VI. A STUDY OF THE TUNES
One of the most important lines of study will be that of the tunes to which the hymns are to be sung.[7] To use a botanical figure, a hymn will not bear fruit unless it is pollenized by a vital tune. Who would be even aware of Cardinal Newman’s “Lead, Kindly Light,” if it were not for Dykes’ tune? Without Lowry and Doane’s music what recognition would the modest lyrics of Fanny Crosby have won? Wesley’s “Hark, the herald angels sing” owes the wideness of its Christmas use to Mendelssohn’s tune. Tennyson’s “Sunset and Evening Star” and “Sweet and Low” were brought to wide public attention by Barnby’s two settings. Without the wings of melody few hymns would get very far in place or time. A mediocre hymn with a good singable tune will do vastly more good than a great hymn with an impracticable one.
Hence it is the minister’s business to study the tunes. Not the notes, not the harmony: he can leave them to his musical experts, if he has them. He must study the singability of the tune, its appeal to his particular people, its adaptation to the sentiment of the hymn with which it is associated. Its age, its traditional or conventional use, its style, its composer, its elaboration of harmony—all these are merely incidental. That it is singable, fitted to express and intensify the sentiment of the hymn, to give it access to the hearts of the congregation, to create the contagion of feeling in the assembly—these are the essentials of a good tune.
Just as the sales departments of our great manufacturing establishments make an intensive study of the psychology of salesmanship in all its phases, so the ministry of the church, in its schools of preparation and in its several organizations, should increase its efficiency as salesman of vital religion by a like study of the psychology of the hymn and of its use.