band - 2:44

Music notes

Cranbrook (While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night)This might be the most fun-to-sing arrangement of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. It is mainly notorious for having the same lively tune and semi-fuguing arrangement as the well-known Yorkshire dialect folk song On Ilkla Mooar Baht ‘at (On Ilkley Moor without a hat). But that association is problematic for it as a church hymn. Is a hymn appropriate if people start to giggle when it begins?

Since most people probably learned On Ilkla Mooar Baht ‘at well before they heard this hymn, they might think that this is one of those many cases of church music being based on a folk song. Or they may have heard its legendary origin story that the song was written a group of choirboys who were out on a post-practice ramble and picnic on Ilkley Moor (in West Yorkshire, near Leeds and Bradford) on a chilly day, and they improvised the song based on the melody and choral arrangement of While Shepherds Watched they had been learning.

The tune and arrangement was indeed a hymn written at least 50 years before the humorous folk song with gruesome food-chain logic first appeared. The tune and arrangement, known as Cranbrook (aka Northampton) was written sometime before 1805 by the prolific Methodist, and later Unitarian, hymnist Thomas Clark. Clark’s day-job was as a shoe-maker and he lived his whole life in the city of Canterbury in south-east England,

But Clark did not compose it for Nahum Tate’s poem While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. He wrote it to accompany Grace ‘tis a charming sound, that was written by the non-conformist poet Philip Doddridge (1702-1751). That lyrics-music combination still appears in various hymnals today.

Clark self-published several hymnals, but they were mainly used only by non-conformist congregations in the south-east of England. It is not at all clear when or how Clark’s tune and arrangement got to Yorkshire, or when his arrangement was first used for While Shepherds Watched. Interestingly, the online sources for information about hymns for use in churches seem to ignore this fun-to-sing arrangement of WSWTFBN, probably because of the giggling problem that I mentioned above.

My guess, and it is only my speculation, is that perhaps it was through pub-singing that the lively and easy-to-sing Cranbrook arrangement got linked to the everyone-knows-the-lyrics Christmas hymn. We have already seen how Yorkshire pub singers near Sheffield preserved early hymns as pub songs, including several versions of While Shepherds Watched, after the churches installed organs and abandoned the rousing early “west gallery” style of singing in favour of silky smooth hymns that conformed to the classic rules of harmony.

During and after that transition the singing of the old hymns as pub-singing was widespread in England, not just around Sheffield, Cornwall and a few other rural places. I can easily envision this hymn-tune combination going viral in pubs from town to town across the country, which would solve the mystery of how it got from Canterbury all the way up to Yorkshire.

The late Dr Arnold Kellett, who studied Yorkshire dialects, determined that On Ilkla Mooar baht ‘at is in the specific dialect of people who live around Halifax, just west of Leeds. He recounts without judgement the legend of the song’s choirboy origins, but noting that no particular town’s church or singing school is identified in the story, and that the folk song’s lyrics were not documented until 1916. At that time it was described as “a dialect song which, for at least two generations past, has been sung in all parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire.” From that information he placed its origin as being not later than 1877.

Continuing with my speculation, the Ilkla Mooar baht ‘at origin legend is possible but with Grace ‘tis a charming sound having been the hymn that the choirboys had been practicing. Alternatively, perhaps there may never were any choirboys. Some pub singer set the While Shepherds Watched hymn to Clark’s lively tune and arrangement, and it went viral. From there, some mischievous rapscallion (choirboy or not) wrote the parody Ilkla Mooar baht ‘at lyrics. We certainly know that they went viral, first in Yorkshire, and then internationally in the 1960s.

Whatever its history, it sure is a fun song to listen to, as well as to sing a cappella, and that is why one of Canada’s favourite radio hosts, the late Stuart McLean, enticed the members of his Vinyl Café Orchestra to sing it on his Dec 13, 1996 Christmas Show. The singers here are Ian Bell (lead), Rick Avery, Judy Greenhill, Anne Lederman, Kate Murphy, and Oliver Schroer. I got it from a Vinyl Café Productions CD released in 1997. Here are the full six verses of the original song:

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,All seated on the ground,The angel of the Lord came down,And glory shone around.

“Fear not,” said he for mighty dreadHad seized their troubled mind“Glad tidings of great joy I bringTo you and all mankind.

“To you, in David’s town, this dayIs born of David’s lineA Savior, who is Christ the Lord;And this shall be the sign:

“The heavenly babe you there shall findTo human view displayed,All simply wrapped in swathing bandsAnd in a manger laid.”

Thus spoke the angel, and forthwith Appeared a shining throngOf angels praising God, who thusAddressed their joyful song:

“All glory be to God on high,And to the earth be peace;Goodwill henceforth from heav’n to menBegin and never cease.”

Sherburne (While Shepherds Watched)For many years I had a policy of not repeating the same rendition of songs. Well, not on purpose anyway. Then, two years ago I said that I would begin allowing myself to repeat renditions that had been on my cassette or CD Samplers here on my online Bill’s Midwinter Music series. But I would not repeat renditions that I had already posted online (well, not on purpose anyway.)

This selection is cutting it pretty close. Just last year on Dec 23 I posted a version of Sherburne (page 186 in the Sacred Harp songbook) that the folk music collector Alan Lomax had recorded at the United Sacred Harp Annual Convention in 1959. But now I found this recording on YouTube of a better quality, higher resolution recording of the same song being sung at the same group’s 1999 annual convention. It gives a more accurate impression of what it sounds like to be in the middle of a Sacred Harp square leading the singers. It really brings up the tenor melody and the bass harmony parts. As a bass myself, I like that.

As is common with Sacred Harp singing, only the first two verses are sung here.

Shiloh (Methinks I See an Heav’nly Host)Both the words and music for this piece were written by William Billings (1746-1800). Billings was a Boston tanner who also held the civic post of scavenger for the city of Boston (i.e., he was responsible for removing dead animals from the streets.) He came from a poor family. His father had died when he was 14 years old, and he had to quit school to support his family.

Billings had one eye, and one of his legs was shorter than the other. According to a contemporary description of him, he did not have a winning manner but he did have a strong addiction to snuff and “… an uncommon negligence of person. Still, he spake & sung & thought as a man above the common abilities.” Billings was a good friend of the revolutionary instigators Sam Adams and Paul Revere, leading to speculation that he might have been one of the participants in the Boston Tea Party (which happened when he was 27 years old.)

According to an authoritative introduction to a compilation of Billings’ compositions:

The Boston into which William Billings was born on October 7, 1746, was a busy, thriving seaport town of over 15,000 inhabitants. It was the largest city in the British American colonies, and the center of commerce and trade for one of the colonies’ most populous areas. … The proximity of Harvard College, across the Charles River in Cambridge, added an intellectual aura to Boston’s reputation.

However, in spite of its position as a commercial and intellectual center, Boston’s Puritan origins still weighed heavily upon public activities. Although the Puritan oligarchy of the seventeenth century had passed into history, the clergy still exerted an important and often decisive influence on the affairs of the town. …

Boston’s reputation as a center of sacred music is well known, although again the public record can only suggest the extent of the activity. One can claim that the practice of sacred music was widespread, but there is no reason to believe that music-making in Boston churches was of a high artistic calibre. The principal churches were Congregational, and reformed Calvinists had traditionally opposed instrumental, polyphonic choral, or florid solo vocal music in public worship. Only the singing of Psalms in verse by the entire congregation was an authorized musical part of worship services.

Prejudice against harmonized choral music weakened somewhat during the mid-eighteenth century, and choirs of singers appeared in many churches. Originally designed as a group of experienced singers to lead and support congregational singing, the choir on special occasions was sometimes permitted to sing an anthem before or after the service.

Opposition to instrumental and solo vocal music continued into the nineteenth century in most Congregational churches. …

In addition to his day jobs as a tanner and scavenger, Billings became a largely self-taught choir leader, composer and publisher, issuing six volumes of his music. He served as the choir director for several Congregational and reformed-Calvinist churches, and occasionally organized singing schools. Billings usually wrote the airs (tunes) and arrangements for established texts, such as the poetry of British poet laureates Isaac Watts and Nathum Tate, but he wrote the words for Shiloh himself.

Actually, this is one of two arrangement that he published with these lyrics. He had earlier used almost exactly the same text for a choral arrangement named Boston (abridged version here). That had appeared in his 1778 hymnbook The Singing Master’s Assistant and he had to vigorously defend the biblical validity of its lyrics to the elders of several congregations.

But over the next few years he developed an idea for this other arrangement for those words that had already been found acceptable. That is how this hymn arrangements came to be published in his 1786 hymnbook The Suffolk Harmony. It is performed here by the short-lived Canadian ensemble The Elastic Millennium Choir that was based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is from their 1997 album An Old Canadian Christmas.

This song isn’t in the version of the Sacred Harp songbook that we usually use for our singings, but it is in Karen Willard’s An American Christmas Harp songbook that we sometimes sing hymns from.

Methinks I see an heav’nly host,Of angels on the wing!Methinks I hear their cheerful notes,So merrily they sing.

Let all your fears be banish’d hence,Glad tidings I proclaim;For there’s a savior born today,And Jesus is His name.

Lay down your crooks, and quit your flocks,To Bethlehem repair;And let your wand’ring steps be squar’dBy yonder shining star.

Seek not in courts or palaces,Nor royal curtains draw;But search the stable, see your GodExtended on the straw.

Then learn from hence ye rural swains,The meekness of your God,Who left the boundless realms of joyTo ransom you with blood.

The master of the inn refus’d,A more commodious place;Ungen’rous soul of savage mould,And destitute of grace.

Exult ye oxen, low for joy,Ye tenants of the stall,Pay your obeisance, on your kneesUnanimously fall.

The Royal Guest you entertain,Is not of common birth,But second to the Great I Am,The God of heav’n and earth.

Then suddenly a heav’nly host,Around the shepherds throng,Exulting in the threefold GodAnd thus address their song.

To God the Father, Christ the Son,And Holy Ghost ador’d:The First and Last, the Last and First,Eternal praise afford, eternal praise afford.

Let all your fears be banish’d,Glad tidings I proclaim;For there’s a savior born today,And Jesus is His name.

Herald AngelsThe famous Christmas carol Hark! The Herald Angels Sing as we know it today is the product of many hands over many years, but its history too is well documented. The song was first published in Hymns and Sacred Poems in 1739 under the title Hymn for Christmas-Day. It had been written by the influential preacher, and composer of almost 9000 hymns and poems, Charles Wesley, who with his brother John was one of the founders of Methodism.

Wesley’s opening couplet was: “Hark how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of Kings.” Even at the time, the word welkin was a rather archaic expression meaning the sky or the heavens. Charles Wesley said that the song was inspired by having heard the joyous sound of London’s bells while walking to church on Christmas morning.

In 1753, a fellow preacher and poet who was a close associate of the Wesleys published the song in his new hymnbook, but he changed those first two lines to the ones we know today. Seven years after that, more words of the hymn were revised by the Rev Martin Madan. Another hymnodist dropped two verses, and another one added a refrain. But still, the song remained only modestly popular.

The problem was not in the words, but the melody. It wasn’t that the arrangement composed by Charles Wesley was a dud – it was the same superb one that is now commonly affixed to Wesley’s celebrated Easter anthem Christ the Lord is Risen Today! But for some reason that triumphal tune just did not work well with the words, and so even with the massaging of the lyrics the hymn still wasn’t widely sung.

Several composers tried to write a better tune for it over the years. A few of those variants still survive in the British pub-singing and west gallery tradition, but mostly they are now only known because of their survival on the shelves of archives. One of the unsuccessful variants is this one composed by “J. Massey” that has the tune name Radiance. He published it in Manchester in 1840. I cannot find any information online about J. Massey.

Then, finally, in 1855 an English organist named William Hayman Cummings matched it with an arrangement that the finely-polished lyrics deserve. He didn’t compose the arrangement himself. He just slightly-adjusted the arrangement of an obscure choral work that the German composer Felix Mendelssohn had written in 1840 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press. That arrangement immediately caught the public’s favour! It soon was widely published in just about every subsequent hymn book. (The concept of copyright was meaningless in those days.) The song soon left the liturgical world of church hymns to become one of the world’s most popular Christmas carols.

The melody and lyrics were not an obvious match. According to Christmas music historian William Studwell:

… it is one of the strangest of carols. It is, in fact, the most peculiar piece from the top musical echelon of Christmas. In addition to its singular history which necessitated five major contributors, it is artistically odd, as well. The superlative tune, among the very best associated with any Christmas song, is actually an uncarol-like military-type march.

While most carols fall into one of three types – the jolly Yuletide song, the tranquil nativity hymn, or the stately religious processional – Hark! is in contrast a rousing, fast paced, dynamic, unhesitating, unpausing, breathtaking march in 4/4 time. Its bold, stirring, powerful, rapidly cadenced strides vigorously transport the singer or listener on a confident wave of martial music which loudly and joyfully proclaims the story of Christ’s birth. …

Studwell goes on to note that every verse is “saturated with religious doctrine” but “notwithstanding this overdose of theology” the quality of poetry of the time-polished lyrics, especially the first verse, is exceptional, and that the tone and rhythm of the words are musically very much in sync with the melody. He concludes:

And this is the most crucial consideration, for although we cannot ignore the carol’s peculiarities and limitations, its fundamental reasons for existence are not to serve the purposes of the critic or analyst but to be sung, to be enjoyed, and to inspire. All three of these aspirations, certainly, are fully and continually achieved, season, after season, after season.

So, after all that big build-up why am I not giving you the Mendelssohn version? Because you will undoubtedly be hearing that one other times during this Christmas season, but I can confidently predict that you won’t hear this “loser” J. Massey version which repeats the last two lines of each verse instead of using the standard refrain elsewhere.

This recording is by The Oxford Waits & The Mellstock Band, and is from their 2000 album Hey for Christmas. Here are the full lyrics of the song:

Hark! The herald angels singGlory to the newborn King!Peace on earth, and mercy mildGod and sinners reconciled

Joyful, all ye nations riseJoin the triumph of the skiesWith th’ angelic host proclaimChrist is born in Bethlehem!

Christ, by highest heav’n adoredChrist, the everlasting Lord!Late in time behold Him comeOffspring of a virgin’s womb

Veiled in flesh the Godhead seeHail th’ incarnate DeityPleased with us in flesh to dwellJesus, our Emmanuel

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of PeaceHail the Son of RighteousnessLight and life to all He bringsRis’n with healing in His wings

Mild He lays His glory byBorn that we no more may dieBorn to raise us from the earthBorn to give us second birth

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