Faithful One

You might call it a hymn, or a song. For me, it’s a song. The music was not originally written for the organ, but for guitar and drum, and keyboard / piano, most likely in that sequence of primacy of musical instruments. That does not mean it should be played on such musical instruments; the point is that this song is one of many “songs” that have become “standard repertoire” across many churches (ie, across denominations, languages, regions, countries) that when it was needed to be used, it probably matter less what instruments were used.

There is a different line of discussion on whether this is a “song”, a “hymn” or if one of these, whether it has “crossed over” to the other way, or that it has spread, straddling both. It’s absolutely a non-started even to talk about it: reality is most likely that those who regard it as a song would have not come across occasions where it is used as a hymn, and vice versa. There are probably far fewer of us (mostly clergy, musicians, probably the itinerant type) who come across both occasions to warrant this a discussion point.

Why am I going on about this?

• It helps us break down what is song and hymn.
• We should not pack the songs away because our congregation prefers hymns.
• We should not assume that because our congregation prefers to sing modern songs so we should not choose a hymn.

There is a common point here that for those of us who have responsible in choosing songs / hymns (or the “worship service”, or the “liturgy”) we tend to choose a combination of hymns and songs where at most only 1 of them is a little new, less used, or just unfamiliar, in that congregation. We want to encourage enriching of the worship life of the congregation, but not to cause difficult moments with everyone struggling with the tune of most of the songs or hymns in a particular service. Yes, songs or hymns – we can struggle with either.

There is yet another point of discussion whether this is a song or hymn – a historical dimension. Agreed, topic for another day.

I would regard As the Deer Pants for the Water and There is a Redeemer the same category as Faithful One.

• You can regard it as a song or hymn.
• We can accept it being both a “song” and a “hymn”.

How you bring it about musically, that’s almost beside the point. Because surprise, surprise, I tend to play accompaniment to hymns using the same approach I play “songs”. That’s a topic for a later time. For those who hear, and so receive, the musical accompaniment I provide, indeed, they receive modern music. It’s just that it does not sound like “modern music”. It does not matter they don’t realise it.

Back to Faithful One. Musically, it’s probably one of the most simple, straightforward and effective choices of melodic harmonic lines. However it begins with a small surprise – the first melodic line, spanning 4 bars, is repeated two times, and this makes a stretch of 12 bars. The surprising thing here is the 12-bar section. Usually, a phrase is balanced by a second, and both phrases are balanced by the next two phrases, and so on. You get a doubling of 2. Having a group of 3 is a little unusual. Such musical achievement is really tasty.

You can look in your music version of this song, the next two repeats of ths melodic fragment.

The next section “I call out to you, again and again” is made up of shorter phrases, “I call out to you”, followed by “again and again”, and this is mirrored by a repeat, where the second “again and again” closing down to the tonic note. Nothing of the “3” structure as in the first section.

You can do the work here – look in the music of this song. Do you see the melodic contour for both “I call out to you, again and again”?

The third section, beginning “You are my rock”, well, demonstrates how effective simple speech-like melodic contour is. The jump in melodic notes in “You are my rock”, mirrored in “You lift me up” is very fitting, music and lyrics, little effort on the music producing the rise in your soul to reach out to God.

The slight wobble in the melodic notes for “trouble” and “fall down” also paints the situation we can find ourselves in, a downer. Again, you can do the work – look at the music, how the melodic contour paints the mood of the lyrics.

Shape

I know it’s probably stating the obvious, but here is the melodic contour of the first two phrases in the first section:

You notice something odd in the second melodic phrase? Yes, I usually “de-syncopate” some of the syncopated rhythms. You don’t have to inform me the rhythm at the end of the second phrase is wrong, or different from the original.

From “All through the storm” to the end of the song, you almost want to sing that in one breath. It’s so assuring. God in his promise, he is faithful.

There’s a lot more musical interest in this song, such as the piano accompaniment. The fact that I usually play this in C gives rise to additional interests. The key sounds more “raw” than D. Those, another topic or occasion.

For the moment, here is what I might play for the opening (in C major):

You sing it as a prayer, the melodic contour fits the intonation of your prayer.

You sing it as a praise and affirmation, the melodic contour fits the rise of fall of your acclamation.

You sing it as a community, you say it as a testimony to the one next to you, they affirm back, we are in one tune.

Faithful One