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Forty Days and Forty Nights
Feb. 21st, 2010 03:19 pmAh, Lent. Season of fasting, penitence, and minor keys. And, because of this last, season of interesting harmonies and of music that makes your spine tingle. 'Forty Days' is a prime example:
Forty days and forty nights
thou wast fasting in the wild;
forty days and forty nights
tempted, and yet undefiled.
( Sunbeams scorching all the day )
Luke doesn't really tell us what the forty days were like for Jesus; all the temptation happens at the end of them. George Hunt Smyttan attempts to fill in the gaps. This is a hymn about discomfort, pain, and physical and spiritual suffering. Even fluffy springtime things like sunbeams and dewdrops have their sinister side. (And as for the wild beasts! There are many things that prowl around in Lenten hymns.) We're not going to get to Easter without going through the wilderness, and it's not going to be pleasant.
The great thing, of course, is that we are not going through it alone. Even when the landscape is dust and stones and it seems as if there is no other soul for miles, we are by no means the first to go through this, and the one to whom we call knows what it's like. Hunger, discomfort, temptation - they are not insuperable. As the other version of the antepenultimate verse has it, 'Thou, his vanquisher before, grant we may not faint nor fail'. And, at the end of it all, it is worth it.
Aus der Tiefe works beautifully, a wonderful depressing minor tune with lovely crunchy harmonies. Some churches switch to the tune Buckland for the last two verses, which is an inspired touch, lifting the mood in the music as well as in the words.
Here's a rather fun improvisation:
Forty days and forty nights
thou wast fasting in the wild;
forty days and forty nights
tempted, and yet undefiled.
( Sunbeams scorching all the day )
Luke doesn't really tell us what the forty days were like for Jesus; all the temptation happens at the end of them. George Hunt Smyttan attempts to fill in the gaps. This is a hymn about discomfort, pain, and physical and spiritual suffering. Even fluffy springtime things like sunbeams and dewdrops have their sinister side. (And as for the wild beasts! There are many things that prowl around in Lenten hymns.) We're not going to get to Easter without going through the wilderness, and it's not going to be pleasant.
The great thing, of course, is that we are not going through it alone. Even when the landscape is dust and stones and it seems as if there is no other soul for miles, we are by no means the first to go through this, and the one to whom we call knows what it's like. Hunger, discomfort, temptation - they are not insuperable. As the other version of the antepenultimate verse has it, 'Thou, his vanquisher before, grant we may not faint nor fail'. And, at the end of it all, it is worth it.
Aus der Tiefe works beautifully, a wonderful depressing minor tune with lovely crunchy harmonies. Some churches switch to the tune Buckland for the last two verses, which is an inspired touch, lifting the mood in the music as well as in the words.
Here's a rather fun improvisation: