The old red copy of The Hymnal 1940 belonged to my mother;
she had rescued it from our Episcopal parish when they switched to a newer edition. The rescued hymnal lived on the family piano for many years, and now it's here on my shelf.
As a teenager I used to noodle around with those hymn tunes, pencilling in guitar chords to some of my favorites. I perused the "Index of Composers, Sources, Arrangers" to locate wonderful, creepy Plainsongs, Scottish tunes, Appalachian tunes, and other folk tunes from all over the world. (To this day I always check the composer footnotes when we sing an unfamiliar hymn...my husband has also picked up this habit.)
One day, a few years ago, I picked up the old red hymnal to look up the Doxology:
I started wondering about that tune name.
Could "Old 100th" refer to a page number? Perhaps it was 'hymn 100' from some ancient & mysterious hymnal? What was that hymn about, exactly? Did it come from France? When did people sing it? How did it end up in our modern hymnals? Old 100th is in every hymnal that I know of.
This tune is "Old Hundredth" written by some French guy way back in 1551.
I started wondering about that tune name.
Could "Old 100th" refer to a page number? Perhaps it was 'hymn 100' from some ancient & mysterious hymnal? What was that hymn about, exactly? Did it come from France? When did people sing it? How did it end up in our modern hymnals? Old 100th is in every hymnal that I know of.
Hmmm....are there any other "Old" tunes in this hymnal?
I flipped to the tune index:
Sure enough: Old 104th, Old 112th, Old 120th, Old124th.
What about my (1990) Baptist hymnal? Nope.
That hymnal only has the Old Hundredth. So the other 'Oldies' didn't make it over.... This made me even more curious.
I flipped to the tune index:
Sure enough: Old 104th, Old 112th, Old 120th, Old124th.
What about my (1990) Baptist hymnal? Nope.
That hymnal only has the Old Hundredth. So the other 'Oldies' didn't make it over.... This made me even more curious.
Clearly, the Old Hundredth was the most popular tune of the Oldies; it was used for 4 different hymns in mom's hymnal, and for 2 hymns in the Baptist hymnal: the doxology,
and this one:
and this one:
All People that on earth do dwell
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice...
Those words were written in 1561, based on........ Psalm 100.
So the Old Hundredth tune was for Psalm 100? (duh...)
People actually sang Psalms?
So where are they now? Psalm 100 was the only intact psalm that made it into my 1990 Baptist hymnal. I thought Baptists and other evangelical denominations were big on Bible teaching and memory verses...!
The Episcopal churches I attended had Psalm 100 chanted as part of the liturgy and other Psalms were spoken as responsive readings. Again, only Psalm 100 had made it into their collection of hymns for singing.
Why don't we sing Psalms any more?
What on earth happened?
The little brown songbook sheds some light on these questions in my next post.
People actually sang Psalms?
So where are they now? Psalm 100 was the only intact psalm that made it into my 1990 Baptist hymnal. I thought Baptists and other evangelical denominations were big on Bible teaching and memory verses...!
The Episcopal churches I attended had Psalm 100 chanted as part of the liturgy and other Psalms were spoken as responsive readings. Again, only Psalm 100 had made it into their collection of hymns for singing.
Why don't we sing Psalms any more?
What on earth happened?
The little brown songbook sheds some light on these questions in my next post.
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