Accompanying hymns in worship part 1: tempo and meter

I get to play for my church's worship services about once a month. (I attend Faith Lutheran in Sussex, Wisconsin) We are blessed to have a number of us who are capable of playing for services so no one is obligated to play for every weekend's services. My favorite part of the service is accompanying the hymn singing. For the most part, our congregation is boisterous in its singing and responds well to variety in playing. I absolutely love it that my church has made an effort to use hymns which have been composed over many centuries of Christianity. Yes, Christian hymns are mostly from the Western music traditions, but that is due to the evolution of music in Western civilization as well as Christianity being predominantly in Europe. I look forward to seeing what hymns become composed in the future which include musical traditions of other cultures as the Gospel spreads and inspires poets and composers from other backgrounds.

When preparing for a service, I always start with the hymns, these are the most important musical parts of the service (this includes any liturgical responses and canticles). I like to first simply read through each of the hymns doing an analysis of the poetry, hymn tune and the tune setting. What I hope for with each hymn is good prosody and opportunities to highlight important concepts in the text. I make sure to look at all the verses we will be singing because there will be differences.

(Prosody is the word singers use to refer to how text and music match. For example, Brahms had a habit of placing unaccented syllables on accented beats or higher pitches resulting in awkward prosody. Schubert in contrast will more likely have a tune which will flow with the text - good prosody. I love both composers' songs, but this is just how we analyze and recognize differences between composers.)

Choosing a tempo for playing the hymns can aid in a congregation learning to love a hymn or deciding to avoid it altogether. Our goal should be to find a tempo which helps the congregation emotionally connect to the thoughts and teachings the hymn writer communicates. Creating an environment of thoughtful and emotional congregational singing develops a connection to our brothers and sisters who have sung the hymns centuries before us as well as joins us with our brothers and sisters singing in the pews next to us. This unity is an amazing blessing and is why I so strongly believe in congregational singing.

Here is my process in finding my ideal tempi for singing hymns:

First, I look for the general character of the hymn and if any verses change character. A hymn might be declarative - simply stating facts, penitential - confessing sinfulness, joyful and praising, thankful or reflective.

Next, I will simply speak through the text. While speaking, I try to keep in mind the overall character, paying attention to how I would speak the words in the character of the hymn. So, if the character is penitential I will speak slower than if I were speaking in a joyful character. I will also pay attention to how the character will affect the enunciation of vowels and consonants. If you are at all confused to how these different characters can come across in speech, just sit and listen to conversations sometime. As a speaker gets excited, the rate of speech will be quicker and usually have more clipped consonants. These occurrences in speech are what I am trying to capture when I am speaking through the text. When speaking, I will also try to feel the pattern of accented and unaccented syllables. This will especially be important in some of our hymns which appear to be unmetered.

(As an aside: many of the hymns we sing are translations. All the aspects of hymns I look for in the above process really show the incredible gift these translators had to be able to translate a hymn and use words which show the character and rhythm which match the music. This would be why we usually do not use word by word translations of hymns, they simply do not create hymns which come alive when sung by a congregation.)

So, I have spoken through the text but have yet to play the music. I like to start with the melody first and I first try to sing it a capella. My reasoning for this is that I want to find a tempo which is determined by the text rather than the ability of my fingers. I will often try to move - walking, swinging arms, bouncing - as I sing the melody. There are a surprising number of our hymns which are actually tunes from folk dances or use dance rhythms. Chorale type setting will sometimes hide these dances so taking out everything except the melody will help bring any dance qualities the hymn might have to the forefront.

At this point I have finally (hopefully) decided on my tempo for the hymn. I will also determine what kind of metric flow I want for the music. For example, if a piece is in 3/4 meter usually I will decide to feel one big pulse on the downbeat with beats two and three moving towards the downbeat. This part of the process is especially important in the unmetered tunes. These unmetered tunes come from a tradition of madrigal singing which is rich with hemiola effects. They might have a feeling of two beats together, then three beats. Speaking the text and attempting to dance the melody will help make this type of meter clearer. What I want to avoid is feeling all beats of the measure as equal. All beats are never equal, some are down beats, some move forward, no beat is ever static.

Now that I have the feeling of the motion of the hymn, my goal is to play the music in a way to highlight these qualities, making sure whatever accompaniment I play supports the text. This means the a chorale setting in whatever hymnal am using might not be appropriate. It might mean the harmonic rhythm of the setting is too quick and I need to play a simpler accompaniment. The most important task I have is to communicate the hymn's character to the congregation even if it means I only play the melodic line.

How about I walk through this process using a hymn.

Let's look at a Luther hymn which I think is underused. In our hymnal (Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal published by Northwestern Publishing House) it is #271, We All Believe in One True God to the tune of "Wir glauben all an einen Gott". (The setting I have linked to IS different than the one in Christian Worship, but the link will at least give you an idea.)

Since this is a creed hymn, it is simply declarative, so I like to think we would declare the text is as straightforward as possible, attempting to match the pace of speaking the words.

Here is a recording of me reading through the first verse: verse 1 of We all Believe in One True God
We all believe in one true God,
Who created earth and heaven,
The Father, who to us in love
Has the right of children given.
He in soul and body feeds us;
All we need his hand provides us.
He through snares and perils leads us,
Watching that no harm betides us.
He cares for us by day and night;
All things are governed by his might.

Since this hymn has a few melismas, I feel it is best to look for the simplest phrases to determine my tempo from speech. That would be the fifth and sixth phrases - He in soul and body feeds us; All we need his hand provides us. 

The rhythm of the text does not exactly match the rhythm of the melody in that in speech "feeds us" and "provides us" would probably be notated as eighth notes through both phrases rather than ending with two quarters, but even so, this would be a great place to find our pulse. After speaking and finding my place, I pull out my metronome and figure out my pulse. (I use a free metronome app on my phone which lets me tap my pulse and then it shows me the tempo of my pulse. The app is called Pro Metronome.)  My speech tempo for this piece is roughly 83 to the quarter note pulse.

Now, I will practice speaking the text at 83 in the actual written rhythm to see if my thoughts on the tempo might change. For the most part, I like how it fits together at that tempo.

Next, since this is an unmetered hymn I will speak the text at my tempo and try to figure out my stressed syllables. Here is what I end up with (mainly a trochaic tetrameter):

WE ALL beLIEVE in ONE true GOD,

WHO creAted EARTH and HEAven,

the FAther, WHO to US in LOVE

HAS the RIGHT of CHILdren GIven.

HE in SOUL and BOdy FEEDS us;

ALL we NEED his HAND proVIDES us.

HE through SNARES and PErils LEADS us,

WATching THAT no HARM be TIDES us.

HE CARES for US by DAY and NIGHT;

ALL things are GOverned BY his MIGHT.

Time for singing! Now I will try to sing the text, usually a capella, really trying to focus on feeling the stresses of the poetry in the text. Almost a capella We all Believe (I was not brave enough to record myself completely a capella it would take me a while to practice to the point of comfort, so the recording is singing with light piano support.) If you are looking at some versions of this hymn which have the music written in half notes or even longer note values, here is a quick history lesson. When music notation began, it was written predominantly in whole notes, for examples of this look at manuscript or early printings of music by Monteverdi. This practice eventually evolved into the notation system we have today, but at times hymn notation did not evolve enough and we end up using some copies which still use the longer note values resulting in a miscommunication of actual tempi to modern musicians. This hymn tune is from the 14th century, if you need convincing about my tempo choice, go spend some time at a Renaissance Festival and/or listen to Renaissance madrigals. (I had the wonderful opportunity in undergrad -University of Central Missouri- to sing in the madrigal choir and I absolutely LOVED it. We spent the entire fall semester singing only Renaissance music, performed at the Kansas City Ren Fest and put on a madrigal dinner for the holidays. We eventually had the opportunity to sing Palestrina in the Sistine Chapel, it was incredible. This music is expressive and beautiful and is all over the place in our hymnals and we need to bring these hymns to life by singing them like madrigals.)

Hopefully you are now convinced of my tempo choice for the hymn and in case you did not like this hymn, maybe are starting to consider it actually could be a great addition to your congregation's repertoire. Now, we need to be able to play it in a way that lets the congregation confidently and robustly sing the hymn. In order to do this, I prefer to play a setting which focuses on the melody and the pulse, so I need to play WAY fewer notes than are notated in the hymnal setting. I go back to thinking about madrigal music. Prevalent instruments at the time were NOT keyboard instruments. We are instead thinking lutes, recorders, drums. So, I will play the melody, attempting to have a light sound similar to a recorder, always leaning into accented syllables. I might actually ONLY play the melody to accompany the congregation so that our tempo does not get bogged down. If I do this, I will usually play the melody in octaves - right hand at the written octave, left hand an octave lower. This will help the men sing better to have it played in their octave. Melody in octaves  If I want top get more adventurous and play more, I need to keep in mind my goal of still feeling the dance of the melody so if I add any notes to my accompaniment it must still have a feeling of lightness. If I add anything, it will be just a simple bass note (trying to imitate a drum which would be pulsing on the strong syllables. It would possibly sound like this Melody plus simple bass line. For any music theorists - my bass line does not follow rules of counterpoint. But, it does not need to because the tune predates the rules of counterpoint and I am not trying to create a singable bass line, I am attempting to create a sound of a drum. Also, this hymn is an example of use of the Dorian mode, which would have a different type of harmonization than major and minor which became prevalent in the latter part of the Baroque period. In an ideal world, I would not actually even play this hymn on the piano, I would sit back and watch a flute, a drum, maybe a tambourine and a guitar attempt to recreate the sounds of lute, recorder and drums.

I know this post is getting long, but I want to look at one more hymn, a Lenten one since we are finishing up that season. This one is #127 in Christian Worship: Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted with the tune O mein Jesu, ich muss sterben.

Step 1: character is a reflective declarative 

Step 2: Speak the text, verse 1

Step 3. find a pulse based on my speaking. This is a bit awkward to find a metronome marking because our poetic "pulse" is on beats 1 and 3 of the written meter. Which is what is going to bring this poetry to life and give us our feeling of the meter. To me, it feels like we REALLY need to lean in to what will end up being the first beat of every measure. This will result in a meter which only has one beat per measure, so we will need to back off considerable on the last two pulses in the measure to make the poetry flow.

Step 4: Sing a capella

Step 5: Attempt to play in the same tempo as feels natural a capella

Melody with simple accompaniment

Full setting from hymnal

I could do this process with a few more hymns and tunes for you, if you would like me to do that, please just leave a comment and I will go through the process with another hymn (or a few more). But, hopefully working through this these two hymns gives you ideas on how to approach hymn preparation which will inspire your congregation to actually sing along and encourage you to explore possibilities of hymns you possibly have not used before. Bringing hymns to life is mostly dependent upon finding a tempo and a meter which allows the congregation to easily sing the text. We can do that without needing to play a lot of notes or find fancy accompaniments. 

Part 2 of my thoughts on playing the hymns will focus on shaping the phrases of the hymns. This will included pacing the breathing, working with commas and periods, etc. So, keep watching for that post!