Heaven Playlist--Part 2

I’m torn about what to write about in my second installment about “heaven songs.” On the one hand, it would be a good time to rant about song lyrics as powerpoint projected high above one at the front of the church vs. the time-honored way of learning to sing by opening a hymn book to the same page as everyone else and choosing a part (soprano, alto, tenor, bass?) and going at it! (This is because I attended church last Sunday with such projections which I find distracting and annoying.)

I haven’t decided whether to rant yet or go with my huge excitement at finding a treasure trove this past week. I think I’ll go with that—I was listening to some English folk music (my choice for listening almost always these days) and had on some Eliza Carthy and got to wondering about more of her music. Maeve, now steeped in the English stuff since she has lived there almost 10 (amazing) years, had recommended her to me some time ago, but I listened to her instrumental music back then and really not so much of her singing. She is a phenomenal musician—I started to write singer, but her playing is also off the charts. Anyway, she has recorded tons of music with her parents, long-time  stars of the English folk music scene, Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy.

So I started listening. They have recorded tons of Christian music, oops, Western Christian music in English, I should say. English hymns, Sacred Harp songs, Baptist hymns (or so Martin Carthy wrote in a liner note). Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy have been singing as part of the Watersons for ages and they sang a fair bit of English Christian music as well. So this blog will cover some old songs I know and a couple of new ones from the Watersons and Carthys in various groups.

(I am going to try to start using the following conventions: CD names will be in italics, Song titles will be in quotation marks, Tune names will be in all caps, and First lines in headline caps. All clear now? This is the editor in me coming out.)

• STARS IN MY CROWN—this is a hymn from the Sankey hymnal. I have had to ask my hymn-loving colleagues at the American Theological Library Association for some help with this. I read on Mainly Norfolk, a folk song resource, that Martin Carthy said they learned this from Sankey Baptist Hymnal #787, but though Hymnary says "Will There Be Any Stars?" is in 197 hymnals, I don’t see any with #787, nor does Sankey Baptist bring anything up. My friends have come through though and I received answers from the President of The Hymnal Society—guess we can accept that without additional verification—and my friend Steve also sent me a link to a scan of the page in the hymnal. It is in the 1921 edition of Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos which ran to 1200 numbers, published by Morgan and Scott. It has a notation system I have never seen before but have been instructed by Geoffrey Moore, the President of The Hymnal Society (many thanks to him for indulging me in this bit of research) is called Tonic  Sol-fa, which you can see in the image. This system was developed in the 19th century by two Brits, Sarah Glover and John Curwen. This is also sometimes called The Curwen Method and more information is on the internet. The British publishers say in a preface that in this edition "will be found most of the old favorites sung by Mr. Sankey in the great Revival Meetings conducted by Mr. Moody during their three notable campaigns in this country..." This seems to be the "Sankey Baptist" hymnal Martin Carthy refers to for their version of this hymn. I love the version I have on my Spotify playlist—it has a whole host of Watersons singing with them, so it is quite a family version, enough to make a good choir!—I think I mentioned in my first blog how much I like that quality among various versions of hymns. Here's a Waterson:Carthy live version without all the family. I played this for my mom and she said she didn't know it. I didn't "know" it, but it sure sounded familiar and I think it might have been because it was recorded by a bunch of country artists—George Jones and Ferlin Husky, for example. That's the kind of thing we listened to on the radio in the car back when I was a child.

• DIADEM—From Waterson:Carthy's Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man. Of course, I knew this one: first line is All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name, DIADEM is the tune name. The four-part singing is magnificent and glorious. They are accompanied by brass which is a perfect choice for such a song. One thing I love about this particular version is the chord progression at the second line, or maybe third depending on how your count, Bring forth the royal diadem, right at the word “royal”. I have never heard that progression so it is startling to me each time and really lovely. There are a number of hymn tunes that the hymn All Hail is sung to but DIADEM is one of the most popular, though the one I grew up with is CORONATION. An interesting factoid from Hymnary: DIADEM is the hymn tune in 137 hymnals and CORONATION in 425! (Just looked at this one in Sacred Songs and Solos which I'm betting was where someone in the Waterson Carthy family learned it  and see that DIADEM is the third tune for All Hail. MILES LANE is the other.) What I really love about this hymn is that it posits the idea that we here on earth are part of the “sacred throng” in an “everlasting song” with the angels and the part of the mystical body of Christ that is already in heaven. This is a very important theological consideration, one that went into making me into a Catholic. I wanted to feel a part of the body of Christ that would come after me and those that had gone on before me. My goodness, listening to this makes me want to start ranting about worship music today—what could be more powerful ever than this old hymn of praise. 

• Gloryland—From Waterson:Carthy's Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man CD. The hymn title is really "Bright Glory Land." I was completely surprised I did not know this—this is the one that Martin Carthy says is supposedly from a Baptist hymnal; ok, yes, I should be able to look this up on Hymnary. Well, I’m not so sure about it being in a Baptist hymnal—but it was published in 8 hymnals between 1894 and the first years of the twentieth century. But these were all published by Biglow and Main (the tune is by Hubert Main). Biglow and Main took over from the very important Christian hymn publisher Bradbury. (All of what I had written was before I knew about Sacred Songs and Solos. I just found it in Sacred Songs and Solos at #941—see discussion above. Research does follow a circuitous route!) Anyway, this is quite a rousing song with some fun lyrics—some I hope are right and some I don’t care about, but are biblical, so fine. I don’t care about “jasper walls with beauty fair,” but the idea of a heaven as a “land of peace without alloy, joy beyond all earthly joy, naught its calm can e’er destroy” sounds pretty good. Maybe I’d like the calm to be destroyed for a little excitement now and then, but only of the good kind! 

• "Heavenly Aeroplane". OK, I am not really in love with this song, but after including a train song and so forth, thought I'd include this fun selection from the Ozarks of the  late 1920s. I guess there are many ways to arrive in heaven! Technology and inventions were celebrated in some of the more fanciful hymn or gospel song writings of backwoods and itinerant preachers (the telephone, railroads, etc) This is from the Waterson's recording Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy (if you do not know the song "Sound", please listen. It's really lovely. Chris Norman did an all-male version that is amazing!). The Waterson's recording Sound has a number of Sacred Harp hymns as well as other songs from the Ozarks.

• GREEN FIELDS. This one from Sound I did really want to include. There is a lot of general confusion about this particular piece (see Mainly Norfolk), but I like it because of its very unusual lyrics which are by John Newton who also wrote Amazing Grace. I'm really surprised I didn't know this hymn as it is likely found in all the hymnals I grew up with. It sure would have made the hours less tedious if we had sometimes replaced Amazing Grace with this hymn! This hymn is usually sung to a different tune, but GREEN FIELDS comes from Sacred Harp, so a certain portion of Americans would know it with this tune (or would have in the past).  I couldn't find any Waterson or Carthy versions of this in YouTube, but I discovered this lovely recording by Martha Bassett (I might change my selection to her version!): 
• How tedious and tasteless the hours
  When Jesus no longer I see!
  Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flow'rs,
  Have all lost their sweetness to me....
  Dear Lord, if indeed I am Thine,
  If Thou art my sun and my song,
  Say, why do I languish and pine?
  And why are my winter so long? 

One song I'm not including on my playlist because it suggests something I don't agree with theologically is Poor Wayfaring Stranger. However, the version on Norma and Eliza's Gift CD is so lovely to listen to. I don't, however, think I am just a traveler here—I'm here because this is where God created for me to be. I am supposed to do my bit to make this earth a heaven. There is also the line, "I'll drop the cross of self-denial," which is contrary to my theology. Conversion, theosis, whatever you want to call it, is not "self-denial," it's a positive movement toward the liberating love that is modeled for us by Christ. This is really important to me, so it doesn't go on my "Heaven" playlist, but it will go on my other playlists just to hear Norma Waterson sing it.

In between editing a collection of fourteen essays on contextual theology plus all the research I did for this particular blog, it has taken me forever. But this is a little sub-collection of heaven hymns and songs that I really enjoy and hope you will too!