Carrol Vertrees: Take note of hymns’ sweet sounds

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Carrol Vertrees

Updated: January 14, 2012 7:05PM

Old hymns like “In the Garden” and “Church in the Wildwood” are not sung very often in many of our mainline churches. That is a serious mistake. Maybe the hymns aren’t sophisticated enough.

I am not sophisticated either, and I am glad.

“In the Garden” may be the loveliest hymn ever written. “Church in the Wildwood” has a joyous, contagious lilt. And there is a nice story behind it.

Singing hymns like these probably wouldn’t heal the general malaise that is hurting churches, but it might give us a lift and in the words of another oldie “revive us again” while we search for answers.

Maybe some outbursts of familiar musical joy would make stained-glass windows seem even brighter — there is a healing balm in the participatory process; singing familiar hymns can be done without a prescription.

A few years back, I wrote that on summer Sundays when the windows of our little country church were open, even the birds paused to hear our singing. I cannot prove that, but some beliefs are built on faith — does that sound familiar?

Some folks may say that I am an old geezer living in the past. They may be right about the geezer thing, but they have the rest of it twisted. Those old hymns from the past live in me, and as another one says “ ... keep me singing all the day.” Well, some days, anyway.

So this is not just a petty complaint. It is more the confessions of an old geezer caught in a cultural-time warp, a plea for answers. I suspect that some of my contemporaries share this feeling.

I know that songs like “Count Your Blessings” and “In the Sweet By and By” are dated. But they are not out of date. Their messages and their sweet sounds should not be lost.

This revival of hymnal memories hit me as I read about the little brown church in Iowa. It was built by volunteers and finished in 1864. The only available paint that would protect the wood was brown, which turned out to be a very interesting choice.

A few years before, a young music teacher named William Pitts had ridden into Iowa on a stage coach and noticed a lovely spot in the woods that looked like a great site for a church. It inspired him to write “Church in the Wildwood. When he returned to the area a few years later to teach singing at an academy nearby he was touched to see the new church, nestled in the spot he had written about.

He had written the song about the little brown church without ever seeing it. The congregation had painted it brown without ever hearing the song. Was that a coincidence or something grander?

As I was humming and thinking about our great hymns, an entertainer on television was improvising while singing “Amazing Grace.” Why do singers have to flaunt their vocal versatility? It makes me, a purist, righteously indignant, whatever that means.

“Amazing Grace” is perfect, like the Mona Lisa, a baby’s smile, a rainbow after a storm. Why try to improve on perfection?

If this fixation on songs I learned in my childhood is dementia, may I never be healed.