HYMNS AND CAROLS
Those who don ’ t want to sing or hum now , would be rather poor people . Christmas time is singing time , there are songs and carols everywhere , on public places and in shops we hear well known tunes , even if we sometimes think it too much . The message they bring may remain unheard , maybe many who hum the tunes can ’ t even remember the texts they once learned , but in the old customs and images Christian culture lives on and resurfaces at this time of the year . This culture often can be rather trivial , ‘ kitsch ’ like the most famous of all carols ‘ Silent Night ’, now declared a ‘ UNESCO cultural heritage ’, you must not look too closely at the text , written in 1816 with ‘ poetic freedom ’ by the Austrian parson Joseph Moor . His version tells of a rather mature looking boy ‘ in curly hair ’ and of heavenly peace , while Luke talks of a rather noisy scene around a newborn baby , with heavenly choirs singing praise and shepherds crowding round . But the miracle of which Luke and Matthew tell us has inspired many beautiful poems . Our history of literature doesn ’ t often look at hymns , although this kind of poetry is still flourishing .
Hymns were a kind of by-product of the Reformation . Martin Luther wanted congregations to sing in their own language , so that they felt part of a family and could understand the message given to them by the Gospels . Luther himself wrote many hymns which these days are also sung by Catholic congregations and have been translated into other languages . Luther saw in these hymns a kind of ‘ comfort in discouragement ’, or ‘ refreshment in vexation ’. Calvin and other Puritan reformers saw this differently , they banned all music and images from churches , only the ‘ Word ’ should count . Similarly the Church in Scotland didn ’ t want music , as we can see from the fact , that the 18 th century church of St Andrews by the Green in Glasgow was called the ‘ whistling church ’, since it was the first church in town to have an organ ( it was Episcopalian ). In the Catholic Liturgy hymns had no place either . Latin was the language of the services , and after Pope Gregory the Great unified the liturgies during the 7 th century , the great tradition of Gregorian Songs started to spread even into the concert halls , although these days they only play a modest part in Catholic services . The ‘ Counter Reformation ’ of the Catholic Church brought about many hymns in native languages which became popular also in Protestant churches .
From the development of hymns you can learn how religious language changed with the years . Latin Mass songs were both prayers for help and songs of praise . Language and imagery were based on the Bible , especially the Psalms and the Prophets . In a book written in 2010 the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben asked why God needed to be praised at all , since the praise by the faithful does not add to the Glory of God . Agamben thought that by singing ‘ Glory to God in the Highest ’ we were following ancient forms of acclamation to kings , which had their models in rituals of
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