Fred Pratt Green was one of the first new hymnwriters at the forefront of a revolution in Christian music, known as the ‘Hymn Explosion’, which took place about fifty years ago in the 1970s, and is still influencing Christian worship today.
Two World Wars had driven people back onto the resources they had loved and grown up with. Not many people were writing new material (though there were exceptions), and worshippers hankered after the glory days of times gone by.
But in the new world of the postwar era, and on into the 1960s, young people, particularly, looked for worship and Christian music that was more authentic to the experience of their own lives on the threshold of what felt like a new world. The Second Vatican Council brought about huge changes in Catholic worship, including new settings of the Mass, but also an outpouring of new hymn writing, not formerly a large part of Catholic worship. I interviewed one of the most prominent writers, Estelle White, in 1999, who said that she started writing hymns in the 1960s, ‘when protest was in the air’. (Feminist Theology, no. 23, January 2000, pp. 85-9)
In the protestant churches, new writers such as Fred Kaan, Brian Wren and Timothy Dudley Smith were inspired to put pen to paper. Their material came out first in hymn book supplements, such as the Methodist Hymns and Songs (1969) and URC New Church Praise (1975). Gradually, they began to shape the hymnbooks that we still sing from in many of our churches.
Fred Pratt Green’s hymns became very popular all round the world, and he very generously dedicated a large part of his royalties to a Trust, set up in 1984, to support those who were called by God to inspire new Christian music for praise and worship.
One of his own hymns was written to celebrate the gift of music in worship. Each verse ends, appropriately, with the word ‘Alleluia!’. It begins:
When, in our music, God is glorified
and adoration leaves no room for pride,
it is as though the whole creation cried:
Alleluia!
The praise to which this hymn calls us is not purely emotional, or thoughtless. There is room, of course, for hymns and songs that make our hearts soar, leaving our reason and understanding behind. But there is also room for hymns and songs that carry hearts and minds to God in harmony. So the second verse is brilliant and intriguing:
How often, making music, we have found
a new dimension in the world of sound,
as music moves us to a more profound
Alleluia!
What would a more profound Alleluia be like for you? Maybe praise that draws from the depth of your own life-experience, or arises out of new insights into the world? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
The Trust that Fred Pratt Green set up is still going strong at 40! To celebrate the anniversary, we are sponsoring a Hymn Competition focusing on Celebrating Creation, and a Day Conference on the theme of A More Profound Alleluia. You can find out more at The Pratt Green Trust – A charity whose principal aim is to further the cause of hymnody.
In the meantime, his hymn ends with a prayer that we can make our own:
Let every instrument be tuned for praise!
Let all rejoice, who have a voice to raise!
And may God give us faith to sing always:
Alleluia! Amen!
Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000)
© Copyright 1972 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, www.stainer.co.uk. Used by permission.
Janet Wootton
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