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Cut Out the Lobotomy Choruses

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As a lover of music and a worshipper in song, I see two trends in the world of praise music – one delightful, the other distressing. A growing number of new hymns engage our worship with both theological depth and musical richness. Noticeably, these songs center on melodies that balance complexity and singability. (I know. Singability is not a real word but I hope you see my point. Praise songs need to be basic enough for most people to sing and remember but complex enough to protect them from mental numbness).

New troubadours are composing songs that build up the body of Christ in ways that I find both refreshing and gratifying. I am profoundly thankful for the works of hymn-writers like Stuart Townend, Keith Getty, Bob Kauflin, and others.

The other trend moves in the opposite direction – both melodically and devotionally. Many new, popular praise songs have very little melodic variety. It is not too far to describe them as monotonous. I call them lobotomy choruses.

Not too long ago, some Christians complained that praise songs fit into a “7-11” pattern – Seven words repeated eleven (or more!) times. Rather than the verbal richness of a modern hymn like In Christ Alone, we sang endless choruses of I can sing of your love forever, I can sing of your love forever, I can sing of your love forever, I can sing of your love forever.”

But today, the problem goes beyond mere repetition of words. Now we repeat the very notes. Or, at least, we’re not straying far from one dominant note that pervades the melody, making for an experience more akin to a New Age mantra than a Christian hymn.

Try out this thought experiment. Just hum the melody of these two songs: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and Our God.

In case you need prompting, here are some lyrics:

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,

tune my heart to sing thy grace;

streams of mercy, never ceasing,

call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,

mount of thy redeeming love.

 Vs.

Our God is greater,

Our God is stronger,

God you are higher than any other.

Our God is Healer,

Awesome in Power,

Our God! Our God!

Our God is greater,

Our God is stronger,

God you are higher than any other.

Our God is Healer,

Awesome in Power,

Our God! Our God!

Does one song have more melodic variety than the other?

Perhaps you know enough about musical notation to envision the notes of these two songs on a page. For the first hymn, your eyes would need to move up and down quite a bit. For the latter, you won’t need to move your eyes very far at all. And melodic fluctuation effects more than just our eyes and ears.

In his classic work, What to Listen for in Music, composer Aaron Copland offered these thoughts on what makes for a good melody. “A beautiful melody, like a piece of music in its entirety, should be of satisfying proportions. It must give us a sense of completion and of inevitability. To do that, the melodic line will generally be long and flowing, with low and high points of interest and a climactic moment usually near the end. Obviously, such a melody would tend to move about among a variety of notes, avoiding unnecessary repetitions.”

In his important work This is Your Brain on Music, Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin adds insight about how a good melody stimulates our brain. I have to wonder if he would claim that a monotonous melody does the opposite. The effect of music on the brain is a topic of growing interest as the discipline of neuroscience evolves. The field of psychology also chimes in with important findings (as discussed, for example, in Robert Jourdain’s Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy).

A commitment to lobotomy choruses surfaces in the way some worship leaders reformulate older, melodically rich hymns. They insert mini-lobotomy choruses in between verses of otherwise engaging songs. So, for example, when singing the melodically complex When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, we mix in several lines of monotone “Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross…”

Recently I was in a Christian gathering where, after droning several monotonous praise songs, we began to sing Crown Him With Many Crowns, one of my favorite hymns. The contrast prompted hope in my lulled spirit. I wondered if we would sing all four of the verses, lauding God as the Lamb upon His throne, the Lord of Life, the Lord of love, and the Lord of heaven. No such luck. After singing just the first verse, we lapsed into a mantra-esque refrain of “Majesty, Lord of all” and many repetitions of the same. Then we sang the second verse of Crown Him with Many Crowns” and repeated the “Majesty” chorus NINE TIMES! (I counted). What had started as a melodically complex, theologically engaging time of worship devolved into a mind-numbing repetitious chant. And we never sang verses three and four of Crown Him with Many Crowns.

I hope you won’t dismiss my concerns as mere personal preference or the ranting of a crotchety nostalgia freak. There’s more at stake here. Music reflects and advances a worldview. Some music flows purposefully from a view that life is monotonous, moving nowhere, and best handled by minimizing or totally eliminating desires. Christian music, conversely, embodies a perspective that sees a point to life with a culmination on the horizon and diverse beauty along the way.

The complexity of a Bach hymn and the words he etched at the bottom of the page, soli deo gloria, are not coincidental.


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