Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is Timothy Dudley-Smith’s “A purple robe, a crown of thorns”. In one way this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves as it’s clearly a hymn about the Crucifixion, so would better be set for Holy Week, but the hymn book has so many hymns for Holy Week that I have to start getting them in early so that I’m not still singing songs about the Passion after Easter!
The copyright information doesn’t say when the lyrics or melody were written, but it was probably still quite new when I first came across it. It was as a newly committed and confirmed Christian, so probably around 1981/82. Up to that point I only knew the mainly traditional hymns that were sung at school assemblies, so to discover that there was a whole world of different styles of music in worship was rather exciting. The church I attended as a student sang many contemporary ‘choruses’, which sound rather dated forty years on, as well as some older hymns.
This one fits nicely between the two. It’s not a typical 1980s chorus but nor is it a traditional hymn (i.e. several verses sung to the same tune). I’m not even sure whether to describe it as a ‘hymn’ or a ‘song’. It’s a ‘hymn’ in so far as it has five verses with a regular metrical pattern of words and the words are mostly making factual statements about Christ’s death. On the other hand the words are in the first person – “I see my Saviour stand … I see my Saviour go … I see my Saviour bear [the cross and all our sins] … I see my Saviour die … I sing my Saviour’s name” which is more the style of a worship song.
Musically, it’s noted as “common metre” so that it could in theory be set to any number of traditional hymn tunes, but that would rob the hymn of its character. The music by David Wilson appears to have been written especially for these words, and the five verses have three melodies in a pattern of A-B-C-A-B which is found commonly in more recent worship songs. The melodies themselves however are in a minor key, as befits the solemnity and despair of Good Friday. The final verse sings of Jesus’ reign on high, so should probably be omitted if it’s actually sung in Holy Week when we try not to anticipate the ‘happy ending’ of the story.
So this is a hymn that although it has not achieved widespread popularity in churches, even on Good Friday itself, is a firm favourite of mine. It’s unique, and it reminds me of the early days of my own walk with God.
[N.B. for once I’m writing these notes the day before the post is published, so I don’t know what John might say about it on Friday].
This hymn is also well-known to me, partly I suspect because David Wilson who wrote the tune was the vicar for whom I served my first curacy, and I am grateful to him for introducing me to the new (then) hymn book which had just come out – Hymns for Today’s Church, in which this hymn appears. And I like it very much. It has a lovely lilting tune which can easily become an ear-worm, and which absolutely captures the pathos and mourning nature of the words.
Having said that, it isn’t a hymn without its difficulties – the foremost of which is finding the right point in a church service in which to use it. For unlike “All glory laud and honour” which obviously fits at the beginning of Palm Sunday as it is clearly set all in the moment of Jesus’ triumphal entry, or “Ride on ride on in majesty” which obviously fits as the last hymn on Palm Sunday as it looks from the immediate entry to what will happen in Holy Week, or “When I survey the wondrous cross” which has a clear setting of looking back at the cross as Jesus died on it, or a whole range of similar hymns … the problem with this hymn is that it stands in five consecutive places for the verses: v1) before the soldiers (as they put a purple robe on him and pay mock homage); v2) carrying the cross (he bears the weight), v3) hoist up on the cross in his suffering, v4) at the moment of his death 3 hours later, and v5) after his ascension (sharing his Father’s throne on high). So it is a sequence hymn … but it’s impossible to sing it as a refrain interlude during a Passion Play, because the tune doesn’t allow the verses to stand individually. And the other factor is that the tune moves naturally with a kind of swing, so it won’t tolerate being played too slowly, and there isn’t naturally time to reflect on the words at the leisure which they deserve.
I imagine that Timothy wrote the words with a Common Meter (8.6.8.6) rhythm in mind, and I wonder what was in his head with verse 3? Did he simply have a tune like St Peter (“How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”) in his head, and think that verse 3 would fit well enough to the tune? Or did he actually want a different set of stresses for this verse? I suspect the former, but I may be quite wrong. Anyhow, as a tune-writer myself I have faced the question of what to do with a words-writer’s irregularities in the words, and I think myself that David was absolutely right to see that verse 3 needed a different approach – which is the key to how this tune works. And I applaud that, but I wonder at the same time if it might have been possible to write a tune in which each note requires a different chord – because that’s the way that the hymn could be slowed down to make it possible to reflect on it at an appropriate pace.
So I find myself in a bit of dilemma with this hymn. It’s great, but I find it hard to use. Looking back on my ministry, I have never actually scheduled it for congregational singing. Maybe with the rise of the visual media its place is to accompany a sequence of pictures which span the crucifixion story as part of a meditation on the meaning of the cross? Maybe I need to work on finding a proper context in which to set it? Maybe it is a hymn which will find its place as the music for an evangelistic YouTube clip?