Last night I had the privilege of leading this hymn in a Good Friday service, for the first time in twelve years. I always enjoy telling the story of how the tune came to be written.
It is generally the words of a new hymn that will grab my attention. In only a few instances is this effective introduction tied specifically to a melody. So, many of the hymns we have been looking at this year first reached me as texts, as poetry.
For that reason, in my dreams every hymnal compilation would be also available as a book of texts only.
The extent of my hymnody is fairly limited, really. It is a bonus in my vocation that I have the leisure and the responsibility to look for and evaluate lots of music for use in worship. I have no idea how often my ignorance either benefits me or hinders us as a congregation. But in this special week of the church year, I want to tell you the story of my favorite ignorance.
I first read the text in The Worshiping Church (Hope Publishing, 1990). I was literally left breathless when I encountered them for the first time. How could I have been in the church for over 40 years and never have sung them? Or even read them? There they were, without music, a powerful devotional poem, presented without music, on a page in a hymnal.
The proposed tune was familiar to me, but it requires the repetition of the final line of each stanza. That didn’t work for me. I was too uninformed to know that there was another tune, written for this text, in wide use among some worship traditions, and almost exclusively so in England. I just didn’t know.
So, I asked our friend Ed Childs if he knew of or had a setting of this hymn. And to my very great pleasure, on Good Friday 1999 our congregation was the first to sing the tune GUNNAR*, with the words of a 17th century poem that speaks as clearly today as it did when first written.
“My Song Is Love Unknown” (GUNNAR) was published that year, and is now sung in many churches across our country. For many of those churches, as for College Church, this is the tune of “My Song Is Love Unknown.” Thankfully, in this matter, ignorance truly was bliss.
My Song Is Love Unknown
(Samuel Crossman, 1664;
rev. in Hymns for Today’s Church, 1982)
My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love for me;
love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be:
But who am I, that for my sake
my Lord should take frail flesh and die?
He came from heaven’s throne salvation to bestow;
but they refused,
and none the longed-for Christ would know:
This is my friend, my friend indeed,
who at my need his life did spend.
Sometimes they crowd his way
and his sweet praises sing,
resounding all the day hosannas to their king:
Then “crucify” is all their breath,
and for his death they thirst and cry.
With angry shouts they have
my dear Lord done away;
a murderer they save, the Prince of Life they slay!
Yet willingly he bears the shame
that through his name all might be free.
Why, what has my Lord done
to cause this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
and gave the blind their sight:
What injuries! Yet these are why
the Lord most high so cruelly dies.
Here might I stay and sing of him my soul adores;
never was love, dear King,
never was grief like yours!
This is my friend in whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.
SING ON!
originally in my weekly College Church Choir newsletter “Knowing the Score,” Vol 17, No 26, April 8, 2009.
* GUNNAR is the name Dr. Childs gave his tune. It is the surname of the first missionary sent out by College Church.
hear the hymn, and visit more of ETC's splendid choral music
https://edwintchilds.com
https://edwintchilds.com/music/publishedWorks/My_Song_Is_Love.mp3
Published by MorningStar Music Publishers
