The Contemporary Charles Wesley

In the church today, we sing in many styles: chant, chorales, traditional hymns, gospel hymns and songs, jazz, folk, classical, pop, praise and worship, Taizé, rap, hip-hop, as well as numerous ethnic, cultural, and indigenous styles of music. Each new generation since Wesley has come to appreciate the importance of the Wesley hymns and has composed new tunes for their singing. But are all of today's styles of music agreeable with Wesley's texts?

Composers, publishers, hymnal committees, and recording artists are putting Wesley's texts to all kinds of musical settings, and congregations are being asked and are trying to sing them. Some settings are simply difficult for congregations for musical reasons. But there are other reasons beyond their singability that make for a bad marriage of text and music. Here are some of them:

1. Wesley's phrases are usually longer than most hymn texts, requiring longer musical lines to carry them. Many contemporary styles use short musical phrases or mottos that do not support this text length well at all, forcing the textual line to be chopped up or repeated to the same music. It is the music that rules the text rather than the other way around.
   
   
2. There is a rise and fall, a textual rhythm and meter, that does not agree with most contemporary musical phrasing.
   
   
3. The complexity of the language of Wesley's phrases is often understood better with a longer, spun-out melodic line. Short musical phrases yield confusion when used with Wesley's longer text phrases. (Compare, for instance, Wesley's "And Can It Be" with Thornburg's "God the Sculptor of the Mountain" in The Faith We Sing for a contrast between long and short text phrases between Wesley and contemporary hymn texts.)
   
   
4. The same thing can be said about Wesley's dense theology in many texts as is said of his complex language in 3 above.
   
   
5. There are a number of vocal qualities present in some contemporary styles (and singers) that are simply part of the musical style: harshness, a nasal tone, sharp accents to the initial word sound, pitch imprecision, exploration and exploitation of the upper and lower ranges of both pitch and volume, slurred pitches and diction, and there are others. To be true to the musical style, these must be present; but if they are present in the music, then they work against both the congregation's ability to sing the text and understand the words.

The question is, "Is there a basic incompatibility between contemporary musical styles and Wesley's classical texts?" And if there is, should we be composing more classical hymnic music that uses more contemporary harmonies and rhythms for Wesley texts? Or should we alter Wesley's texts so that they better fit the modern style? And how much can we alter them and still call them Wesley?

These are not unimportant questions. They will all be dealt with by editorial committees of all future hymnals and songbooks.