Advent Songs: A Revision of Old Hymns to Meet Modern Needs (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Patten, Simon Nelson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330571088 ISBN 13: 9781330571088

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from Advent Songs: A Revision of Old Hymns to Meet Modern Needs But my hymns will at least break ground, and may help others to do what is beyond my powers. It is clear at least that the first object in the attempt to make new songs must be to break down the foreign traditions that cramp the writing of English verse; and the second is to remove the remnants of foreign expression that block the way to a vivid emotional appeal. If these ends are made definite the task of writing songs may be left to the more competent. In the beginning I tried to write a song with a universal appeal. After many attempts I gave up this aim as an impossible ideal. The attempt to arouse the many diverse human emotions by one group of words, or by one tune, fails almost inevitably to touch any deep emotion. It is at best a mere skimming of the surface, not an expression of real feeling. I then tried a more simple plan - that of appealing to individual emotions and to local sentiments. Out of this came the purpose on which this collection of songs is based - not the writing of a national song, but the devising of a series of songs, each having a particular and limited appeal. Instead of one American, are there not many Americans, each of whose lives needs expression? In following foreign traditions we have separated songs into isolated groups. Thus our national songs are martial songs that have no appeal except when war is imminent; we have love songs for youth, topical songs for the music hall, and religious songs for the church. This separation seems to me to be artificial, due not to any gulf in our emotions, but to the fact that religion, patriotism, love, and nature appreciation arose, or at least had their bloom, in different languages or times; so they come to us historically as separate entities, and not as complementary realities. Real American emotion, when it frees itself from foreign and traditional trammels, will be a unified flow of feeling, and not a group of isolate

About this edition

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1330571088
• ISBN 13: 9781330571088
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104