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England’s Choral Culture

Without Prejudice


by D.J. Webb

Much discussion of libertarianism revolves, in one fashion or another, around the English Common Law and England’s cultural traditions. England is the home of liberty (it is quite incorrect to claim, as the US president George W. Bush did, that America is “freedom’s home”, other than in the sense that America is an Anglo-Saxon nation—an identity specifically rejected by another US president, Woodrow Wilson). Consequently, there is a continuum of thought in libertarian circles between those who wish to see minimal government with little reference to the cultural basis for it—I believe this would lead to the minarchism of Mogadishu, Somalia, one of the few fully libertarian societies of the present day—and those conservatives who want to see England’s traditions of small government restored and all the rights and liberties traditionally accorded to Englishmen honoured and upheld by Crown, Parliament and Her Majesty’s Courts of Justice.

I would argue that the latter approach is more likely to yield a sustainable free society—and, more to the point, one that anyone, other than a thug, should wish to live in. I have, in various places, outlined some views on the Christian basis of a free society. Unfortunately, it would be disingenuous of me to claim that a pre-critical belief in Christianity was still available. Consequently, I would have to admit that God Himself is just a cultural character, as real as Father Christmas or Merlin in the West or “Monkey” in the Eastern civilisation. This doesn’t mean he is unreal: rather, his reality derives from his role in our culture. As fewer and fewer people are taught to believe in him—and this is effectively what a church upbringing used to offer—the schooling of children in a world outlook where God was a real figure—he becomes less real. While not a historical or scientific personage, in the 19th century and before God was a real cultural presence in England owing to maintenance of a cultural heritage that dated back to the days, in the Dark Ages originally, when English people did believe in the historical and scientific truth of the Bible.

When one reads the history of our country, one is struck with how stiffened were the backbones of Englishmen by their cultural traditions. One example is Gladys Aylward, the English woman who travelled to Nationalist China to run an orphanage. Such people accomplished amazing things, but did so based on their firm beliefs. They were sure God would support them, and extended great effort in achieving their goals as a result. The characters of English people today are flimsy and self-regarding by contrast.

Why is it that people do not believe today? As late as 1960, 50% of English children went to Sunday school. It seems clear that the drive against religion stems, not from popular revulsion, but from Establishment tiring of our traditional culture and decades of anti-religious propaganda on the BBC. The case a few years ago, not far from where I live, of children attempting to kill each other in the woods is emblematic of the transformation of our culture. “You save yourself”, or words to that effect, were uttered by one of the 10- or 11-year-old children whose head had been dashed by a rock, “and I’ll just lie here and die”.

The great “advantage” of the state-fostered cultural revolution is that children are now no longer being taught “lies”, taught to believe that someone a little like Father Christmas created the world, and awaited us in the next world to usher us into Paradise. The disadvantage is the degradation of our culture, as nothing worthwhile replaces it. And I think this is partly why the 19th-century English thinker John Ruskin lamented the scientific discoveries that were destroying the basis for faith. In 1851 he exclaimed,

If only the Geologists could let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.

Early on, Victorian intellectuals realised how transformative the scientific discoveries being made would eventually be, both for religious faith and for wider culture. I wonder whether it is possible to accept Anglicanism in particular as a cultural heritage, and believe in it culturally, but not scientifically or historically. This is the point of view that I hold, at any rate, and so, for some reason, I love our traditional hymns, even if the content is objectively false.

There is a beauty in the words of the Anglican hymnal, and of course hymns of other denominations. “Lo! he abhors not the virgin’s womb”. “The Lord of years, the Potentate of time, Creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime”. “Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Saviour, or I die”. Just as Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, etc, ought to be studied by English schoolchildren, and of course the Authorised Version of the Bible, our hymnal contains glorious imagery and beautiful tunes that ought to be studied by future generations. You could call it “heritage”, rather than “culture”, but I insist on believing this heritage is a more stable basis for a free society than anarchy as such. Possibly this is because Christians sought to encourage the putting on of “the new personality”, the Christ-like personality—the 1950s image of someone who has a “policeman in his head”, who instinctively behaves in an orderly fashion without the presence of CCTV cameras, is an artefact of a Christian culture.

By contrast, religions such as Islam have never sought to create a “new personality”. Islam functions via harsh and barbaric shariah law punishments, leading to the odd circumstance that Muslims believe English society to be decadent, while the Muslim community (and not just a tiny minority of it) is heavily involved in child rape and similar crimes in our country: they sneer at us for our weak punishments for such crimes, oblivious to the fact that they, so far from being our superiors by behaving with higher morals, are the source of a good deal of such public order problems in England today. For this reason, I doubt the Islamic heritage forms an appropriate basis for a libertarian society.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this, I love the hymns. The following is a list of my favourite carols, some by Charles Wesley and some not. Charles Wesley was the son of the rector of Epworth, not too far from where I live, in fact. I then also list some favourite hymns, both Wesleyan and non-Wesleyan. First of all, the existence of hymns at all reflects popular pressure in England, where the non-metrical psalms (as exemplified by the Parish Psalter) eventually gave way to metrical songs from the 18th century onwards, and the once austere low-church traditions of the Church of England broadened to include hymn singing and a high-church variant in style of worship.

I like congregational singing—not songs sung by an individual singer, such as Charlotte Church, as if hymns were pop songs. Neither do I like guitars or other forms of jazzing up the hymns: listening to hymns on Youtube, one’s heart falls when one hears the guitar chords start strumming and then a rock perversion of a hymn performed. The church has traditionally preferred male to female voices—there were no choir girls (“girl choristers”) in the cathedrals of 19th-century England—and in the Middle Ages the plainchant parts of the service were seen as part of the liturgy and thus could only be sung by men. To hear female voices intruded into our choral tradition besmirches and sullies our traditions in the name of “equality”. In general, women’s voices tend towards screeching and lack the quality of men’s voices. Nevertheless, some of the links below, faute de mieux, had to be to hymns sung by females. Some were sung in horrible American accents that tended to spoil the hymn. In general, the highest-quality hymns on Youtube are those uploaded from the BBC Songs of Praise programme, a programme that maintains very high choral and cántatory standards, albeit marred by the interspersal of sanctimonious and self-righteous saccharine personal stories between the hymns.

These are my favourites, with links to reasonably good renditions.

Carols

These carols all have a grand and declamatory feel to them, and ought to be known by heart by all English children. I can think of nothing more enjoyable than singing these hymns in full congregation, and would like to see a culture where our society were held together by a common heritage of worthwhile things, and not meretricious ephemeral pap, such as pop songs. O Come, All ye Faithful is, in particular, a very doctrinally rich hymn that brings pleasure to all traditionalists in England.

Wesleyan carols

Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending is one of my favourite Wesleyan hymns. It is not a Christmas carol, but an Advent carol. It is frequently sung with butchered words, reflecting a rather transparently fake attempt in the Church of England today to pretend to a deeper faith than is really felt. So those who set at naught and sold him is for some reason often sung as we who set at naught and sold him although it is hard to believe that those who changed the words believe that it is we who crucified Christ. It seems the words are deliberately changed to confuse our cultural heritage and spoil the experience for all of those over a certain age. The words Those dear tokens of his passion/ Still his dazzling body bears,/ Source of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers,/ With what rapture/ Gaze we on those glorious scars! (a verse not given in the link above and unfortunately often omitted) are quite astonishing, illustrating a sometimes terrifyingly detailed contemplation of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Hark! the Herald-angels sing is another one of Wesley’s doctrine-packed hymns that is an eternal favourite. The words Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;/ Hail the incarnate Deity,/ Pleased as man with man to dwell;/ Jesus, our Emmanuel expound the doctrine of the Trinity much better than any catechism could.

Other Wesleyan hymns

We see here an example of how many of the hymns in the hymnal are sung in many different settings, including O Thou who Camest from Above. Numerous hymns can be found in three or four different versions, and often each setting has its own merits. And Can It Be is one of the finest hymns of all, and the link given is to one of the best renditions on BBC Songs of Praise. Composed in the year of Charles Wesley’s conversion experience, the words Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—/ I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;/ My chains fell off, my heart was free,/ I rose, went forth, and followed Thee became associated at some point with the prison reform movement in the 19th century. Jesu, Lover of My Soul is one of the best-loved Wesleyan hymns, being composed in 1740 in Co. Down while Wesley lay under a bush, hiding from a Catholic mob that had attacked him. Christ the Lord is Risen Today is one of the best-loved Easter hymns, ultimately based on an Easter hymn of much greater antiquity.

Hymns by others

Rock of Ages here was thought to have been inspired by a storm experienced by Toplady in the Mendip Hills. The Redhead setting linked to here seems to me to be superior to the Toplady setting more common in America. The Carlisle setting of Breathe on Me, Breath of God is linked to here, although other settings are more common: this is my favourite setting of his hymn. We notice here that two or three hymns of American composition rival in quality the English hymns, although America’s choral culture is overwhelmingly dependent on its cultural links with England. It seems to me that only Tell Out, my Soul can be considered a quality hymn of recent composition.

What is the point of arguing for a ethno-cultural basis for a free society? Isn’t a free society one where people create and enjoy cultural works of whatever type they wish? It is, but this does not answer the question of what sort of society a free society would be. Could a free society have an admirable culture? Or would it have to be like Mogadishu? Matthew Arnold wrote in Culture and Anarchy,

“May not every man in England say what he likes?”—Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying,—has good in it, and more good than bad. In the same way The Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

The cultural heritage of England was once the basis for a much freer society, one where people were raised to know what was right and wrong, and how to treat others. The fact that education was once not funded by the state did not mean that only meretricious forms of education were available. Architecture, song, and language all met higher standards than are the norm today. It is a shame that a managerial élite opposed to England’s traditional culture has gained prominence, using its position to weaken knowledge of our cultural traditions and the adherence of English people to them. It may be that in the ruins of culture the only type of “free society” that could now be built would be a cultural “race to the bottom”. An alternative view is that once education was freed of state controls, enough parents would be able to insist on worthwhile educations for their children, educations they were paying for, and, hopefully, this would include a knowledge and understanding of our religious heritage, including our wonderful hymns, which ought to be passed on to our children. We are in a unique position among the nations of the world, in that the cultural traditions of our nation are the essence of freedom, and so conservatism and libertarianism can be two sides of the same coin, as we seek to recover our national identity even as we adapt demands for freedom to the economic and technological reality of a new century. Whatever is thought on this subject, all the hymns linked to above are pleasant and enjoyable, and I hope libertarians give some thought to the way in which a society’s cultural heritage, and especially one as glorious as that of England’s, can play a role in a free society. John Stuart Mill wrote in Chapter 16 of his Representative Government of the difficulty of forging a free society in a state peopled by competing cultural groups. One of the key facets of national identity is religion, and a common religious heritage aids in the establishment of a free polity:

A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others — which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively. This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language, and community of religion, greatly contribute to it.

Related posts:

Bring Back the Gallows: Crime, Eugenics, and the Death of Justice The Drum-beat to War? The Universal Life Church The Daily Telegraph: A Culture of Decay Foreign Devils: Fear, Admiration, and the Future of Civilisation

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