98 Fun Facts About Hymn

Who wrote the words to 'Amazing Grace'?

John Newton was a former slave-ship captain turned Anglican curate; the hymn illustrated his New Year's Day sermon in 1773.

In which hymn collection did 'Amazing Grace' first appear in print, in 1779?

Olney Hymns was written by the curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire with the poet William Cowper, for use at their parish prayer meetings.

What is the name of the tune to which 'Amazing Grace' has been sung since 1835?

New Britain is the tune William Walker paired with the words in his 1835 shape-note book Southern Harmony, after more than 20 other melodies had been tried.

'Be Still, My Soul' is sung to a melody from which Sibelius tone poem?

Finlandia: the hymn tune is taken from Sibelius's 1899 tone poem and carries Katharina von Schlegel's German words, translated into English by Jane Borthwick in 1855.

Carl Boberg's 1885 poem 'O Store Gud', later a famous English hymn, was written in which language?

Swedish: Carl Boberg wrote 'O Store Gud' in 1885 at Mönsterås on Sweden's Baltic coast, after watching a thunderstorm clear over the bay.

Which English missionary produced the 1949 translation of 'O Store Gud' sung by George Beverly Shea?

Stuart K. Hine, an English missionary who had worked in Ukraine, completed his English text in 1949; George Beverly Shea then made it famous at the postwar crusades.

Elvis Presley won his first Grammy for a 1967 gospel album named after which hymn?

How Great Thou Art won at the 1968 ceremony, and a 1974 live recording of the same hymn won again; all three Grammys Presley won in his lifetime were for gospel records.

Henry Francis Lyte, the author of 'Abide with Me', was dying of which disease in 1847?

Tuberculosis killed Lyte at Nice in November 1847, weeks after he preached a last sermon to his fishing-village parish at Brixham in Devon.

What is the name of William Henry Monk's tune for 'Abide with Me'?

Eventide was composed by Monk for the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, which he edited; the name comes from the hymn's opening line, 'fast falls the eventide'.

'Abide with Me' is traditionally sung before which annual sporting event?

The FA Cup Final has opened with 'Abide with Me' since 1927, when Cardiff City beat Arsenal; it was chosen reportedly because it was King George V's favourite hymn.

Who wrote 'Rock of Ages'?

Augustus Toplady, a Devon vicar locked in a bitter pamphlet war with John Wesley over Calvinism, published 'Rock of Ages' in The Gospel Magazine in 1776.

'Be Thou My Vision' is a translation of a medieval poem in which language?

Irish: the medieval poem 'Rop tú mo baile' was translated by Mary Byrne in 1905 and versified by Eleanor Hull in 1912; its tune, Slane, began as the folk ballad 'With My Love on the Road'.

Which hymn is famously said to have been played by the band as the Titanic sank?

Nearer, My God, to Thee, Sarah Flower Adams's 1841 hymn retelling Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven, was also reportedly sung by passengers as the SS Valencia sank in 1906.

Who composed the tune 'St Gertrude' for 'Onward, Christian Soldiers'?

Arthur Sullivan composed St Gertrude in 1871; Sabine Baring-Gould had written the words for children at Horbury Bridge, Yorkshire, to sing while marching to a neighbouring church.

Which organisation adopted 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' as its favoured processional?

The Salvation Army made 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' its favourite marching hymn; the words had won little notice until a rousing new tune of 1871 replaced the Haydn melody first used.

Who wrote both the words and the tune of 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God'?

Martin Luther wrote both text and melody, probably between 1527 and 1529, drawing on Psalm 46; it has been called the Battle Hymn of the Reformation for rallying support to the Reformers' cause.

Which German poet, writing in Paris in the 1830s, called 'Ein feste Burg' the Marseillaise of the Reformation?

Heinrich Heine, in his 1830s essay on religion and philosophy in Germany, called the hymn the Marseillaise of the Reformation; it has been translated into English at least seventy times, including Carlyle's 'A safe stronghold'.

'It Is Well with My Soul' followed which disaster that killed Horatio Spafford's four daughters?

The sinking of the SS Ville du Havre in 1873 drowned all four girls; Spafford wrote the words while crossing to join his wife, and Philip Bliss named the tune after the ship.

Roughly how many hymn texts is the blind American writer Fanny Crosby credited with?

About 8,000 is the usual count; publishers wary of filling a hymnal with one name printed many of Crosby's texts under some 200 pen names.

Which Fanny Crosby hymn began with Phoebe Knapp asking what her new tune said?

Blessed Assurance: Knapp played her new melody on the piano, and Crosby answered that the tune said 'Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine', then gave the rest of the first verse.

Fanny Crosby is credited as the first woman to do what in the United States Senate?

Speak there, reading a poem: Crosby, a pupil of the New York Institution for the Blind, recited her own verses in Washington while lobbying for schools for the blind.

Which English minister, known as the father of English hymnody, wrote 'Joy to the World'?

Isaac Watts, a Nonconformist minister, broke with the custom of singing only metrical psalms by writing original hymns; 'Joy to the World' is his free reworking of Psalm 98.

'Our God, Our Help in Ages Past' paraphrases which chapter of the Psalter?

Psalm 90 ('Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations'); John Wesley later changed 'Our God' to 'O God', and the usual tune is William Croft's St Anne.

Which Charles Wesley carol originally mentioned 'the welkin'?

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing began in 1739 as 'Hark how all the welkin rings', welkin being an old word for the sky; George Whitefield rewrote the opening couplet in 1753.

'Great Is Thy Faithfulness' takes its title phrase from which Old Testament book?

Lamentations 3:23 ('great is thy faithfulness'); Thomas Chisholm wrote the poem in 1923 and William Runyan set it to music in Kansas; the postwar evangelistic crusades made it famous.

For whom did Cecil Frances Alexander write the 1848 collection containing 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'?

Little children were the audience for Hymns for Little Children, which also holds Once in Royal David's City; this hymn enlarges on the Creed's phrase 'maker of heaven and earth'.

Whose 1916 setting turned Blake's 'And did those feet in ancient time' into 'Jerusalem'?

Hubert Parry wrote it in 1916 at the request of Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, who wanted simple music a wartime audience could join in; Elgar orchestrated it in 1922.

'The Old Rugged Cross' was written by which Methodist evangelist?

George Bennard began the hymn in Michigan but could not finish it until a later run of revival meetings; Homer Rodeheaver then made it famous.

Joseph Scriven wrote 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus' as a poem in 1855 to comfort whom?

His mother in Ireland: Scriven sent her the poem from Canada in 1855; it was published anonymously and his authorship emerged only decades later.

Charlotte Elliott's 'Just as I Am' became the altar-call song of which evangelist's crusades?

Billy Graham's crusades closed with it as the invitation hymn, and Graham titled his 1997 autobiography 'Just As I Am'; the usual tune is William Bradbury's Woodworth.

'Eternal Father, Strong to Save' is popularly known as the hymn of which armed service?

The Navy: William Whiting wrote it in 1860 after the storm at sea in Psalm 107, and it became the Navy Hymn through its use at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Reginald Heber wrote 'Holy, Holy, Holy' for which Sunday of the church year?

Trinity Sunday: Heber, a Shropshire vicar who later became Bishop of Calcutta, wrote it for the day when the Prayer Book reading is Revelation 4, whose heavenly song it paraphrases.

'Lift Every Voice and Sing' was written by James Weldon Johnson to commemorate whose birthday?

Abraham Lincoln's birthday, 12 February 1900, in Jacksonville, Florida, where 500 schoolchildren sang it; J. Rosamond Johnson set it to music and the NAACP adopted it as the Negro national anthem in 1919.

Julia Ward Howe adapted the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' from which Union marching song?

John Brown's Body supplied the tune; Howe wrote her new words after hearing Union soldiers sing it near Washington, and The Atlantic Monthly printed them in February 1862.

Which hymn calls its singer 'prone to wander'?

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing: Robert Robinson wrote it at 22, a few years after George Whitefield's preaching turned him to faith, and its 'Ebenezer' is the stone of help Samuel raised in 1 Samuel 7.

Which 1912 gospel song by former pharmacist C. Austin Miles pictures Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus?

In the Garden: Miles gave up pharmacy in 1892 to write gospel songs, and Billy Sunday's song leaders later made this one a revival favourite.

The tune 'Old Hundredth', used for the Doxology, comes from which 16th-century psalm book?

The Genevan Psalter of 1551 carried the tune, usually attributed to Louis Bourgeois, set to Psalm 134; English use later joined it to Psalm 100, hence 'Old Hundredth'.

Which 1844 tunebook named an American shape-note singing tradition?

The Sacred Harp: singers sit in a hollow square, one voice part to a side, and first sing each tune on the syllables fa, sol, la and mi, one for each of its four note shapes.

Which church revival shaped the 1861 hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern?

The Oxford Movement prized the old Greek and Latin hymns of the church, and translations of them went into the new book alongside modern texts.

'Lead, Kindly Light' was written in 1833 by which future cardinal, then an Anglican?

John Henry Newman wrote it as a poem, The Pillar of the Cloud, aboard an orange boat becalmed for a week in the Strait of Bonifacio; he was canonised in 2019.

'Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee' sets Henry van Dyke's words to a melody by which composer?

Beethoven: Van Dyke wrote the poem to fit the Ode to Joy theme from the Ninth Symphony of 1824, while a guest preacher at Williams College.

Cat Stevens took which 1931 hymn by Eleanor Farjeon into the US top ten in 1972?

Morning Has Broken reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100; Farjeon had been asked to write words to fit Bunessan, a Gaelic tune named for a village on the Isle of Mull.

Which gospel standard came to Albert E. Brumley while picking cotton?

I'll Fly Away, one of the most recorded gospel songs, came as Brumley hummed 'The Prisoner's Song', with its wish for an angel's wings to fly over prison walls; it took him three years to finish.

Which ninth-century Latin hymn do the cardinals sing as a papal conclave begins?

Veni Creator Spiritus, traditionally credited to the Frankish monk Rabanus Maurus, is sung in the Sistine Chapel to call on the Holy Spirit before the cardinals take their oath of secrecy.

'How Firm a Foundation' was which general's favourite hymn, sung at his funeral in 1870?

Robert E. Lee counted it his favourite hymn; its author is a mystery, signed only 'K' in John Rippon's 1787 collection and often credited to his song leader Robert Keene.

Which pharaoh is credited with a great hymn to the sun disc?

Akhenaten, who moved Egypt's worship to the sun disc Aten in the 14th century BC, is credited with the hymn inscribed in the Amarna tomb of his courtier Ay.

Count Zinzendorf, a prolific 18th-century hymn writer, was a bishop of which denomination?

The Moravians: Zinzendorf sheltered Moravian refugees on his Saxon estate at Herrnhut from 1722 and was consecrated a bishop of their renewed church in 1737.

The Kesh temple hymn, among the world's oldest surviving literary texts, comes from which culture?

Sumerian: the hymn opens with the god Enlil praising the city of Kesh while the goddess Nisaba sets his words down on tablets, and it survives on clay tablets from about 2600 BC.

The valley named after the writer of 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty' gave its name to which prehistoric humans?

Neanderthals are named after the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, where the 17th-century hymn writer Joachim Neander loved to walk and hold open-air services.

Before becoming a clergyman, the writer of 'Amazing Grace' captained ships in which business?

The slave trade employed him as a captain on three voyages in the 1750s; decades later he wrote a pamphlet condemning it and backed William Wilberforce's abolition campaign.

The hymn 'I Vow to Thee, My Country' borrows its tune from which movement of Holst's The Planets?

Jupiter supplied the melody because an overworked Holst was relieved to find the poem fitted a tune he had already written. Diana asked for the hymn at her 1981 wedding.

On Christmas Eve 1818, the carol 'Silent Night' was first sung to the accompaniment of which instrument?

Guitar was what the young priest Joseph Mohr asked Franz Gruber to write for, possibly because river flooding had damaged the church organ at Oberndorf.

The tune of 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' comes from a cantata celebrating the printing press by which composer?

Felix Mendelssohn wrote the music in 1840 for the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention, and an English organist fitted the carol's words to it in 1855.

Which children's hymn first appeared in an 1860 novel, as a poem spoken to comfort a dying child?

Jesus Loves Me began as Anna Bartlett Warner's verses in her sister Susan's novel Say and Seal; William Bradbury added the tune and the chorus two years later.

Which Best Picture winner takes its title from Blake's hymn 'Jerusalem', which is sung as the film ends?

Chariots of Fire closes with the hymn sung at the 1978 funeral of sprinter Harold Abrahams, one of the two 1924 Olympic runners the film follows.

Which US president broke into 'Amazing Grace' during his eulogy for a murdered pastor in Charleston?

Barack Obama recited and then sang the hymn at the 2015 memorial for Clementa Pinckney, one of nine worshippers killed at Emanuel AME Church.

The hymn 'All Creatures of Our God and King' is based on the Canticle of the Sun by which medieval saint?

Francis of Assisi composed the canticle while recovering from illness near the end of his life; an English rector reworked it for his parish's children's Whitsun festival.

Haydn's melody for the hymn 'Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken' is also the national anthem of which country?

Germany took the melody for its anthem in 1922, though Haydn wrote it in 1797 to honour the Austrian emperor, which is why hymnals call the tune 'Austria'.

The Guru Granth Sahib, a scripture made up of hymns arranged by musical raga, is the holy book of which religion?

Sikhism regards the book itself as its eternal Guru, because the tenth human guru, Gobind Singh, named the scripture as his successor in 1708.

The melody of 'O Sacred Head, Now Wounded' began as a love song and was reused in which composer's St Matthew Passion?

Johann Sebastian Bach wove the tune through the Passion more than a century after Hans Leo Hassler wrote it; Paul Simon later borrowed it for 'American Tune'.

'Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer', a favourite of rugby crowds, was originally written in which language?

Welsh was the language of the 18th-century original; Wales rugby crowds now sing the English translation, nicknamed 'Bread of Heaven', at international matches.

'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel', based on the ancient O Antiphons, belongs to which season of the church year?

Advent, the weeks of waiting before Christmas, is when monasteries sang the antiphons, one on each of the last seven evenings before Christmas Eve.

Which 1969 gospel hit by the Edwin Hawkins Singers reworked an 18th-century hymn by clergyman Philip Doddridge?

Oh Happy Day was recorded in a Berkeley church in 1967, then climbed to No. 4 in the US and No. 2 in the UK and won a Grammy.

Which civil rights anthem is thought to descend from a 1901 gospel hymn by Philadelphia minister Charles Albert Tindley?

We Shall Overcome is believed to have grown out of Tindley's 'I'll Overcome Some Day'; striking tobacco workers in Charleston were singing the modern version by the mid-1940s.

The hymn 'He Who Would Valiant Be' takes its words from The Pilgrim's Progress, written by which author?

John Bunyan began his allegory in Bedfordshire county prison, jailed for holding services outside the Church of England; the hymn's verses come from the second part.

'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika', a hymn written by a schoolteacher in 1897, is now part of which country's national anthem?

South Africa merged the hymn with the apartheid-era anthem 'Die Stem' in the 1990s, producing a national anthem sung in five languages.

The 33 ancient Greek hymns praising gods such as Demeter and Apollo are traditionally named after which poet?

Homer was credited with them in antiquity, but scholars date most to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, and the Hymn to Ares may be a thousand years younger.

Which Puritan songbook, printed in Massachusetts in 1640, was the first volume printed in British North America?

The Bay Psalm Book had a first run of about 1,700 copies; one of the eleven known survivors sold for $14.2 million in 2013, a record for a printed book.

Hymnals label many texts with the syllable pattern 8.6.8.6, a verse form known by what name?

Common metre is why the words of 'Amazing Grace' can be sung to the tune of 'House of the Rising Sun' or the Pokémon theme, and the other way round.

Which Victorian poet wrote the words of 'In the Bleak Midwinter', which gained its hymn tune in 1906?

Christina Rossetti's poem has two famous settings, and the one Harold Darke wrote as a choir anthem was voted the best Christmas carol by choirmasters in 2008.

The hymn 'Shall We Gather at the River?' is heard in Stagecoach, The Searchers and other Westerns by which director?

John Ford counted it among his favourite hymns and put it in at least seven films, using it satirically in Stagecoach as a woman is run out of town.

The Saxon pastor who wrote 'Now Thank We All Our God' served a town stricken by plague and famine during which war?

Thirty Years' War refugees crowded into walled Eilenburg, where at the height of a 1637 plague Rinkart, the only pastor left alive, led as many as 50 funerals a day.

Which gospel singer performed 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' at Dr King's funeral in 1968, at his own request?

Mahalia Jackson had often sung it at his rallies; Thomas Dorsey wrote the hymn in 1932 in grief at the deaths of his wife and infant son.

The song 'Simple Gifts', made famous by Copland's Appalachian Spring, was written in 1848 by a member of which sect?

The Shakers kept the song largely to themselves for almost a century, until Aaron Copland borrowed Elder Joseph Brackett's melody for a 1944 ballet score.

Which English composer of The Lark Ascending served as music editor of The English Hymnal in 1906?

Ralph Vaughan Williams, a cheerful agnostic, gave two years to the book and wrote 'Sine Nomine' for it, the tune now sung to 'For All the Saints'.

Which 18th-century poet's hymn 'God Moves in a Mysterious Way' turned its opening line into an English proverb?

William Cowper wrote it in 1773 as the last of his hymns, around the time of a depressive illness that nearly cost him his life.

The tune of 'Holy, Holy, Holy' is named after which city, host of the church council that formalised the Trinity?

Nicaea hosted the council that Emperor Constantine called in 325, and Victorian composer John Bacchus Dykes chose the name to match the hymn's praise of God in three persons.

Which 4th-century bishop of Milan, who helped convert Augustine, wrote the earliest complete Latin hymns to survive?

Ambrose succeeded where Hilary of Poitiers had failed a few decades earlier: Hilary's hymns proved too long and complex to catch on, and only fragments of them remain.

Which Dominican theologian is credited with 'Pange lingua', the hymn whose last verses form the 'Tantum ergo'?

Thomas Aquinas wrote it while preparing the liturgy of the new feast of Corpus Christi for Pope Urban IV, and another of his hymns for the day gave the world 'Panis angelicus'.

Which Latin hymn of the Requiem Mass has its chant melody quoted in Symphonie fantastique and The Shining?

Dies irae means 'Day of Wrath', and its first chant melody is among the most quoted in all music, borrowed by composers from Rachmaninoff to film scorers.

What name is given to the high, florid melody that a few sopranos sing above the main tune of a hymn?

Descant once meant a strict medieval style of note-against-note polyphony; a famous modern example is David Willcocks's line for 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing'.

The Jubilee Singers, who took spirituals on fundraising tours from 1871, were students at which Nashville institution?

Fisk University was five years old and close to bankruptcy when its singers set out; within two years they were performing spirituals for Queen Victoria.

Gospel singer Ira Sankey spent decades leading the music at the revival campaigns of which American evangelist?

Dwight L. Moody recruited him in 1870 after hearing him sing at a convention, and the pair went on to lead revival campaigns across both America and Britain.

Which hymn of praise, spoken by Mary on her visit to Elizabeth in Luke's Gospel, is sung at Anglican evensong?

The Magnificat is named after the opening of its Latin text, and Catholic and Lutheran churches sing it at Vespers, their own evening service.

Which British television series of congregational hymn singing began in 1961 at a Baptist church in Cardiff?

Songs of Praise is believed to be the longest-running series of its kind on television anywhere, and it staged its largest event at the Millennium Stadium in 2000.

The 1907 hymn 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken?' was reworked as a funeral song in 1935 by which country music act?

The Carter Family version was written by A. P. Carter, and the hymn is sung each year to close the Country Music Hall of Fame's induction ceremony.

'The Lord's My Shepherd', sung at Queen Elizabeth II's wedding and funeral, is usually set to which Scottish tune?

Crimond takes its name from a village church in Aberdeenshire and is generally credited to Jessie Seymour Irvine, who wrote it around 1872.

When few worshippers could read, a leader chanted each phrase of a hymn for them to repeat, a practice called what?

Lining out began in 17th-century Britain, when books were costly, and survives in Gaelic psalm singing on Lewis and among Old Regular Baptists in Appalachia.

Which Boston banker turned composer wrote over 1,600 hymn tunes and brought music lessons into American public schools?

Lowell Mason arranged 'Joy to the World' in the form sung today and is considered the first important music educator in the United States.

Philip Bliss, who composed the melody of 'It Is Well with My Soul', died in 1876 in what kind of disaster?

A train wreck killed him and his wife when a bridge gave way under the Pacific Express at Ashtabula, Ohio; a new hymn text was found in his trunk, which survived the crash.

Which ancient Greek hymn, sung at the evening lighting of lamps, is among the earliest Christian hymns still in use?

Phos Hilaron, known in English as 'O Gladsome Light', is still part of Orthodox vespers and is nicknamed the Lamplighting Hymn.

Which Tudor composer wrote a canon for Archbishop Parker's 1567 collection that is still sung to an evening hymn?

Thomas Tallis wrote nine tunes for the archbishop's book, and this one, first a setting of the 67th psalm, is now paired with Thomas Ken's hymn for the close of day.

Which carol by Poet Laureate Nahum Tate was once the only Christmas hymn authorised in Church of England services?

While Shepherds Watched appeared in a 1700 supplement to the official metrical psalms; before then, only the Psalms of David could be sung in Anglican worship.

Which American Quaker poet wrote the poem about a ritual drink that supplies 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind'?

John Greenleaf Whittier's 'The Brewing of Soma' describes Vedic priests seeking the divine through a sacred drink; an English editor made part of it a hymn in 1884.

Which evening hymn, chosen for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, was sung at the Hong Kong handover a century later?

The Day Thou Gavest, by the Victorian clergyman John Ellerton, ended up bracketing the British Empire: sung at its 1897 high point and as the flag came down in 1997.

Which 12th-century Rhineland abbess and visionary left 69 musical works, hymns among them, set to her own texts?

Hildegard of Bingen also wrote the Ordo Virtutum, arguably the oldest surviving morality play, and in 2012 was named a Doctor of the Church.

Which Sanskrit collection of 1,028 hymns may be the world's oldest religious text still in continued use?

The Rigveda arranges its hymns in ten books, and verses from it are still recited at Hindu weddings and other rites of passage.

A verse of 'Amazing Grace' that its author never wrote was first recorded in which 19th-century American novel?

Uncle Tom's Cabin has Tom sing the hymn with an added verse that had been passed down orally in African-American communities for at least 50 years.