Metre (hymn)

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A hymn metre (US:meter) indicates the number of syllables for the lines in each stanza (verse) of a hymn. This provides a means of marrying the hymn's text with an appropriate hymn tune for singing.

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Hymn and poetic metre

In the English language poetic metres and hymn metres have different starting points but there is nevertheless much overlap. The hymn "Amazing Grace" is used as an example:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see.

Analyzing this, a poet would see couplets with four iambic metrical feet in the first and third lines, and three in the second and fourth. A musician would more likely count eight syllables in the first line and six in the second. This would be described as 8.6.8.6 (or 86.86). The words of "Amazing Grace" can therefore be set to any tune that has the 8.6.8.6 metre, for example "The House of the Rising Sun". [1]

Conventionally most hymns in this 86.86 pattern are iambic (weak-strong syllable pairs). By contrast most hymns in an 87.87 pattern are trochaic, with strong-weak syllable pairs:

Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heav'n to earth come down,...

In practice many hymns conform to one of a relatively small number of metres (syllable patterns), and within the most commonly used ones there is a general convention as to whether its stress pattern is iambic or trochaic (or perhaps dactylic, such as Great Is Thy Faithfulness). It is rare to find any significant metrical substitution in a well-written hymn; indeed, such variation usually indicates a poorly constructed text.

Terminology and abbreviations

Most hymnals include a metrical index of the book's tunes. A hymn may be sung to any tune in the same metre, as long as the poetic foot (such as iambic, trochaic) also conforms.

All metres can be represented numerically, for example "Abide With Me" which is 10.10.10.10. Some of the most frequently encountered however are instead referred to by names:

Two verses may be joined and sung to a tune of double the length:

English minister and hymn writer Isaac Watts, who wrote hundreds of hymns and was instrumental in the widespread use of hymns in public worship in England, is credited with popularizing and formalizing these metres, which were based on English folk poems, particularly ballads. [2]

A few hymns have an inconsistent metrical pattern across their verses; one well-known example is "O Come, All Ye Faithful". Such a metre is described as '"irregular". [3]

Local and historic variation

While the terminology above enjoys widespread agreement across the English-speaking world, there is some regional variation. Even within a region there may be historical variation and development. For example, some metre names no longer widely used includes:

The latter metres are named for the metres of metrical psalms.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The metrical index of the 1941 LCMS The Lutheran Hymnal has several single-item metrical categories, and lacks a PM category. Their 1982 Lutheran Worship , however, introduces a new PM category, although still retaining several explicit single-item metrical categories. Their 2006 Lutheran Service Book maintains a similar PM and methodology.
  2. ↑ An example is the 12.9.12.9 CAPTAIN KIDD ("What Wondrous Love Is This"). The Presbyterian Hymnal lists it in the numerical part of the index.
  3. ↑ In Christian Heinrich Rinck's "Choräle für die Orgel und für die englische Kirche op. 119", Darmstadt 1832 (Yale University LM2093, nr. 4) P.M. is given to the hymntune Hanover by William Croft.

Related Research Articles

In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.

A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.

In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.

An iamb or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable. This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Thus a Latin word like íbī, because of its short-long rhythm, is considered by Latin scholars to be an iamb, but because it has a stress on the first syllable, in modern linguistics it is considered to be a trochee.

Common metre or common measure—abbreviated as C. M. or CM—is a poetic metre consisting of four lines that alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The metre is denoted by the syllable count of each line, i.e. 8.6.8.6, 86.86, or 86 86, depending on style, or by its shorthand abbreviation "CM".

A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line.

The Iambic trimeter, in classical Greek and Latin poetry, is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic metra per line. In English poetry, it refers to a meter with three iambic feet.

Accentual-syllabic verse is an extension of accentual verse which fixes both the number of stresses and syllables within a line or stanza. Accentual-syllabic verse is highly regular and therefore easily scannable. Usually, either one metrical foot, or a specific pattern of metrical feet, is used throughout the entire poem; thus one can speak about a poem being in, for example, iambic pentameter. Poets naturally vary the rhythm of their lines, using devices such as inversion, elision, masculine and feminine endings, the caesura, using secondary stress, the addition of extra-metrical syllables, or the omission of syllables, the substitution of one foot for another.

Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of a rhythm, iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form | x – u – |, consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:

| x – u – | x – u – || x – u – || x – u – |

This is a glossary of poetry terms.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to poetry:

In Greek and Latin metre, brevis in longo is a short syllable at the end of a line that is counted as long. The term is short for (syllaba) brevis in (elemento) longo, meaning "a short [syllable] in place of a long [element]." Although the phenomenon itself has been known since ancient times, the phrase is said to have been invented by the classical scholar Paul Maas.

Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot can be resolved, or sometimes both.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hymn tune</span> Musical melody of a Christian hymn

A hymn tune is the melody of a musical composition to which a hymn text is sung. Musically speaking, a hymn is generally understood to have four-part harmony, a fast harmonic rhythm, with or without refrain or chorus.

Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres".

A masculine ending and feminine ending or weak ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. "masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable. "feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. This definition is applicable in most cases; see below, however, for a more refined characterization.

Long metre or long measure, abbreviated as L.M. or LM, is a poetic metre consisting of four line stanzas, or quatrains, in iambic tetrameter with alternate rhyme pattern ABAB. The term is also used in the closely related area of hymn metres. When the poem is used as a sung hymn, the metre of the text is denoted by the syllable count of each line; for long metre, the count is denoted by 8.8.8.8, 88.88, or 88 88, depending on style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trochaic septenarius</span> A poetic metre used in Greek and Latin especially in Roman comedy

In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius is a form of ancient poetic metre first used in 7th century BC Greek literature. It was one of the two most common metres of Roman comedy of the early 1st century BC and was also used for the marching songs sung by soldiers at Caesar's victory parade. After a period when it was little used, it is found again in the Pervigilium Veneris, and taken up again as a metre for Christian hymns. The same metre, with stress-rhythm replacing quantitative metre, has continued to be used, especially for hymns and anthems, right up to the present day.

Latin prosody is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.

A metron, , plural metra, is a repeating section, 3 to 6 syllables long, of a poetic metre. The word is particularly used in reference to ancient Greek. According to a definition by Paul Maas, usually a metron consists of two long elements and up to two other elements which can be short, anceps or biceps.

References

  1. ↑ "The Blind Boys of Alabama - "Amazing Grace"". YouTube . 23 November 2009. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  2. ↑ "Isaac Watts & Emily Dickinson: Inherited Meter". Academy of American Poets . Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  3. ↑ "O Come, All Ye Faithful". Faith Alive Christian Resources. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  4. ↑ "HM Hallelujah Meter (66.66.88)". The Cyber Hymnal. 19 October 2018. Retrieved 29 November 2018.; Lutheran Book of Worship and The Hymnal 1982 use 66 66 88 instead.
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