I've written before on this "movement" of putting old hymn texts to new music before. While I don't want to beat a dead horse, I want to express how much I enjoy playing and singing these beautiful texts from past theologians that are in a lot of ways poetic.
Isaac Wardell speaks to the writing of new music to these texts and how it has to capture the emotions of the words and what they mean, rather than just writing music that fits with the words. He says "fundamentally these hymns are, in a way, poems and, it's about the lyrics. But the purpose is for corporate worship. The priority is that the text and emotion being stirred is actually being meshed together in a way that people can sing together." A lot of times we don't take into consideration the emotion that the Holy Spirit is stirring inside of us when we are singing. So it is important that these things are taken into consideration when writing new music to these hymns.
Kevin Twit talks about retuning a hymn that is well known, and why we would want to change something that is not broken. Twit says "every text I believe has more emotional range nuance than any one tune can fully capture. Even when there's a good familiar tune it can be beneficial sometimes to introduce a new tune that helps them hear the words all over again." Many people ask me why you would want to change such time tested melodies, like O for a thousand tongues to sing or The Churches one foundation, and I think that Kevin makes a great point that it can open up that text and show new meaning in a different melody.
Please watch this interview and let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy!
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