At Men’s Katoomba Convention over the past three weeks, I’ve been overseeing the singing, and the most controversial aspect of what we did was… the old hymns. It’s actually not a surprise in one sense, although in the past I have often felt that I’ve struck a good approach to singing them. So it was interesting to be faced with a number of quite heated discussions about this in the wash-up.

My view is that if traditional hymns are to be sung traditionally, then they need traditional orchestration and instrumentation. You need an organ or a choir or a range of orchestral instruments, or some combination of the above. This is because they usually have a harmonic structure that lends themselves to these kinds of sounds.

In particular, there are usually 4 parts written out: the melody itself, the bass line, plus an alto and tenor line which harmonises with both of the other lines. This means that an alto in a choir is able to sing quite an interesting line of music with melodic movement, which is sympathetic with the lines that the basses, tenors and sopranos are singing. The same is true for a viola line or a trumpet part – the parts working together CREATE the harmonic movement, and therefore considerable musical interest. The chords flow out of the parts; they do not dictate the parts.

In contrast, in contemporary music (thinking especially of the rock/pop idiom that so much contemporary congregational worship music represents), it’s all about the chords, not the parts. The chords dictate any parts that the members of the band may play.

So therefore I believe that playing traditional songs with a band cannot be done properly without either making a mess or making some changes!

Here’s what I mean. Many of our contemporary song books such as The Source or Songs of Fellowship retain the traditional choral parts of the old hymns, but place chord symbols above the stave at the points where the harmonies imply a changed chord. This is indeed helpful in the situation where a church band consists of perhaps a guitar player (who needs the chords) and a classically trained pianist (who needs all the parts). Other instruments can easily be added, such as bass, which would also follow the guitar chords, or singers, strings players, horn players etc, who would be able to play one of the written parts.

Theoretically, this is fantastic. It can allow our church music to be inclusive of a wide range of musicians, regardless of the type of instrument they play. Traditional instruments can be blended together with contemporary instruments.

The problem is that, musically-speaking, it’s a recipe for a great big mess. Rather than parts being clearly heard and implying chordal changes, they are competing with the instruments (like guitars and synths) that pound out the chords. Worse, if a bass player cannot read the musical notes and simply plays the chords, there will be a monumental clash with any other instrument playing the bass line, such as an organ/piano, cello, or trombone. There is no subtlety left, unless something is done to reduce the competition between the different types of instruments.

Styles have developed throughout the history of music, and have often happened because of happy accidents. However, this is an unhappy accident! In an effort to maintain the use of hymns in an era where organs and choirs have given way to bands, we’ve come up with not a new style, but a rejection of stylistic distinctives, and therefore a problem for our listeners: it just doesn’t sound that good.

Perhaps you may say that you’ve heard bands just playing the traditional chords with the other instruments stripped away? I certainly have. The problem with this is that rather than the sweet lyrical interaction of harmonising melody lines, you’ve got the “clunk, clunk, clunk” of continually changing chords. The hymns weren’t meant to be played like that. The effect is that old hymns are made to sound more pompous than they need to sound.

I think we have a choice of two ways to approach the old hymns. Either do them with traditional arrangements and therefore also traditional instrumentation, or change the harmonic structure to fit the contemporary band. In my music ministry, I do both. 2 of our weekly services have a traditional feel to them. I have maintained the pipe organ as the main accompanying instrument, but added a range of other instruments to the rosters. We have a strings group that has 8 players and plays once per month. We also have a small once-a-month choir. I am working at pulling together some brass to make an additional group. The congregations love this kind of variety, and it really allows the old hymns to flourish in the way in which they were intended.

However at our other 3 services each week, there is a contemporary feel. We still want to do the old hymns because they are often very singable, connect us with our spiritual ancestors, and so passionately and richly express the wonders of our life in Christ together. So we do them with contemporary arrangements. For the lovers of the old harmonisations (a group which includes myself), this can be quite confronting, because it sounds a bit different. But if the arrangements are done well – in particular if the chord progression chosen properly SERVES the melody it is written to – it can revitalise an old melody.

I think the best thing about coming up with good new arrangements of hymns is that it allows a very wide range of age groups to sing the same songs. That is no small benefit.

Many churches have been torn apart over music, and it is undoubtedly the work of Satan, causing us to be more pre-occupied with the little stuff than the big stuff. Nevertheless, not every discussion about these things should be labelled the work of the Devil! Music raises many closely held opinions and feelings, and we must all listen to each other. Just because I have made these decisions for my own music ministries doesn’t mean that I’ll never change my mind or my approach. I must be humble, but also act with conviction.

At Men’s Convention we did 5 old hymns to my own new arrangements. Some of them worked better than others. The most striking thing was that we had some people asking us for the arrangements, and we had other people saying that the treatment of the old hymns was disappointing (putting it nicely!). Here I have tried to express some of the reasons why our music group took the approach we did. One thing that I do take great comfort from, however, is that on average these older songs produced a much higher volume level from the crowd than much of the more contemporary stuff! We need to keep balancing our music programs with old and new material to ensure we’re connecting with our various generations. But we really should be looking at ways of making these old hymns continue to have relevance in our churches today.

For your interest, the hymns we rearranged and played at MKC 2010 were:

1. It is well with my soul
2. Amazing Grace (using Chris Tomlin’s recent re-arrangement)
3. Be thou my vision
4. Holy holy holy
5. Guide me O thou great Jehovah
6. Stand up, stand up for Jesus