HOTC #14: LSB 398, Hail to the Lord’s Anointed
Back in Advent, we discussed at length the way that Advent hymns will often play with the tense of certain verbs in order to give verses double meanings in the context of the prophecy, the Incarnation, and the Second Coming of Christ. This hymn accomplishes the same thing, mostly because it was originally an Advent or Christmas hymn - by bringing it to Epiphany, the phrases gain new meaning, and paired with a powerful, energetic tune one of the classic Epiphany hymns in our hymnal is born.
Christ and the Virgin, a mosaic from the Hagia Sophia, Constantinople
The Author
James Montgomery
James Montgomery, a Scotsman born in late 1771, was the son of a pastor and missionary in the church of the Moravian Brethren. His parents sent him to study for the ministry near Leeds, in north-central England when they left for a mission trip to the West Indies - a trip from which neither of them would ever return.
Montgomery soon failed at schooling, and after a series of odd jobs was eventually jailed twice for seditious libel; on one occasion this was due to his printing of a poem celebrating the fall of the Bastille during the Revolution then raging in France.
He went on to gain some notoriety as a secular poet and newspaperman, however in his own opinion it was his hymns that were always destined to be his legacy. Many of these, though not all, date from his period of study at Fulneck, near Leeds. The consumption of his hymns was improved somewhat by his acquaintance with a Rev. James Cotterill, who collected a new hymnal for his parish (St. Paul’s, in Sheffield) in 1817, titled A Selection of Psalms and Hymns Adapted to the Services of the Church of England (Victorian publications invariably have hilariously specific names stating exactly what they’re about). This hymnal quickly flopped, however, as Rev. Cotterill’s congregation didn’t care for the new book. Cotterill and Montgomery proceeded to collaborate on a revision of Cotterill’s earlier work,a nd it was published in 1820 to wide acclaim (even, eventually, we are told, from the old dears at St. Paul’s).
Montgomery eventually authored something like 400 hymns, most of which are now obscure, but a few of which, including three other texts in Lutheran Service Book: LSB #367, LSB #435, and LSB #436.
He died in Sheffield, England in 1854.
The Text
The text presented in Lutheran Service Book is at points a mashup of Montgomery’s longer original text (for example, the sixth verse is a mashup of the original sixth and seventh verses), but the organization and general arc of the text is true enough to the original.
The basis for Montgomery’s text is Psalm 72, which is the psalm universally appointed for Epiphany in the lectionary. His own philosophy on hymnwriting seems to have involved a middle course, somewhere between a a literal, almost word-for-word recitation of the psalm in question on the one hand and an abstract paraphrase on the other hand. His hymns also display a high amount of organization, something he himself commented on in some of his writings.
In this case, the text contains little more of the original psalm than structure and mood (in a very general way). The hymn opens as Epiphany hymns so often do, by hearkening back to the Old Testament - to the prophecies of a Son of David, a savior come to “break oppression,” and to “set the captive free,” in the words of the hymn. The hymn thus begins by discussing the finite - a moment in time, the coming of the Messiah. The “hailing” of the first verse is in the present tense - it’s something done now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Later in the first verse, He “…comes to break oppression,” again, in the present tense.
We know where this is going, right? We saw it over and over again in the Advent hymns we looked at, but the whole verb tense thing is coming back here in Epiphany.
The second verse is a bit wonky - it starts out in present tense: “He comes with rescue speedy…” but by the end of the verse the “souls, condemned and dying, / Were precious in His sight.” The “Were” is past tense, the only verb in the whole hymn in the past tense.
That single fleeting phrase in the past tense is all we’re gonna get, though. From here on out it’s future tense, and Montgomery has some fun with it. The third verse is pretty straightforward, but the fourth verse opens with an allusion to the Three Wise Men, except…hang on a second…it’s in future tense! “Kings shall fall down before Him.” Now, the following phrase (second phrase of the fourth verse), “And gold and incense bring;” obviously makes this an allusion to the Wise Men, right?
Well…maybe. It’s one of those double meanings we had so many of back at Advent. It could be about the Wise Men, as that would’ve been a future event from the point of view of the psalmist. Or it could be an allusion to so much of the glorious imagery in Revelation. The dichotomy is brilliant, and this might be one of the best tense-shifts in the whole hymnal.
The hymn ends with an image of Christ Triumphant, the hymn having now moved from the consideration of a single event - a single momentous moment in time - to the infinite vastness of Christ’s victory, and a vision of the heavenly throne.
It is, perhaps, one of the best Epiphany texts in the book, and that’s saying something when we consider that on the one hand the available themes are rather limited and that on the other hand several of the hymns we’ve considered over the last few weeks have been stalwarts and classics themselves.
The Tune
Very little is known about the tune - it is by Leonhard Schroter, and was published in 1587. It, obviously, is not originally paired with this text, but to the text which gives it its name, FREUT EUCH, IHR LIEBEN, sometimes given as FREUT EUCH, IHR LIEBEN CHRISTEN.
The tune is very energetic, leading off as it does with the repeated F major chords, which need space - they need to “bounce” in order for momentum to propel the singers up to the Bb. This is particularly true as the first chord is a on beat 4 - it’s essentially a pickup note to the second F major chord, which is on a strong beat.
A passing note in the soprano voice is also very effective at the beginning of the third line.
I have always thought that the beginning of the third verse, “He shall come down like waters” begs to be tone painted, maybe with some descending passing tones, but the way the harmony is written in the hymnal that’s not really possible except between the second F major chord and the following D minor (second beat, first full measure). If anybody has some better ideas on this, I’d love to hear them.
This tune was not much composed upon by the great composers, at least not as far as I can find, and it’s not really all that popular with contemporary church composers (I have catalogued over 7,000 pieces in my organ music collection, and I only have a single setting of this tune), which is really a shame, as it’s such a good tune. What examples I was able to find are listed below.
Editor’s note
As most of you no doubt know, we’re now in that season where the historic one-year lectionary and the modern three-year lectionary diverge. The one-year folks have the Gesima Sundays starting today and running up to Ash Wednesday, while the rest of us hang out in the dwindling Sundays of Epiphany until then.
I work in a congregation that runs on the three-year lectionary, and I’ve set up the schedule of hymns for this blog in such a way that it reflects that (for one thing, the content in LSB is clearly designed to accommodate the three-year lectionary [there are hymns that are based on readings that aren’t in the one-year lectionary]; for another thing, all of the CPH worship planners I have are for the three-year lectionary). So, if you’re on the one-year lectionary, the hymns appearing here over the next couple of weeks are going to seem a bit out of place until we get to Ash Wednesday. The schedule was never intended to follow the lectionary, only to move through the seasonal sections of the hymnal during those seasons and to move through the more general sections of the hymnal during the “green season” and after the seasonal sections have been exhausted.
Eventually I hope to set up a system where you, the readers and viewers who consume my writings and who constitute the TLO community can vote hymns up or down on the list, so that favorites make it on here more quickly. Who knows, if there’s enough one-year lectionary people out there who want them badly enough, I might end up doing pre-Lent tunes the last few Sundays of three-year Epiphany next year!
Settings of this hymn and/or tune can be found in:
For organ:
Concordia Hymn Prelude Library, Vol. 4