Behold, the awful trumpet sounds

I. First Printing

This hymn first appeared in A Collection of Sacred Ballads (1790 | Fig. 1), edited by Andrew and Richard Broaddus. In this collection, the hymn spanned six stanzas of four lines, unattributed, without music. Little is known of Richard, but Andrew Broaddus (1770–1848) was a prominent Baptist preacher and hymnal compiler. At age 20, he had just converted from Episcopal to Baptist the previous year, newly baptized 28 May 1789, and he was ordained the following year, 16 Oct. 1791, both occurring in Upper King and Queen Baptist Church, Newton, Virginia. Andrew Broaddus also edited the Dover Selection of Spiritual Songs (1828) and the Virginia Selection of Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs (1839). “Behold the awful trumpet sounds” did not appear in either of the latter collections.

Fig. 1. A Collection of Sacred Ballads (1790).

Fig. 2. A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (Philadelphia: John Ormrod, 1801).

II. Second Printing

The hymn’s second printing was in A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (1801 | Fig. 2), compiled by Richard Allen (1760–1831), who at the time was pastor of the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and who would go on to formally constitute the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination in 1816. The hymn was repeated in additional hymnals produced by the denomination in 1818 and 1836.

Allen’s version was identical to the earlier printing. It is likely Allen had taken some of his hymns from the 1790 collection, because there are other borrowings from one to the other, including the hymns “Brethren farewell, I do you tell” and “The time draws nigh when you and I.”

Thematically, “Behold the awful trumpet sounds” is similar to a hymn generally credited to Allen, “See! how the nations rage together,” but whereas the other text is poetically inconsistent and addresses more than one audience (preachers, sinners, and God), this text has a much better clarity and consistency of theme and meter. Another hymn in Allen’s 1801 collection, “O God, my heart with love inflame,” probably by William Colbert, looks forward to a time when all God’s saints will gather and sing for all eternity.

III. Analysis

In its earliest printings, the hymn spanned six stanzas of four lines, without music. Its structure of iambic common meter makes it easily singable to a number of possible tunes.

Compared to the other hymn, this one shares many of the same images, including the resurrection of the dead (1 Thess. 4:16, Isa. 16:19, Mk. 12:24–27), Jesus descending from on high (Rev. 19, Matt. 26:64), burning mountains (Deut. 32:22, Micah 1:4, Joel 2:2–5, Rev. 8:8), falling stars (Mt. 24:29, Mk. 13:25, Rev. 6:13), and the moon turned to blood (Joel 2:31, Acts 2:20, Rev. 6:12). Other images given here but not in the other include the trumpet signal (Matt. 24:31, 1 Cor. 15:52, 1 Thess. 4:16, Rev. 8–9) and the sun going dark (Joel 2:31, Amos 8:9, Matt. 24:29, Acts. 2:20).

In The African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymn Book (1836), this hymn was headed “Day of Judgment. 1 Thess. iv. 16,17. Matt. xxv. 46.”

Gwendolin Sims Warren, a scholar of black church music, thought this hymn could be a predecessor to (or inspiration behind) the slave spiritual “My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall”:

Some of the most striking spirituals are those that express the slaves’ visions of the future, always in sharp contrast to their present conditions. These songs describe dramatically and in great detail the Day of Judgment. The despised slave was certain that morning, significant to the Christian as the time of deliverance, would bring the day of redemption and of ultimate victory. Then, at last, justice and right would triumph over evil.[1]

At the same time, however, she recognized how these images originate in the Bible; it would have been just as likely for a slave to develop the spiritual based on apocalyptic preaching and teaching. Richard Allen was no stranger to slavery himself, having purchased his own freedom as a young adult and contributed to the cause of abolition.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
15 January 2021
rev. 23 February 2021

Footnotes:

  1. Gwendolin Sims Warren, “My Lord, what a morning,” Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit (NY: Henry Holt & Co., 1997), p. 68.

Related Links:

William Cathcart, “Rev. Andrew Broaddus,” The Baptist Encyclopaedia, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), pp. 138–139: Archive.org

“Behold, the awful trumpet sounds,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/behold_the_awful_trumpet_sounds