Tuesday 12 January 2010

Music and Worship: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

Charles Wesley was one of the most powerful Christian poets of all time. A lecturer for my English course at Southampton University made a similar point to the amusement of the class (including myself) who considered the ‘hymn = poetry/literature’ equation pretty crazy.

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) was brother of John Wesley, and himself a founding father of Methodism. But several of his poems have taken root in almost every Christian tradition.
‘And can it be’, based on Wesley’s conversion experience, has a fair bit of theological jargon, but otherwise the language is straightforward and, if you have a grounding in the Christian faith, as clear as when written more than 200 years ago. But for some it may be very puzzling. What’s this in verse 1 about ‘an interest in the Saviour’s blood’? How can I have ‘pursued’ the Saviour to death? Wesley acknowledges the central mystery in verse 2: ‘The Immortal dies’ – someone who can’t die (‘immortal’ = ‘non-mortal’) does die.

‘Jesu, lover of my soul’, on the other hand, begins like a love song. Was Wesley thinking of the Song of Solomon, a love poem seen as an allegory of Christ as the (male) lover of the (female) believer/soul/church? ‘Hark! the herald-angels sing’, one of the most widely sung of all carols, is partly by Wesley, partly by others.

But probably the best known of all Charles Wesley’s hymns is ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’. The opening verse unfolds slowly. It’s only in line 5 that it becomes totally clear that the divine love which surpasses all other loves is Jesus. In fact this is the only time that the name Jesus appears. But other phrases refer to him, including ‘almighty to deliver’ and ‘end of faith, as its beginning’ (an unusual form of address!). Essentially the whole poem is a hymn to Jesus – God the Father is not mentioned. Some hymnbooks have four eight-line verses. Others omit the second (‘Breathe, O breathe’) even though the reference to the Holy Spirit is pretty vital to the meaning of the poem and to our Christian experience.

‘Love divine’ has never quite settled in with any one tune. It’s said that Wesley himself had in mind a tune by the seventeenth-century composer Henry Purcell (‘Fairest Isle’ – Venus’s Song from King Arthur, a semi-opera). It fits nicely, but hasn’t caught on. Some people nowadays like the tune ‘Love divine’ by Sir John Stainer (1840–1901). This has four phrases, so the four eight-line verses referred to above become eight four-line verses. A bit repetitive, but the tune itself is good. Many people now prefer the eight-phrase tune ‘Blaenwern’, perhaps thinking it more modern, although the composer W.P. Rowlands was actually only 20 years younger than Stainer. ‘Blaenwern’ is in a lilting three-four time. Having started low, it builds to a wonderful climax at ‘pure unbounded love thou art; visit us…’. It can sound immensely effective, as at a recent All Souls service [2006] when about 200 people really made something of the final verse ‘Finish then Thy new creation’.

Other tunes will fit. Sir Charles Stanford, contemporary of Stainer and Rowland, and a better composer than either, wrote ‘Airedale’, but I’ve never heard this used and am not tempted. ‘Hyfrydol’ by R.H. Prichard (1811–1887) and ‘Thornbury’ by Basil Harwood (1859–1949) are among other tunes that fit well. Perhaps they should have their turn occasionally?

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