Saying It, Tho Haltingly (Part 1 of 2)
Two hymns beget a song of concern
Mystery in the Pine Room
I’ve written on a couple of hymns already, in my earlier Medium articles Yeah, Religion Seems A Little Weird and then Plunging Into The Second Measure.
I’ve also written stories on two levels before. One of my earlier stories was Not Gonna Take My Girlfriend, about a guy named Arthur Ingles. Who is Arthur Ingles? Only a couple people got it, but that’s my fault; it was apparently too obscure. You can go back there if you want, and try to discern the second level.
We’re going to write a song that tells a story on two levels today. Thanks for coming to the Pine Room to be a part of this. What do you want to drink? I’ve made a batch of red sangria. Or you can have a cocktail.
Halting words, simple song
Our hymn for today is Be Still My Soul. The words are by Katharina von Schlegel and the music is taken from the famous longer piece Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius. We’re only going to look at the first line of the hymn and I’m going to describe just two of my impressions of it: the rhythm is nicely different, and the notes are few. Here’s me covering the first line:
The rhythm is interesting in a couple ways. First, it’s in 4|4 time but the vocal doesn’t start ’til the second beat. In other words, there are only three beats in the first measure. This makes the listener scramble (if only subconsciously) to get coordinated with foot-tapping.
The second thing about the rhythm is that it has a bit of beautifully awkward hesitation. There are two instances of it in the first line, and they combine for a mild stammering effect. When the singer gets to “on” there is an unlikely pause at a not-emphasized word. It’s as if we’re hesitating to say the rest of the sentence. Then we blurt ahead with a very short note for “thy,” to the last word “side” that is sung unusually here as two syllables, like we’re having trouble getting it out. I’m a little sensitive to stuttering, having gone through a mild phase of it when I halfway fell apart during law school. It wasn’t very dramatic outwardly, but I felt it (and went and got good help for it).
Also distinctive is the seeming simplicity of the melody. There are only four different notes in the part I sang, and it actually doesn’t go much further out than that in the rest of the song. I remember one of my music theory professors telling us that simple is best, little movement among tones. I’m starting to get that.
We have our own halting words
So what can we in the Pine Room do with these musical traits, in writing a song of our own? Well, we’re only going to do part of the song this time, and finish it in the next article. Here are the first two verses of so he’s calling you again, huh?:
I think you can feel that the beats are a little off normal, and that the narrator/singer in this one side of a conversation is struggling a little a first, to enter into an awkward topic. He’s also staying within a narrow range of tones. His chords are mostly minor; the poor naive person on the other end of the call (speaking without words, as a flute) is valiantly trying to stay in major key.
We’ve done the first two verses this time, and will write the rest of the song in our next short hymn study, coming up soon.
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Lyrics of first two verses (written in collaboration with my friend Tim Connelly):
So he’s calling you again, huh?…
It seems it’ll be better this time, huh?….
Your breakup last time was tough,
He even got a bit rough;
He’s a Christian now, huh?…
Telling you just how, huh?
He took you to fancy places
And cursed in the servers’ faces;
[rest of song: next time]
