In writing weekly notes over the last year on the music used in the parish I serve, I have found myself examining the formal aspects of both texts and tunes, and the matches between them, more than ever. Some of the critique that has emerged surely belongs here on my own website rather than in notes for parish use. Some particularly poor matches (some in the Hymnal 1982, some made by custom, perhaps according to pairings in older editions of the Hymnal) have inspired me to look at textual and musical meter, rhyme, and pace throughout the Hymnal: a long process that is still ongoing. I hope to draw some conclusions in a future article.
In the course of this work, I have discovered (so far) two ‘ruined rhymes’ in the Hymnal, places in which revisions to a text have not respected its rhyme scheme. I will add to the list if and as I find more.
050 This is the day the Lord hath made
Isaac Watts’s text makes use of some rhymes that may have been full, or nearly full, ones in his place and time (made / glad, son / throne), and one that may have had matching vowels but exchanges the nasals (men / name). The Hymnal 1982 changes ‘men’ to ‘us’ in defiance of the quite regular rhyme scheme; the Hymnal Companion mentions this change but not its result.
145 Now quit your care
Percy Dearmer’s text was substantially rewritten, I think for the better, for use in the Hymnal 1982. The Hymnal Companion draws attention to the fact that Dearmer followed the rhyme scheme of the French text, ‘Quittez, pasteurs’, for whose tune his text was written (in fact he went a step further, rhyming the last three lines of the stanza, rather than only the antepenultimate and the last). But the article fails to note that in the Hymnal rewrite, line 6 of stanza 1 does not follow this scheme, wherein it should rhyme with line 2, as in the other stanzas. (Dearmer’s original line 1.6, rhyming with ‘worry’ in 1.2, was ‘bells call and clash and hurry’ – typical of the rather picturesque style of the whole original text.)
598 Lord Christ, when first thou cam’st to earth
Line 1.1 originally ended with ‘men’, rhyming with 1.3, ‘then’. This change and the others noted in the Hymnal 1982 Companion – pluralizing ‘nation’ – are welcome (though I am not sure the text was worth ‘saving’), but the change to ‘earth’ surely invited the rewriting of line 3. More puzzling are the analogous lines in stanza 3, ending with ‘Christ / war’: the only stanza in which the ababccb scheme is not followed (perhaps this led the Hymnal editors to feel that the breaking of the scheme in stanza 1 was acceptable). I have not been able to discover whether there was an original version in which these lines rhymed.
Rhyme is, of course, not a theological value, nor even a prerequisite for good poetry or even good verse; any number of modern English texts and translations do not use it (nor did Old English, or classical Latin, verse). But this formal device should surely be respected and retained in those many hymns that make use of it.