Very confusing! Every single parallel is inexact. Another possible interpretation is that the Incarnation only seemed to occcur. Better off without it, my 2 cents.

Overall, it is a sad fact of hymnal history that wine rhymes with sign.

yeah. Good. The tune surely is tops. The words are just too mixed up. After all, head scratching puzzlement -- and a sense that a hymn is flirting with consubstantiation or, at best, some incomplete expression of something vaguely resembling truth -- is not really what one wants in a hymn.

What is the name of the tune? I am not familiar with these words. Not in Ritualsong, I don'tthink.

Donna

Well, it's just because I'm not a cradle Catholic. There are a few tunes I don't know! On the other hand, the first time I ever sang in a RC Church it was 'Mother at thy feet is kneeling'. LOLOLOL (The nuns allowed me to sing behind a wooden screen, so no one could see me, a heathen ,while I sang- I think it was for a wedding)

Donna

3. Once were seen the blood and water: Now is seen but bread and wine;
Once in human form he suffered, Now his form is but a sign.

4. Wheat and grape contain the meaning: Food and drink he is to all;
One in him we kneel adoring, Gathered by his loving call.

Tune here (and note that OCP claims copyright only to the guitar chords, snicker)

controversy thread here

But isn't it interesting that OCP includes it in everything? We've used it because of the dignified music.

I just wanted to know the Hymntune name. And I feel better now that I know Kathy doesn't know it either. :)

"We've used it because of the dignified music."

I think this happens every week with various hymns in some of the best music programs! That is why we need a censorious high commissioner!

No, seriously, we need detailed, detailed, detailed commentary on hymn texts.

Yes, Elgar is well-known for writing tunes that are not bad.

Re: good tune, bad words or confusing theology

Ugh. Hate that. We just learned a new song last night at choir practice that was like that. The tune was pretty enough but not a singing tune; the chorus particularly was nothing like a chorus, and sounds like it will be very hard to learn. But the lyrics! Every verse ricocheted from "harmless clouds of nice sounding words that mean nothing" to "lame and annoying", to "total cognitive dissonance and illogic", and then to "cruising close to heresy and blasphemy".

I actually felt physically sick, in a way I haven't felt in years. You know how poetry affected Emily Dickinson? Like that, except the opposite.

So when the music director asked us how we liked it, I said that if we sang it to a totally different set of words, I'd have no objections. I kinda figured my vote wouldn't rule, since for some reason everybody else thought it was "pretty"; but at least I said what I thought. So we will be singing it, and I will have yet another opportunity to offer stuff up and so forth.

The really annoying thing is that I don't think the songwriter was actually up to mischief; it feels more like a case of "lazy lyricist", somebody just throwing words up until they finished five verses of this dreck. This person does write competent songs when she tries, so she has no business playing the lazy lyricist card.

I don't have time to write at the moment, but Noel, if you keep a running tab of suggestions of tunes that need texts, I'll work on it in a month or two.

Do we have any early French things, or a tune or two of Gibbons?

Donna