For the fruits of His Creation

also published as
For the fruit of all creation 

with
EAST ACKLAM
SANTA BARBARA


Fig. 1. Methodist Recorder, 6 August 1970, p. 13. Text ©1970 Hope Publishing Company.

I. Text: Origins

The story behind this hymn was recounted in The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (1982), p. 29:

It is hard for a even a very good tune to replace an established one. Francis Jackson’s splendid tune EAST ACKLAM was written in 1957 for the hymn “God that madest earth and heaven,” as an alternative to the Welsh folksong AR HYD Y NOS. Some years later, at a conference of the Methodist Church Music Society, the composer played a recording of it, which made a great impression and led to a suggestion from John Wilson that Fred should give it a new text, preferably on a harvest theme where new hymns were badly needed. Harvest Hymn appeared in the Methodist Recorder in August 1970.

More precisely, the author’s scrapbooks include a letter from John Wilson dated 12 July 1970, suggesting he write a text for EAST ACKLAM, saying “I’m due to do a hymn sing at the local (and prosperous) Congregational Church on August 2nd, in the presence of the Congregational Guild of Organists. A new harvest hymn might be appropriate!”[1] As suggested, the hymn was completed for the event, and it was first sung at the Guildford Congregational Church, 2 August 1970, using informally reproduced song sheets.

The first publication of the song followed shortly thereafter in the 6 August 1970 issue of the Methodist Recorder, page 13, in three stanzas of five lines, without music, but with recommendations for both EAST ACKLAM and AR HYD Y NOS (Fig. 1). The following year, Fred Pratt Green’s text was printed together with EAST ACKLAM in Green’s 26 Hymns (London: Epworth, 1971 | Fig. 3 below), and in the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland’s Act of Praise, held 20 July 1971 at St. Mary’s Baptist Church, Norwich. The first appearance of this text in a hymnal was in the Catholic collection Praise the Lord (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1972), also with EAST ACKLAM.

Dr. John Bishop, writing to Fred Pratt Green 23 March 1972, praised the text and its intended tune:

You’ve certainly done Francis Jackson’s tune (how warm and expansive and friendly it is) a good turn in rescuing it from its unhappy marriage with those words in Hymns and Songs [“Through the love of God our Saviour”] which, with the best will in the world, many of us can’t stomach these days.[2]

II. Text: Development & Assessment

In the hymn’s original form, Fred Pratt Green used the term “men” generically to refer to all people, but when this hymn was adopted into the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978 | Fig. 4, below), the editors changed this to the pronoun “we” to better reflect the shift in preference toward inclusive language. Green adopted this change into his own collections. The Lutheran Book of Worship also changed the first line to read “For the fruit of all creation.” This change has been adopted by other hymnal compilers, but it was not adopted by Green as his official text. In his scrapbooks, on the proposed changes sent to him by the LBW committee, he wrote, “Most of these changes are acceptable, in deference to American dislike of ‘sex language.’”[3]

Hymnologist Carl Daw has nicely summarized the main ideas of the text:

The first stanza reads like a fairly conventional seasonal text, punctuated by the refrain, “Thanks be to God.” The ingathering tone customary in harvest hymns takes a new direction in the second stanza, however, as the emphasis moves to the sharing of harvests, rather than the hoarding of them. The harvest theme finally moves from the literal to the metaphorical in the third stanza, which celebrates “harvests of the Spirit” manifest in unearned good, astounding wonders, confounding truths, and boundless love.[4]

Daw also noted the skill involved in writing the unusual rhyme scheme, aabbb, with double rhymes at the end of each line.

Hymnologist C. Michael Hawn offered a detailed assessment of the hymn in Sing with Understanding, 3rd ed. (2022), from which some excerpts are worth noting here:

Fred Pratt Green shifts the perspective from admiration of the natural created order. He focuses instead on the sustainability of creation, the interdependence of all nations, and the partnership between Creator and humanity in caring for the earth and each other. . . . [T]his hymn combines our gratitude to God for the bounties of the earth with our responsibility to care for our neighbor through “the harvests we are sharing.” Green’s concern for justice and a social gospel is often evident in his hymns.

The form of this hymn is a sung litany. . . .

Creation is an ongoing event in the theology of this hymn. God continues to be actively involved in the future of the planet through humans’ sustainable activities and the natural resources stored for our “future needs.” The poet replaces the nearly ubiquitous use of past tense present in earlier hymns—“God made”—with present participles in the first stanza, implying that creation remains ongoing on the living organism that we call earth.[5]

III. Tunes

1. EAST ACKLAM

Green’s text was intended for EAST ACKLAM, written by Francis Jackson in 1957 and first published in the Methodist Hymns and Songs (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1969 | Fig. 2), where it was set to “Through the love of God our Saviour” by Mary Peters (1813–1856). East Acklam is the name of the village where the composer lived.

 

Fig. 2. Hymns and Songs (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1969), excerpt. Tune ©1960 Francis Jackson.

 

According to John Wilson, in A Short Companion to Hymns & Songs (1969), EAST ACKLAM was “written in 1957 and first sung at the reunion service of Old Choristers of York Minster in October of that year, to the hymn ‘God that madest earth and heaven.’”

Fred Pratt Green’s text was first printed together with Jackson’s tune in Green’s collection 26 Hymns (1971 | Fig. 3).

 

Fig. 3. Fred Pratt Green, 26 Hymns (London: Epworth, 1971), excerpt. Text ©1970 Hope Publishing Co., tune ©1960 Francis Jackson.

 

2. AR HYD Y NOS

In spite of the original plan of using Fred Pratt Green’s text as a vehicle for Jackson’s EAST ACKLAM tune, Green’s text has been commonly set to the Welsh tune AR HYD Y NOS, starting as early as 1983 in the Methodist Hymns and Psalms, where it appeared with both tunes as mutual options. For more on the history of AR HYD Y NOS, see the article “God that madest earth and heaven.”

3. SANTA BARBARA

In the Lutheran Book of Worship, the text was printed with SANTA BARBARA, a tune by Emma Lou Diemer written especially for this text and this hymnal. At the time, she was professor of theory and composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and organist for the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in the same city.

 

Fig. 4. Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978), excerpt.

 

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
rev. 23 December 2020

Footnotes:

  1. Fred Pratt Green Papers (MSS 166), Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, scrapbook 2, page 12.

  2. Fred Pratt Green Papers (MSS 166), Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, scrapbook 4, page 6.

  3. Fred Pratt Green Papers (MSS 166), Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, scrapbook 12, page 21.

  4. Carl P. Daw Jr. “For the fruit of all creation,” Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016), p. 39.

  5. C. Michael Hawn, “For the fruit(s) of this / all creation,” Sing with Understanding, 3rd ed. (2022), pp. 130–131.

Related Resources:

“Harvest Hymn,” The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green, with commentary by Bernard Braley (Carol Stream, IL: Hope Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 28–29.

Marilyn Kay Stulken, “For the fruit of all creation,” Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), no. 563.

“For the fruits of His creation,” Companion to Hymns and Psalms, ed. Richard Watson & Kenneth Trickett (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1988), pp. 220–221.

“For the fruits of his creation,” Companion to Church Hymnal, ed. Edward Darling & Donald Davison (Dublin: Columba Press, 2005), pp. 94–95.

Paul Westermeyer, “For the fruit of all creation,” Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), p. 533.

C. Michael Hawn, “For the fruit(s) of this / all creation,” Sing with Understanding, 3rd ed. (Chicago: GIA, 2022), pp. 130–132.

Maureen Harris, “For the fruits of His creation,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/f/for-the-fruits-of-his-creation

“For the fruits of His creation,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/for_the_fruit_of_all_creation