Song lyric changes

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caille

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I’ve been away from the church for a while, and when I came back recently I noticed that many of the songs I loved had changes in the wording.

Songs to which I had the lyrics memorized years ago suddenly had different wording, and I’m confused about WHY?? A few, yeah, the wording is more modern, but the rest just puzzles me. It reminds me of the changes made in simple character names from books to movies–not a logical reason for it but that they wanted to change something.

Was there a good reason for these changes?

God Bless all of you.
 
caille said:
…Was there a good reason for these changes?..
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Without knowing exactly what songs you mean, I am going to say probably not. Most song changes that I have seen over the last 20 years or so seem to be for the purposes of neutering the language or otherwise making them more politically correct, which in my view are not good reasons.
 
I don’t remember specific ones right now, but when I thumbed through the book I noticed other changes. The changes may have been made some time ago–before I drifted away from the church my work schedule interfered with every weekend mass (and almost all the holy days too) for over a year.
 
Did they change the brand of hymnals or missalettes?

I know that a lot of hymnals have different wordings between themselves, just because of the different versions of a particular song floating around. Its sort of like how in some places “The First Noel” is spelled like that, while in others its “The First Nowell”. Just different.

Other times they’re sanitizing the language or trying to ditch archaic language.

So, basically, it has several possibilities.
 
They might be altering the words to make the song easier to sing. Sometimes the lyrics and the melody are difficult for less experienced singers (ie, the laity).
 
I haven’t really noticed that, but I have noticed new songs to old melodies. Sorry, I can’t think of one…well, yes I can. There’s a song called something like One Love…something. It starts out One Bread, One Body, One something else, and it’s to the tune of The Water Is Wide. There’s also one to the tune of Morning Is Broken, and I actually like it better. Those are frequently scheduled when I cantor, because they’re perfect for my range. Maybe that’s not why, but I know I won’t embarass myself trying to sing something I’m not capable of singing. Could that be what you’re talking about?
 
Many of the older hymns have had lyric changes, most notably, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, which the USCCB said rendered the song nebulous when it came to the mystery of Christ decending upon the earth during the Mass. Away In a Manger also suffered some lyrical changes, as well.

Unfortunately, publishing houses like OCP have taken it upon themslves to change the lyrics by taking all references to “Father”, as in God, the Father, and substituting them with words like Creator. This pretty much torpedoes the Trinitarian aspect of the hymns.

OCP also took liberties with rewriting the Spanish version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. This confused the faithful who already knew the song. Many got lost when a parish at home used the new version.
 
daeve said:
I haven’t really noticed that, but I have noticed new songs to old melodies. Sorry, I can’t think of one…well, yes I can. There’s a song called something like One Love…something. It starts out One Bread, One Body, One something else, and it’s to the tune of The Water Is Wide. There’s also one to the tune of Morning Is Broken, and I actually like it better. Those are frequently scheduled when I cantor, because they’re perfect for my range. Maybe that’s not why, but I know I won’t embarass myself trying to sing something I’m not capable of singing. Could that be what you’re talking about?
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One bread, One body
One Lord of all,
One cup of blessing which we bless.
And we, though many,
Throughout the earth,
We are one body in this one Lord.

Is that the one?
And “Morning has Broken” is the same lyrics as the popular song.
 
benedictgal said:
Many of the older hymns have had lyric changes, most notably, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, which the USCCB said rendered the song nebulous when it came to the mystery of Christ decending upon the earth during the Mass. Away In a Manger also suffered some lyrical changes, as well.

Unfortunately, publishing houses like OCP have taken it upon themslves to change the lyrics by taking all references to “Father”, as in God, the Father, and substituting them with words like Creator. This pretty much torpedoes the Trinitarian aspect of the hymns.

OCP also took liberties with rewriting the Spanish version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. This confused the faithful who already knew the song. Many got lost when a parish at home used the new version.
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My Church sang a different version of “What Child Is This”. The version we sang (refrain for v2-3) was different than the one on the book 🤷
 
caille said:
I’ve been away from the church for a while, and when I came back recently I noticed that many of the songs I loved had changes in the wording.

Songs to which I had the lyrics memorized years ago suddenly had different wording, and I’m confused about WHY?? A few, yeah, the wording is more modern, but the rest just puzzles me. It reminds me of the changes made in simple character names from books to movies–not a logical reason for it but that they wanted to change something.

Was there a good reason for these changes?

God Bless all of you.
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I know exactly what you mean. Here are some changes I noticed.

Christ the Lord is Risen Today
Praise To The Lord
At That First Eucharist
Immaculate Mary

There are many more but without a hymnal in my hands, I can’t remember!
 
benedictgal said:
OCP also took liberties with rewriting the Spanish version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. This confused the faithful who already knew the song. Many got lost when a parish at home used the new version.
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CBWIII has also changed O Come, O Come Emmanuel and I was quite incenced by this tampering until I checked it out and discovered that it is the accurate translation from the Latin, restoring the verses that we’ve never sung in my 54 year memory. It still doesn’t sound right, but at least in this case it seems that it’s the original English version that took liberties.

They’ve done that to a lot of French hymns too: If I’m at a French Mass in Advent I need the book to sing “Venez, Divin Messie” (O Come, Divine Messiah) and at Christmas “Il est né le Divin Enfant” requires a hymnal because of the changes. In this last one they rewrote a line that named musical instruments which they seemed to feel nobody recognized. Very annoying that they didn’t give us credit for being intelligent enough to consult a dictionary if we were unfamiliar with the words. They could have put in a footnote explaining the words if they were so concerned that we didn’t know their meaning.
 
daeve said:
I haven’t really noticed that, but I have noticed new songs to old melodies. Sorry, I can’t think of one…well, yes I can. There’s a song called something like One Love…something. It starts out One Bread, One Body, One something else, and it’s to the tune of The Water Is Wide. There’s also one to the tune of Morning Is Broken, and I actually like it better. Those are frequently scheduled when I cantor, because they’re perfect for my range. Maybe that’s not why, but I know I won’t embarass myself trying to sing something I’m not capable of singing. Could that be what you’re talking about?
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Many hymns can be sung to a variety of tunes. Some lend themselves well to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” so it’s an easy way to introduce a new text to a community, sing it to a tune they already know. Most hymnals have a metrical index, a list of all the tunes that have the same metering.

So in that list you find that a hymn that can be sung to the tune of “Ode to Joy” may also be sung to the tune “HYFRYDOL” or “NETTLETON” or “AUSTRIA” or “BEACH SPRING”. The words of that hymn will fit these tunes, although not all the tunes can be used to equal effect. Picking HYFRYDOL may put the emphasis on the wrong word or break up a word in a strange fashion. But usually you will find that you can use 2 or 3 different tunes for the same hymn to good effect.

There are a couple of hymns set to BUNESSAN (a Gaelic melody), the tune to “Morning Has Broken”, a tune I personally loathe. “This Day God Gives Me” is the one we Catholics sing a lot.

Let’s face it, tunes have been used for a variety of songs. When my kids were small I bought a Smurfs Christmas Album and one of the songs sounded soooo familiar. I wracked my brain trying to figure out why. It finally hit me: the tune was O DU FROHLICHE, the tune I knew as “O Sanctissima”.
 
PatienceAndLove said:
One bread, One body
One Lord of all,
One cup of blessing which we bless.
And we, though many,
Throughout the earth,
We are one body in this one Lord.

Is that the one?
And “Morning has Broken” is the same lyrics as the popular song.
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The song I was trying to think of is named One Love Released. The lyrics are one this, one that, over and over until you get to the end, which is one love released.

There’s another song in the Breaking Bread hymnal with the Morning Has Broken melody. I’m at work, and don’t have a hymnal here. It’s obviously not very memorable since I can’t think of it. The main reason I remember these two is I found them on the list of songs one Sunday last summer when I was cantoring (no choir) and sort of freaked at 2 new songs with no rehearsals. I was relieved to recognize the melodies when I was picking the notes on the piano.
 
PatienceAndLove said:
One bread, One body

And “Morning has Broken” is the same lyrics as the popular song.

The ‘popular song’ “Morning has Broken” was a 49 year old hymn when Cat Stevens opted to include it on his 1971 “Teaser and the Firecat” album.
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Phemie said:
I think you’re looking for “This Day God Gives Me”
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Not familiar, but I believe there are several songs using that melody. I’ll try to remember to look it up (books in car) when I go out to lunch in a little while.
 
One reason for a change in words is to aquire a copywrite. With new words, you now have a copywrite for so many years. With no change, it goes into the public domain.

That is also one of the reasons new translations of bibles appear.
 
Evan said:
One reason for a change in words is to aquire a copywrite. With new words, you now have a copywrite for so many years. With no change, it goes into the public domain.

Don’t you just renew the copyright?? The words to “Happy Birthday” haven’t been rewritten but it’s still copyrighted.

That is also one of the reasons new translations of bibles appear.

While a Bible text may be copyrighted (and I must admit that came as a surprise) it’s not the reason new translations appear. New translations are usually written when there is a better understanding of the language from which they came or, as in the case of the New Jerusalem Bible, when they decide to go to the source rather than translate from a translation.
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The problem is that when publishing houses like OCP “feel” the need to improve upon a text :confused: , it usually results in having the hymn’s doctrinal merits watered down. The USCCB powerpoint on sacred music lamented the fact that when Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence was “retranslated”, the word “decendeth” was replaced with “decended”, taking away the fact that at every Mass, Christ our God decends from heaven.

While I am as proficient in Latin as I am in Spanish and Italian, I have seen the O Come, O Come Emmanuel texts in English and Latin side by side, and the older English words match up pretty closely to the Latin. However, the newer OCP Spanish version of the same song prety much guts the first verse.

Even Away In a Manger suffered the same fate. Now, as far as What Child is This, OCP came up with a version that combines this hymn with one of their new ones, Child of the Poor. Having heard this “medley” during the Christmas Vigil Mass, it was not very nice at all. The faithful got confused and belted out What Child is This. The medley had been originally scheduled for the Christmas Day Mass, the the music director, have experienced the confusion the night before, ditched the combo and went with What Child is This. Actually, I wouldn’t have sung What Child is This because that is more for the Epiphany, especially the third verse. I do like the more older version that alludes to the Passion of Jesus in the second verse. The Magnificat had it as their song for today (Feast of the Holy Innocents).

Phemie, the New American Bible is the one promulgated by the USCCB. Because the conference owns the copyrights to this translation, it also serves as their cash cow (for lack of a better phrase) because the Lectionary for use in the United States is from this particular bible. A far superior one is the RSV-CE, 2nd Editionj and the Douay Rheims. Until a new translation is approved that follows the guidelines of Liturgicam Authenticam, we are stuck with it.

Speaking of Liturgical Authenticam, one of the problems that this document is supposed to tackle is the issue of changes in song lyrics. The new USCCB document on music, which was supposed to follow Liturgicam Authenticam to the tee, got shot down by the NPM and the FDLC, so it pretty much gutted any hopes that the paper would have had some teeth to it.😦
 
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