Most hymn tunes are in a major key and are quite straightforward to play on the whistle (not necessarily in the keys they were composed in!).
Some, though, have accidentals, and/or are written in a Classical minor key, meaning you have to do some very precise half-holing or cross-fingering to make them sound good.
I've played whistle quite a few times at Church.
You end up having to have whistles in a lot of different keys so that you can make the tune come out in the right key for the choir and/or organist.
In traditional Church music it's not about the key, it's all about the range.
All of the hymns are placed in whatever key is required so that the tune has the typical C to C or D to D range.
If a hymn has a range larger than an octave they push the range upwards and downwards as equally as possible- B to E for example.
Therefore the tunes sometimes end up in keys with several sharps or several flats.
In traditional hymnody the TUNE and the HYMN are two seperate things. The HYMN is merely a set of words. The TUNE is the melody itself has its own name and you may find as many as 20 hymns sung to the same tune in various hymnals.
So: Be Thou My Vision is a HYMN, the tune is called Slane. There are a number of different hymns that use Slane as the tune, including a wedding song called Bridegroom And Bride.
Amazing Grace is a hymn, the tune is called New Britain. After 9/11 a military choir sang Amazing Grace at the White House to an entirely different tune.
For all that at least one hymn/hymn-tune writer went on record as saying he wished to compose in a style that people at large were used to, and could relate to, it's struck me that the music of hymns in general is markedly different from the sort of tunes Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams were fishing up in the early c20.
Though I dare say these latter included major tunes - I can't recall one off-hand - a good many were modal, like much ITM. And I can't now think of any modal hymns except the odd surviving one, or carol, from pre-Reformation times.
So where was the hymn composer (maybe Charles Wesley) looking for the people and their accustomed music?
I think the answer is Handel, opera, the theatre and a whole world of popular music of the time connected with or influenced by these. Handel was enormous in England, and seen (rightly, IMO) as a fine model to follow. One of Wesley's hymns - I forget its name - includes repetitions and flourishes which are very Handelian on a miniature scale.
And I wonder - was there a deliberate attempt to exclude the modes from musical discourse after the Reformation, *because* of their intimate connection with the pre-Reformation church music?
Were they seen, perhaps, as too hypnotic? Maybe major or modulating-major tunes were seen as that much more rousing, and therefore stipulated for that reason. (I think of the song A Blacksmith Courted Me - dorian as collected from the trad world, major in hymn-books.)
I thought that Ralph Vaughn Williams used traditional English songs as the basis for his settings of hymns in the early 20th century version of Hymns Ancient and Modern. A Blacksmith Courted Me------For Bunyon's words" He who would Valient be.." is an example. I feel sure there are others..
Gather Us In, also known as Here in this Place. Contemporary tune, but sounds old, Marty Haugen. I love playing it on fiddle. Not sure what mode it's in, key signature is D, but lots of accidentals. I'm sure I could figure it out if I analyzed it.
Try "Abide with Me" played in G on a D whistle - it has that lovely C sharp accidental. Also "The Lord's My Shepherd". Lovely on a low D whistle.
I tried "Abide With Me" as a session tune (admittedly after most of the players had left; it was 3am on a Sunday morning) and although they groaned, they all joined in and then agreed what a nice tune it was.
The c18 Methodists used tunes in the middle-of-the-road idiom of their day, akin to Baroque, show music and publisher-driven popular music. They probably steered clear of trad because there's no doubt that, in at least some of its aspects and manifestations, trad was the rock and roll of the c18-19, with all that implied: no more abstruse reason need be sought.
The nexus between the Church and MOR has been re-established in recent decades (if it ever went away) in the much-derided but often very beautiful "happy clappy"-type songs sung to guitars etc. in services. I wondered what single thing these quite eclectic tunes might have in common, and it hit me - they would practically all be quite at home in this or that West End musical or show. I've heard very few that sound like trad - The Londonderry Air and Slane have been lifted straight, of course, and I can think of three very good ones that fit within trad idioms, but so far that's all.
When Vaughan Williams came along, trad had long ceased to be the rock and roll of Southern England, anyway; it was perfectly respectable to study it - there was so little of it left. It's obvious, despite VW's best efforts, that trad and modal music in general (barring songs/tunes in the ordinary major scale) have remained very much a minority taste in the English musical world. I don't mind this: I like popular / MOR music's pluralism, if the stuff cuts the mustard at all, as long as I can play trad in a cave with cronies when I wish to.
Am I Going Crazy!
Am I Going Crazy!
I'm at services and I hear one of my favorite Hymns.
And I'm sitting there wondering how well it would sound on the whistle.
I have to be going crazy! I can barely do "Parting Glass"
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by Seamus DAngelo
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
You´re not crazy for hearing music in your head, Belief in the supernatural is though...
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by Björn
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Most hymn tunes are in a major key and are quite straightforward to play on the whistle (not necessarily in the keys they were composed in!).
Some, though, have accidentals, and/or are written in a Classical minor key, meaning you have to do some very precise half-holing or cross-fingering to make them sound good.
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by nicholas
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Not- crazy,,
There is a irish traditional Unaccompanied song
I use to hear it all the time ,,cant remember the
title now but the tune was - Be Thou My Vision.
You still as sane as I am - jim,,,HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHaaaaaaaaaaa! Ha!
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by FIDDLE4
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
I've played whistle quite a few times at Church.
You end up having to have whistles in a lot of different keys so that you can make the tune come out in the right key for the choir and/or organist.
In traditional Church music it's not about the key, it's all about the range.
All of the hymns are placed in whatever key is required so that the tune has the typical C to C or D to D range.
If a hymn has a range larger than an octave they push the range upwards and downwards as equally as possible- B to E for example.
Therefore the tunes sometimes end up in keys with several sharps or several flats.
In traditional hymnody the TUNE and the HYMN are two seperate things. The HYMN is merely a set of words. The TUNE is the melody itself has its own name and you may find as many as 20 hymns sung to the same tune in various hymnals.
So: Be Thou My Vision is a HYMN, the tune is called Slane. There are a number of different hymns that use Slane as the tune, including a wedding song called Bridegroom And Bride.
Amazing Grace is a hymn, the tune is called New Britain. After 9/11 a military choir sang Amazing Grace at the White House to an entirely different tune.
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by Richard D Cook
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Try Amazing Grace to the tune of Gilligan's Island, accompanied by guitar playing Stairway to Heaven....
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by wyogal
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
For all that at least one hymn/hymn-tune writer went on record as saying he wished to compose in a style that people at large were used to, and could relate to, it's struck me that the music of hymns in general is markedly different from the sort of tunes Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams were fishing up in the early c20.
Though I dare say these latter included major tunes - I can't recall one off-hand - a good many were modal, like much ITM. And I can't now think of any modal hymns except the odd surviving one, or carol, from pre-Reformation times.
So where was the hymn composer (maybe Charles Wesley) looking for the people and their accustomed music?
I think the answer is Handel, opera, the theatre and a whole world of popular music of the time connected with or influenced by these. Handel was enormous in England, and seen (rightly, IMO) as a fine model to follow. One of Wesley's hymns - I forget its name - includes repetitions and flourishes which are very Handelian on a miniature scale.
And I wonder - was there a deliberate attempt to exclude the modes from musical discourse after the Reformation, *because* of their intimate connection with the pre-Reformation church music?
Were they seen, perhaps, as too hypnotic? Maybe major or modulating-major tunes were seen as that much more rousing, and therefore stipulated for that reason. (I think of the song A Blacksmith Courted Me - dorian as collected from the trad world, major in hymn-books.)
Plenty to ponder here!
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by nicholas
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
I thought that Ralph Vaughn Williams used traditional English songs as the basis for his settings of hymns in the early 20th century version of Hymns Ancient and Modern. A Blacksmith Courted Me------For Bunyon's words" He who would Valient be.." is an example. I feel sure there are others..
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by alexboydell
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Gather Us In, also known as Here in this Place. Contemporary tune, but sounds old, Marty Haugen. I love playing it on fiddle. Not sure what mode it's in, key signature is D, but lots of accidentals. I'm sure I could figure it out if I analyzed it.
# Posted on February 10th 2008 by wyogal
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Try "Abide with Me" played in G on a D whistle - it has that lovely C sharp accidental. Also "The Lord's My Shepherd". Lovely on a low D whistle.
I tried "Abide With Me" as a session tune (admittedly after most of the players had left; it was 3am on a Sunday morning) and although they groaned, they all joined in and then agreed what a nice tune it was.
# Posted on February 11th 2008 by buttons 'n' whistles
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
(I must be crazy too!)
# Posted on February 11th 2008 by buttons 'n' whistles
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Music in your head? I would not worry.
Now, VOICES in your head may require some attention.
Especially in church (Ooooooh!).
Good luck.
# Posted on February 11th 2008 by Rook
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
OK. A radio station that serves where my family lives plays what my Mom likes to call "Church Music" on Sundays.
One of the songs they played was an old hymn that my Sister realized was the melody for "You Raise Me Up".
wyo:
"Gather Us In" as I know it is one of my favorite Hymns.
# Posted on February 11th 2008 by Seamus DAngelo
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
Love not only the tune, but the words, too. Especially the last line "gather us in, all people together, fire of love in our flesh and our bone."
# Posted on February 11th 2008 by wyogal
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
wyo:
What's even odder is that the 1st place I heard "Gather Us In
was at a Unitarian-Universalist Congregation in Nashua. New Hampshire.
"Be Not Afraid" would sound decent on the Whistle, I think.
(Yes, I am making slow and steady progress)
# Posted on February 19th 2008 by Seamus DAngelo
Re: Am I Going Crazy!
To return belatedly to this thread:
The c18 Methodists used tunes in the middle-of-the-road idiom of their day, akin to Baroque, show music and publisher-driven popular music. They probably steered clear of trad because there's no doubt that, in at least some of its aspects and manifestations, trad was the rock and roll of the c18-19, with all that implied: no more abstruse reason need be sought.
The nexus between the Church and MOR has been re-established in recent decades (if it ever went away) in the much-derided but often very beautiful "happy clappy"-type songs sung to guitars etc. in services. I wondered what single thing these quite eclectic tunes might have in common, and it hit me - they would practically all be quite at home in this or that West End musical or show. I've heard very few that sound like trad - The Londonderry Air and Slane have been lifted straight, of course, and I can think of three very good ones that fit within trad idioms, but so far that's all.
When Vaughan Williams came along, trad had long ceased to be the rock and roll of Southern England, anyway; it was perfectly respectable to study it - there was so little of it left. It's obvious, despite VW's best efforts, that trad and modal music in general (barring songs/tunes in the ordinary major scale) have remained very much a minority taste in the English musical world. I don't mind this: I like popular / MOR music's pluralism, if the stuff cuts the mustard at all, as long as I can play trad in a cave with cronies when I wish to.
# Posted on August 25th 2008 by nicholas