wfn.org | 'Lost' tune may have been Wesley's favorite, scholar says

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Oct. 22, 2001 News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-71BP{486}

NOTE:  A head-and-shoulders photograph of Clark Kimberling is available.

A UMNS Feature
By Tim Tanton*

If John Wesley walked into a United Methodist church today, picked up a
hymnal and looked for his favorite song, he might be disappointed.

A University of Evansville (Ind.) scholar has found evidence that Wesley's
favorite hymn tune might have been a long-out-of-print melody known as
"Wednesbury" (pronounced "Wedgebre"). 

Clark Kimberling, a composer and mathematics professor at the United
Methodist-related school, was doing research work on Sacred Harmony, a hymn
book published by Wesley. In the process, he found a commentary that
identified "Wednesbury" as the favorite tune of Methodism's founder. 

The commentary was by James T. Lightwood, a leading writer on Methodist
music in the early 20th century. He recounted Wesley's early-morning visit
to a Whitehaven school, where the children joined the clergyman in singing
the song. Lightwood's source, an old manuscript, described the scene: "After
the service, he (Wesley) gave out 'Lift up your heart to things above,' to
which he raised 'Wednesbury,' and, finding that we could join him, he said:
'I am glad to find you can sing my favorite tune.'"

"If a good choir with 30 people or more in it sang this tune several times
(and got) used to it, they would just fall in love with it," Kimberling
said. The tune's history and Wesley's comment are "pretty gripping," he
added.

The melody's composer is unknown, though it may have been John F. Lampe, a
Wesley contemporary. Wesley used "Wednesbury" as the tune for eight hymns in
the 1786 edition of his Collection. The words in at least one of the hymns
are straight from Charles Wesley, John's brother and the father of Methodist
hymnody: "Lift up your hearts to things above, ye followers of the Lamb. And
join with us to praise his love and glorify his name. To Jesu's name give
thanks and sing, whose mercies never end. Rejoice! Rejoice! The Lord is
King, the King is now our friend, our friend! The King is now our friend."

"Wednesbury" is better than most of the tunes composed by Wesley's
followers, said the Rev. Carlton Young, editor of the United Methodist
Hymnal. "Some of these tunes are very well constructed, but few as musically
sound or interesting as the tunes of John F. Lampe, sometimes called
Methodism's first composer, who composed the 24 tunes for Wesley texts in
Festival Hymns." Young said he agrees with another scholar that there's a
good probability Lampe composed "Wednesbury."

Since the early 1800s, "Wednesbury" has been all but forgotten. "It's just
not published," Kimberling said. He offered his own arrangement in an April
article for The Hymn: A Journal of Congregational Song, as well as for a
booklet that he has assembled of tunes from Wesley's Sacred Harmony. "Other
than that, you'd have to go back before 1850."

Why would a tune that was possibly Wesley's favorite fall into obscurity?
Kimberling offered three possible reasons. First, an immense amount of hymn
writing has occurred since Wesley's day, and as time goes on, old songs and
tunes are displaced by new. 

A second factor could be the music's key. "'Wednesbury' is in a minor key,
and for reasons that we can only speculate about, there's a lesser
proportion of minor-key melodies now than there formerly was," Kimberling
said. "In Sacred Harmony, about one-fourth of the tunes were in minor keys;
in the United Methodist Hymnal, it's about one-eighth."

Third, "Wednesbury" is difficult to sing, in part because it hits a high
F-sharp, he said. "Congregations don't sing that high," he said. 

"I tend to think of 'Wednesbury' as a ... fine piece for a choir to sing,
but it's not a congregational song," he said. "It's a tune that people could
fall in love (with), but it's not one that they could sing very well unless
they're just musical."

Young noted that some of the early tunes were originally meant for solo
performances with cello and harpsichord or organ. "You should try singing
'Wednesbury' without it being taught phrase by phrase by a strong voice or
choir - or at an ad-lib tempo," Young said. "It ain't 'Blessed Assurance.'"

Kimberling added that at about the time that Wesley published Sacred
Harmony, in 1789, other people were composing a great many tunes that grew
into a body called "Old Methodist." "That body has, fortunately,
disappeared," he said. Those tunes weren't actually the earliest tunes of
Methodism, but belonged to a period between 1790 and 1840, "when musical
taste was at its very worst," according to one of Kimberling's sources.

One can only speculate about why "Wednesbury" might have been Wesley's
favorite. "My first reaction is that it is just a great tune," Kimberling
said. "... It's very emotional, which I do know is something that was
important to Wesley. 

"Wesley's point of view about the music was that people were singing anyway,
and he wanted to take advantage of that to draw them into the church."

Singing was a social activity back then, Kimberling said. "It was something
people did for entertainment." Before the Methodist revival, singing in the
Anglican Church consisted largely of chanting psalms, he said. 

"What Wesley did was introduce a big breath of fresh air," Kimberling said.
He changed the music in the Anglican Church, which took notice and improved
its own hymnals. Both Wesleys were Anglican clergymen.

The name "Wednesbury" could have come from a town in Staffordshire, in
England's coal country, where being a Methodist was hazardous in Wesley's
day. "Nobody really knows how the names of these tunes were chosen, but it
was very common to name tunes after places," Kimberling said. In Wesley's
Sacred Harmony, 30 to 60 percent of the tunes are probably named for towns,
he said.

Wesley had definite ideas about music and published several tune books.
"There's what could be called the Wesley style of singing," Kimberling said.

For example, Wesley made reference in print to favoring a faster tempo to
hymns than the standard of the time. "...We sing swift ... because it tends
to awake and enliven the soul," Wesley said, according to Young's Music of
the Heart: John and Charles Wesley on Music and Musicians. Wesley preferred
that the women constantly sing their melody parts alone, though a man could
sing bass with them if he understood the notes as they were written.

Kimberling has collected tunes from Sacred Harmony into a booklet, available
at cost to anyone who would like a copy. He can be reached by e-mail at
ck6@evansville.edu. 

His motive in making the songs available is simple. "I'd like to see people
worship with them," he said. "These tunes were part of very exciting times,
when people were being converted, and I see that coming through the tunes."

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*Tanton is news editor for United Methodist News Service.

 

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