Out of Silence Music Rises
The William Bradley Roberts Hymnary

Order now!  

Description The Rev. Dr. William Bradley Roberts has been writing hymn tunes for over 40 years, and this collection is an anthology of those commissions and compositions written at all stages of his career. He has chosen or been presented with texts for all times of worship and lectionary, and composes tunes that are memorable and well-composed. Many hymns have descants for them, and they are provided as stand-alone verses for the few singers you can trust. The PDF version of the collection includes images for all of the hymns and melodies for unison hymns for reprinting in bulletins in PDF, JPG, PNG, and TIF formats, and also includes copies of the hymns with descants above the melody and accompaniment. Foreword by Paul Richardson "A good text will write its own tune," the composer of these settings modestly contends. Proof being found in pudding (and I am a great fan of puddings, good texts, and good tunes), the validity of his assertion is demonstrated in this tasty and tasteful anthology. William Bradley Roberts is a better listener than most, as evinced here. He has a preternatural ability to comprehend the content and character of a text, then design a setting that conveys, not competes. Most of these tunes are occasional, commissioned for or evoked by liturgical setting and pastoral sensitivity. Thus, they began with a context for which Roberts, sometimes in collaboration with others, chooses a suitable text. His discernment is evident at this point, for he knows hymnic literature as well as the specific liturgical framework and ministerial opportunity. He has selected the work of skilled writers whose artistic texts provide consistency in substance, structure, and sound rather than presenting the composer with problems that must be solved. Though half of these texts are from recent decades, they span a range of times and styles. There are writers from the patristic period through the eighteenth-century formulation of the English hymn by Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and William Cowper, supplemented by Christopher Smart. From the nineteenth century come texts by Frances Cox (translating Gellert), George Rawson, Emily Elliott, Folliot Pierpoint, Sabine Baring-Gould, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Edwin Hatch. Twentieth-century writers include Louis F. Benson, Martin Franzmann, W. Russell Bowie, Albert F. Bayly, W.H. Vanstone, F. Bland Tucker (a translation), Brian Wren, Jeffery Rowthorn, and Michael Saward. Roberts has found particular resonance with Susan Palo Cherwien (4 texts) and Carl P. Daw, Jr. (9, one a scriptural paraphrase). The handling of the musical elements is masterful. Melody is always primary and, in most cases, sufficiently sturdy to stand alone. Rhythm, range, and phrase shape make each melody distinct and accessible, as well as suited to the text. These are managed in ways that often enable singers to sustain thought and breath though an idea of challenging length. Most lie within the congregationally-secure compass of a tenth. Though there are some challenging leaps, these require only a few repetitions to elide with the expression of the words. Hearing a stanza or two sung confidently by a choir should enable worshipers to join without hesitation. The solid, almost-always-syllabic melody is one element in a rich musical idea. Moving lines in lower voices or accompaniment articulate an energizing microbeat that reinforces a strong underlying musical pulse. Harmonies, at times complex, support rather than compete with the presentation of the text in the topmost voice. Some tunes are minor or modal, offering the possibility of reflective experience; this is particularly welcome in comparison to previous pairings of the older texts. These tunes are worth studying as well as singing. The several examples of 8.7.8.7.D. and its kin are a syllabus of the science and art of melodic craft. Roberts demonstrates successful negotiation of the opportunities (and avoidance of the pitfalls) of this poetic meter, providing appropriate variety--often heard in and drawn from the text--to give the tune slight differences that maintain interest and bear repeated singing while maintaining continuity and confidence. Out of Silence Music Rises is the legacy of a working, thinking church musician who loves congregational song and supplies superb settings of fine texts, ready for use. I have encountered some of these through my friendship with Bill, now decades long. I am grateful to have become acquainted with them all, discovering settings that are not merely singable but inviting, engaging, and enlightening. --Paul A. Richardson, Richmond, Virginia Introduction by Carl P. Daw, Jr. Any opportunity to introduce people to settings of my hymn texts that they may not yet have encountered is always a special privilege, but it is an even greater joy to be able to acquaint others with the work of a talented and longstanding friend. Although William Bradley Roberts (whom his friends know as Bill) is recognized and appreciated for his choral works, his hymn tunes have received less attention than they deserve. Several of them are cherished by congregations who have commissioned them, a reliable indication that they ought to be more widely known. It is particularly gratifying that this collection prints Bill’s most frequently published hymn tune, Mississippi (no. 29), with its original text, "Travelers' Child, Laid in a Manger." In some ways, the choice of this tune for other texts is a testimony to its sheer melodic beauty, though I dare to hope that encountering this tune with its intended text will promote even greater appreciation of its musical excellence. One significant evidence of the care with which this tune has been crafted can be recognized by noting that this setting for a text centered on a peripatetic Jesus does not come to rest on its tonic pitch until the final note of the melody. Such an unsettled condition is effectively signaled by how the tune opens at the midpoint of a broken tonic triad, and the related sense of constant journeying is reinforced by the third measure’s stepwise progression. These defining elements are reiterated in the second phrase, providing the narrative first half of each stanza with an appropriate and effective sonic milieu communicating instability. When the second half of each stanza turns from narrative to interpretation by invoking a name or epithet of Jesus, the tune makes that transition evident with the first and only appearance of the sixth note of the scale, using this highest pitch of the tune for that invocation. From that point onwards the final two musical phrases form a gently descending cascade of notes leading to the desired but elusive conclusion on the final tonic note. Such sympathetic and enhancing settings are what every text writer hopes for, particularly when a tune is created for a specific text. I feel especially blessed that Bill fulfilled (and exceeded) my hopes with this tune. In a similar way, Bill's settings for my other texts in this collection (those already associated with other tunes) offer additional evidence of his skill and sensitivity as a composer. Perhaps a reflection of his years of working with Alice Parker, most of his tunes are notable for their lack of melisma; he usually creates settings that follow the "one note per syllable" criterion. So his departures from this practice are worth noticing. A case in point is Whitehead (no. 37), his exuberant setting for my metrical paraphrase of the canticle "A Song of Creation" (Benedicite, omnia opera Domini). Some sense of its intended energy can be gleaned from the musical direction he used in its original publication: "Bright and lively (like a hoe-down).”" This desired sense of movement is further evident from the fact that thirty of the fifty-three syllables in the text are assigned two eighth notes. While it is true that the first two phrases display many recurring tonic pitches that feel like the stomp of a hoedown, the second half contains waves of rapidly descending and ascending passages that feel more like a roller coaster. The cumulative result is that this setting truly feels as if all creation has broken out into song--and joyous song at that. Canticles should not be dirges, and this setting does everything possible to communicate delight. Bill's association of melisma with liveliness can also be seen in Florrie Janet (no. 10). Perhaps because the first two lines of the text include the words "lively" and "stirring," they provide the initial occurrences of a motif consisting of two sixteenth notes and eighth note that appears five times in the tune. Like most of Bill's use of melisma, these examples all involve adjacent pitches rather than widely separated intervals. A more modest use of melisma can be found in David (no. 7), his setting of my first hymn text, "Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song." Because Bill encountered this text before it was formally published, he could not have known that it was specifically written to provide words for Peter Cutts' tune Bridegroom. While the tune that generated the text builds to the reiterated refrain, Bill's tune achieves continuity and unity by the melodic linking of the opening phrase and the refrain. This connection is created by using the first seven pitches of the opening phrase to set the six syllables of the refrain, necessitating melisma on the first word of the refrain. As singers return to the next stanza after singing the refrain, the repetition of the melody has the effect of making the refrain a subtext for that next first line, thereby knitting the ending and the beginning of the tune together and giving the tune a shape that feels more circular than linear. Unlike the invigorating effect of melisma in the two previously discussed tunes, the intention here is to create smoothness and momentum, a more appropriate enhancement for this prayerful text. Almost imperceptible melisma occurs in Lexington Road (no. 22), in the identical phrases three and seven. In this instance, melisma makes a stepwise movement possible before a falling fifth. Another fascinating pattern of employing melisma can be found in Freeman (no. 11), where the pairing of a dotted quarter note and an eighth note is associated with the three occurrences of the word "praise" in the first stanza. Each time it is sung, the word "praise" gains both added emphasis and duration. As a result, the implanted association of word and music subconsciously brings "praise" to mind wherever that musical motif occurs in subsequent stanzas. I have called attention to these musical techniques in Bill's settings of my texts in this collection not simply as curiosities but as examples of the care and intelligence he brings to the creating of his hymn tunes. More such illuminating details could be identified and celebrated, but I want to draw my introductory words of appreciation to a close by calling attention to one more especially significant feature of Bill's tunes. As Bill's annotations indicate, the tune I mentioned at the beginning of these remarks emerged from planning for a conference on the Church's vocation of hospitality. That hymn's connection to Bill's composing of hymn tunes is far from coincidental. In fact, a concern for providing singers with hospitable melodies forms a recurrent and persistent feature of his tunes. This attention to welcoming singers to tunes that they can acquire quickly (sometimes almost intuitively) is a consistent pattern in Bill's compositions. The evidence for this concern can be found in the preponderance of tunes that repeat the opening phrase in the second phrase (usually with a change of the final note). Citing only the tunes that set texts I have written, this characteristic can be found in Ex Silentio Musica (no. 10), Florrie Janet (no. 11), Freeman (no. 12), Hackett (no. 16), Lexington Road (no. 22), Maxwell (no. 26), Mississippi (no. 29), Old Town (no. 30), and Whitehead (no. 37). The spirit of hospitality that permeates the tunes in this collection is hardly surprising because such a generous and welcoming spirit characterizes the person who created them, and it gives me immense pleasure to be able to introduce him and his tunes to anyone who might be encountering them here for the first time. --Carl P. Daw, Jr., Watertown, Massachusetts

Preface from the author
"Oh look, Mildred, how exciting. We’re learning a new hymn today!"

Now there's a comment we're not likely to overhear in the narthex. Or so I warned my students at Virginia Theological Seminary--most of whom were the future clergy who get to, shall we say, catalog the grievances when we dare to introduce new music. No, we practitioners of church music well know it's the Sunday we sing "Amazing Grace" that we can expect kudos from the congregation. It's a good day to go to coffee hour after church.

There are solid reasons why this is so. As Donald Hustad said, "The common expression, 'I don't know much about music, but I know what I like' should actually be 'I don’t know much about music, but I like what I know.'" Once those neural tracks are laid in the brain, we love to return to them, reinforcing what we already know. It's a blessed assurance to sing music that already belongs to us.

Choirs, of course, are less disturbed by new hymns, because, for the most part, they are music readers. Experts estimate that only 10--20% of U.S. citizens read music. That means that at least 80% of our parishioners must learn new music by rote, getting no help from the printed score. This takes time and intention, and rushing the process will only add to the frustration of both the parishioners and the clergy, who must listen to that catalog of grievances.

Singing the old familiar hymns bathes us in warm comfort. This is the pastoral dimension of hymn singing. It reassures us, affirms our values, encourages us to keep going forward on the path we're already traveling. But there is also a prophetic dimension. The prophecy of hymns both challenges our attitudes and behaviors and fashions us into a new creation. The Bible repeatedly commands us, "Sing to the Lord a new song." God knows that we naturally relate to familiar hymns, but learning new hymns requires motivation and encouragement.

This collection of hymn tunes developed over forty years. Still, it is not a comprehensive collection that purports to cover all the subjects in a topical or liturgical index. The tunes came to life as necessity or inspiration dictated. A friend said, "They are like picture postcards from your life."

For a congregation to learn a new hymn is no small feat. I find that openness to new forms and materials of worship is a sign of the health of a congregation. When congregations vehemently resist change in worship, it often means that the community is clinging for life to the old familiar routines. Fear often prevents us from stepping out of our safe space.

While repetition in liturgy can deepen its power, a frightened dependency on consistent worship practice can inhibit growth. Over a long career, I have observed that congregations whose faith was alive were open to a variety of expressions of worship. "Sing to the Lord a new song" encourages a living faith.

As a composer of hymn tunes, of course I hope those vibrant congregations will try the tunes in this volume. Sometimes a new tune can bring fresh vitality to a text that had been sung to only one familiar tune. In other instances, the new tune is married to a new text, giving poets an opportunity to share the Spirit's revelation. Poets are wordsmiths for sure, but what matters far more is their ability to express fresh insights and perspectives. "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," said Emily Dickinson.

This volume may also be a source of simple anthem material. For some parishes, simple anthems are the only kind possible due to their limited resources. Even for "big steeple churches," a simple anthem can be sung to great effect, and it can be the first step in introducing a new hymn tune to any congregation.

Using a bit of creativity, the music director can fashion these hymns into simple anthems. Add an introduction, an interlude, a sung descant, or instrumental obligato, and suddenly you have a new anthem in your repertoire. Other ways of varying the simple material of a hymn are to have solos or semi-choruses on some verses, as well as shifting between treble clef voices and bass clef voices. Where there are multiple voice parts, a verse might be sung by two sections--say soprano and tenor--providing a new tone color to the sound.

As careful readers will discover in the annotations on the hymns, none of these hymns was created in a vacuum. A specific occasion, need, or request led to their creation. I hope this modest collection will prove to be an enjoyable and community-building experience. Above all, I pray that a congregation will use these hymns to make a joyful noise unto the Lord.
Great gratitude is due several people who helped me prepare the manuscript for publication: Carl P. Daw, Jr., David Hoover, Martha Lentz, and Paul A. Richardson. David Schaap, the publisher at Selah, figured out how to fit it all between two covers. Wherever things are "done decently and in order," these five friends are responsible.

--William Bradley Roberts, Richmond, Virginia