When in our music God is glorified

with
ENGELBERG
FREDERICKTOWN

I. Text: Origins & Earliest Publications

Fred Pratt Green (1903–2000) spent most of his career as a British Methodist minister with some success as a poet. Although he had written a few hymns along the way, the vast majority of his hymnic output came after retirement, starting with his involvement with the Methodist Hymns and Songs (1969). He later explained how the task sparked his craft:

What happened was entirely unexpected. I was put on a committee charged with the task of producing a supplement to the Methodist Hymn Book. I guessed I had been chosen—because of a modest reputation as a poet—to scrutinize the new material from a literary angle. However, we soon found ourselves with tunes we liked, but without suitable texts, and with themes no hymn writers seem to have tackled. This is why there are eight hymns of mine in Hymns and Songs—I was told to go and write them.[1]

Also on that committee was music scholar, composer, and active Hymn Society member John Wilson (1905–1992), who contributed five tunes and two arrangements. A couple of years later, in 1971, Wilson asked Pratt Green to write a text suitable for choir festivals, to be used with the tune ENGELBERG by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924; more on the tune below). The resulting text, “When in man’s music God is glorified,” was first presented at a regional gathering of the Church Music Society, London Southwest District, at the Methodist Church in Redhill, 1 May 1971. A subsequent newsletter of the CMS described the event:

In the afternoon, Revd. F. Pratt Green gave an exposition of “The Craft of Hymn Writing.” It revealed the immense care he devotes to his hymns before he approves their final form. First and second drafts of a new hymn he was writing were distributed and his audience invited to participate in further revision. Many found themselves involved in this severely constructive kind of hymn criticism for the first time.[2]

As explained here, he brought two drafts of the hymn, which are now preserved in his archival scrapbooks at Emory University. One of the most notable changes between drafts was in the way it originally began “Now let our instruments be tuned for praise,” with a nearly identical stanza at the end (as bookends). The sixth stanza, which was never published, is worth noting:

If every art confessed no other Lord
Than he who is the Uncreated Word,
Mankind would cry, by truth and beauty stirred: Alleluia!

In the second draft, the opening bookend was replaced by a new stanza, “When in man’s music God is glorified.” The sixth stanza, in an apparent attempt to improve the rhyme, became a question:

And shall this art confess another Lord
Than one who is the Uncreated Word?
Must we not cry, if we have truly heard, Alleluia?

After accepting additional revisions from the attendees, he created a third draft dated 1 May 1971, eliminating the sixth stanza. John Wilson sent more ideas on 13 June 1971, including a recommendation to change the alleluias to say “To God the glory,” in order distinguish this hymn from other hymns in the same meter, also believing it “would reiterate what is really the main idea of the hymn.”[3]

In the author’s final typewritten draft, now held at Emory University, the hymn was headed “LET THE PEOPLE SING: A Hymn for a Choir Sunday or Festival of Praise.” The hymn was evidently finished too late for inclusion in the author’s 26 Hymns (1971); it did not appear there, as is sometimes reported.

According to the author’s scrapbooks, the first notable public performance of the finished hymn was made Sunday 7 November 1971 at Trinity Methodist Church, Bury St. Edmonds. Outside of the CMS event and the church service, the hymn first circulated officially in print in the Thursday 27 January 1972 issue of the British Methodist Recorder, page 11, where it appeared in full, without music, headed “Time to Praise” (Fig. 1). Later that year, it was printed for use in a worship service (Act of Praise) at the annual convention of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 24 July 1972, with ENGELBERG, the text handwritten under the notes, the music having been reproduced from the tune’s appearance in Hymns and Songs (Fig. 2).

The hymn’s performance by the Hymn Society in 1972 drew the attention of their counterparts in America. William W. Reid, editor of The Hymn, consequently requested permission to have the hymn text printed in the American journal, which was approved and printed on the front cover of the July 1973 issue (vol. 24, no. 3).

Finally, after four years in general circulation, the hymn was first included in a larger collection of hymns in New Church Praise (1975 | Fig. 3), produced by the United Reformed Church in England and Wales.

II. Text: Development

The most significant and lasting change to the hymn came at the request of the editors of the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978 | Fig. 4). In the first line, they proposed replacing “man’s” with “our,” for which the author wrote “Agreed!” on his draft.[4] In the fourth stanza, they proposed replacing “Psalm” with “hymn,” probably in reference to Matt. 26:30/Mk.14:26, and in the fifth stanza, they gave semicolons at the ends of the first two lines rather than the author’s exclamations. For these, he wrote, “Replied I saw no reason for changes + would prefer original.” They had also proposed a different tune, FREDERICKTOWN, newly composed by Charles R. Anders. Pratt Green wrote, “Interesting tune for this hymn!”

The change in the first line was then adopted as his official version. He reflected on this situation in an article the following year, in 1979, and he was not entirely sympathetic with the movement to address masculine language in hymns, which was relatively new at the time:

The editors of one recent American hymn book felt the need to eliminate “man,” “men,” “mankind,” etc. in the interests of the feminine sex. So I was asked to accept “When in our music God is glorified” in place of my original “When in man’s music God is glorified.” My own view is that something has been lost as well as gained! Nevertheless, one accepts a change of this kind with good grace, wondering what is to be done with the ‘he-ness’ of God!”[5]

A few years later, in his collection The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (1982), his editor, Bernard Braley, wrote, “Fred maintains that the loss of the juxtaposition of ‘man’ and ‘God’ somewhat weakens the line.”[6] In the Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (1981), this editorial change was not addressed specifically for this hymn, but the editor offered more generally, “The committee sought to use responsible judgment in updating the language of the hymns wherever possible, eliminating archaic pronouns and phraseology, and removing sexist and discriminatory allusions.”[7] Ultimately, the change proved to be wise, as hymnal editors have collectively moved away from the generic masculine representation for humanity; had it not been addressed in the Lutheran Book of Worship, it would have been addressed elsewhere.

III. Text: Analysis

1. Overall context

This hymn is rare in the way it deals with the act of making music, versus the far more common approaches of filling a place in the liturgy, expressing a doctrinal concept (which isn’t to say church music does not have doctrinal foundations), paraphrasing Scripture, exhorting listeners to belief or commitment, addressing a social concern, etc. Bert Bolman called it “the only hymn text in Christendom that explains the reasons for church music while simultaneously offering ‘alleluias’ to God.”[8] Similarly, Raymond Glover explained the void:

History suggests that it is very difficult to write a real hymn on the subject of congregational music-making. Usually there is insufficient weight and development to support the effusiveness that this theme seems to generate. Here, however, we have an honest hymn of substance and scope that is never self-congratulatory or platitudinous and is always grateful and worthy.[9]

2. Poetic construction

The hymn was built around the meter of the tune, 10.10.10.4, for which few texts existed at the time, and which also puts the writer into a mode of having to use a three-fold rhyme. One analyst of the author’s hymns, Vernon Wicker, noted, “Commitment to the rhyme scheme, AAA, could easily force a poet toward awkward technical solutions, but in this case the hymn writer utilizes the metrical restriction to create a stronger sense of unity and strength of expression.”[10] Pratt Green navigated this stricture by allowing the rhyme to be flexible in places, especially in the third stanza, mixing “song” and “wrong” with “tongue,” or elsewhere by mixing one-syllable and two-syllable rhymes. The ten-syllable lines allowed him plenty of room to achieve a naturally flowing string of words, although the opening line contains a compelling inversion (versus “When God is glorified in our music”).

3. Scripture references

Regarding the Scriptural underpinnings of the hymn, the author (or his editor) supplied five references in his book Partners in Creation (2003): 1 Chronicles 16:42, Psalm 150, Mark 14:26, Ephesians 5:19–20, and Colossians 3:16. The first of those (“Heman and Jeduthun . . . expressly named to give thanks to the Lord, . . . had trumpets and cymbals for the music and instruments for sacred song,” ESV), is not referenced directly in the hymn, but points to the concept of having people within the church whose special task is to make music. The Psalm applies primarily to the final stanza, encouraging all voices and instruments to declare “alleluia” (Hebrew: “Praise the Lord”).

Mark 14:26 mentions Jesus and the disciples singing a hymn after the Last Supper before heading out to the Mount of Olives. Some Bible scholars believe this might have been one of the Hallel psalms (113–118), which is possibly why the author used “psalm” rather than “hymn.” Psalm 116:13 (“I will lift up the cup of salvation”) would have been particularly appropriate following the Last Supper. The two Pauline texts are similar expressions of the admonition to use psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to give thanks and to convey biblical teaching. This is incorporated into the third stanza, which says “the Church, in liturgy and song” has “borne witness to the truth.”

4. Interpretation

Moving through the hymn stanza-by-stanza, the first immediately lays the foundation for why church music happens: for the glory of God. Church musicians are likely to have mental associations between this and J.S. Bach’s famous inscription (Soli Deo gloria), or the Westminster Shorter Catechism (“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”) or possibly the Heidelberg Catechism (Q&A 6: “God created man good . . . that he might rightly know God his Creator, . . . to glorify and praise him”). Vernon Wicker observed, “The second prase startles with its honesty and humility: human vanity should not be the focus of our music, but God’s praise.”[11]

The second stanza describes the spiritual phenomenon of making music and experiencing something greater than the sum of its parts. Church musician and scholar Donald Hustad explained:

When church music draws attention to itself, it remains only a source of pleasure or the object of esthetic veneration. When it gives us a more profound view of God and of ourselves, it is worthy of that inscription [Soli Deo gloria]. It becomes an Alleluia experience, a celebration of a new dimension of ultimate reality.[12]

The third stanza, as previously mentioned, carries the biblical idea of using music to convey doctrinal truth, and the author saw it happening “in faith and love” across centuries of error (as in Eph. 4:15, “speaking the truth in love”). Furthermore, Lutheran scholar David Berger pointed to the way in which the creation of music accumulates over time and continues to serve the church, saying, “Liturgy and hymns of Christian worship are gifts of the ongoing communion of saints from every time and place, conveying the truth in a multiplicity of languages—musical and verbal.”[13]

The fourth sets Jesus as an example of making music in the face of adversity. Berger noted, “Indeed, music has the power to lift us from the pit of despair (1 Samuel 16:23),”[14] but Pratt Green seems to have conveyed something slightly different, not so much music breaking us free from darkness, but music being brought to the Lord, obediently, even in the face of certain trouble (Habakkuk 3:17–18). Therefore, the author says, we do likewise, and offer it to God, “for whom [Jesus] won the fight.”

The final stanza embodies the sense and spirit of Psalm 150. Here, in what once was the opening of the hymn, we find an appropriate and stirring conclusion, where the author, as Berger conveyed thrillingly, “pulls out all the stops”:

Instruments and voices are lifted up in faith as they sound yet again “alleluia!” There is no holding back as musicians raise the roof in praise to the Maker. Fittingly, Green concludes with a petition that recognizes once again the source, the foundation, and the proper focus of the music of worship: “May God give us faith to sing always: Alleluia!”[15]

IV. Tunes

1. ENGELBERG

The tune ENGELBERG is by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) was originally intended as a musical setting for the hymn “For all the saints, who from their labours rest” by William Walsham How (1823–1897), first published in the New Edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern (1904). Stanford’s original setting was an ambitious multi-stanza arrangement with varied use of voices and accompaniment. Christian Reformed scholar Bert Polman wrote, “It is clearly a fine congregational hymn but also a stunning choral anthem when used with some of the additional settings that Stanford supplied.”[16]

Fig. 5. Hymns Ancient & Modern, New Edition (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1904).

In spite of Stanford’s esteem as a composer and music scholar, the 1904 edition as a whole was widely panned for other reasons, leading to the re-issue of the 1889 edition in 1906. That same year saw the publication of The English Hymnal (1906), in which Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)—one of Stanford’s former students—composed his own tune for How’s text, SINE NOMINE. In the eyes and hearts of many, Stanford’s tune was supplanted by these developments and SINE NOMINE became the favored tune setting of “For all the saints.” ENGELBERG became a tune in want of its own text.

One such attempt was made in the U.S. with the publication of “All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine” by F. Bland Tucker (1895–1984) in the Episcopal Hymnal 1940. But by 1970, Tucker’s hymn had not succeeded in being adopted across the Atlantic, thus prompting John Wilson to request a new text from Fred Pratt Green. “When in our music God is glorified” has subsequently played a significant role in the popularization of ENGELBERG. This pairing was printed informally in the 1972 Act of Praise (Fig. 2) and more formally in New Church Praise (1975).

In The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (1982), the editor included an important observation: “John [Wilson] points out that the tune ENGELBERG without the composer’s special ‘Amen,’ which contains which contains the climax of the melody—the one-and-only top E.”[16] But perhaps more importantly than a melodic climax, it is also necessary for the harmonic conclusion, since each stanza ends on a half cadence.

2. FREDRICKTOWN

FREDERICKTOWN was composed by Charles R. Anders for this text, for the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978 | Fig. 4), repeated in Lutheran Worship (1982). The tune was named after Anders’ birthplace (Frederick, Maryland). When LBW went to press, Anders was pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church, Tamarac, Florida, but he had previously been an editor for Augsburg Publishing in Minneapolis (1973–1975) and was a member of the hymn music committee of the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship.

Facing strong competition from ENGELBERG, this tune has found better success being paired with a different text, “In all our grief and fear we turn to you,” by Sylvia Dunstan. Dunstan’s text is a more suitable partner, since, as Paul Westermeyer has pointed out, “The melodic lines give it a somewhat somber cast,” and the composer conceived it in the Phrygian mode.[17]

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
21 September 2020

Footnotes:

1. Fred Pratt Green, “Hymn writing in retirement,” The Hymn, vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1979), p. 154: HathiTrust

2. Fred Pratt Green Papers (MSS 166), Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, scrapbook 3, page 21, clipped from an unspecified CMS newsletter. Special thanks to Debra Madera, Special Collections Reference Assistant, for facilitating access to the scrapbooks.

3. Fred Pratt Green Papers (MSS 166), Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, scrapbook 3, page 20.

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

5. Fred Pratt Green, “Hymn writing in retirement,” The Hymn, vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1979), pp. 155–158: HathiTrust

6. Bernard Braley, ed., The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (1982), p. 52.

7. Marilyn Kay Stulken, “When in our music God is glorified,” Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (1981), p. 114.

8. Bert Polman, “When in our music God is glorified,” Psalter Hymnal Handbook (1998), p. 683.

9. Raymond Glover, “When in our music God is glorified,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (1994), p. 789.

10. Vernon Wicker, “Fred Pratt Green: The poet and his hymns,” The Hymn, vol. 46, no. 4 (October 1995), p. 17.

11. Vernon Wicker, “Fred Pratt Green: The poet and his hymns,” The Hymn, vol. 46, no. 4 (October 1995), p. 17.

12. Donald P. Hustad, “An interpretation: When in our music God is glorified,” The Hymn, vol. 36, no. 2 (April 1985), p. 26: HathiTrust

13. David O. Berger, “When in our music God is glorified,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (2019), p. 1183.

14. David O. Berger, “When in our music God is glorified,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (2019), p. 1183.

15. David O. Berger, “When in our music God is glorified,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (2019), p. 1183.

16. Bernard Braley, ed., The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (1982), p. 52.

17. Paul Westermeyer, “FREDERICKTOWN,” Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2010), pp. 455–456.

Related Resources:

Fred Pratt Green, “Hymn writing in retirement,” The Hymn, vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1979), pp. 154–158: HathiTrust

Marilyn Kay Stulken, “When in our music God is glorified,” Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981), p. 560.

Bernard Braley, ed., The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (Carol Stream, IL: Hope, 1982), pp. 51–52.

Donald P. Hustad, “An interpretation: When in our music God is glorified,” The Hymn, vol. 36, no. 2 (April 1985), p. 26: HathiTrust

Richard Watson & Kenneth Trickett, “When in our music God is glorified,” Companion to Hymns & Psalms (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing, 1988), p. 243.

Carlton R. Young, “When in our music God is glorified,” Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), p. 693.

Raymond Glover, “When in our music God is glorified,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), pp. 788–789.

Vernon Wicker, “Fred Pratt Green: The poet and his hymns,” The Hymn, vol. 46, no. 4 (October 1995), pp. 12–19: HathiTrust

Bert Polman, “When in our music God is glorified,” Psalter Hymnal Handbook (Grand Rapids: CRC, 1998), pp. 683–684.

Bernard Braley, ed., Partners in Creation: The Hymn Texts of Fred Pratt Green (Carol Stream, IL: Hope, 2003), p. 153.

Paul Westermeyer, “ENGELBERG,” Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), p. 275.

Paul Westermeyer, “FREDERICKTOWN,” Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), pp. 455–456.

David O. Berger, “When in our music God is glorified,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 1182–1183.

Fred Pratt Green Papers (MSS 166), Pitts Theology Library, Emory University: http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/g29d6