“There’s Just Too Many Hymn Stanzas”

How many times have you heard this: There’s just too many hymn stanzas? Or for that matter, how many times have you thought this on a Sunday morning?

I remember as a teenager reading TLH #315. (While I haven’t been at a congregation that uses The Lutheran Hymnal for a few years now, I still have the hymn numbers deeply ingrained in my mind.) Without picking up TLH, which hymn is it? If you answered I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table, you are correct. You get bonus points if you also remembered that it has 15 stanzas. As best as I can remember, I have never sung the entire hymn in one service. For better or worse, LSB broke the hymn into two hymns - LSB 618 and 619 - each with 5 stanzas and eliminated the remaining 5 stanzas. Perhaps the later stanzas will be sung more often now.

This all leads up to a memorable quote from my current lunch time reading — Robin Leaver’s study of “Luther’s Liturgical Music”. In the essay on Vater unser im Himmelrich (Out Father, Who from Heaven Above - LSB 766), Leaver recounts that Martin Franzmann was concerned that Luther’s paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer was infrequently sung because it was perceived to be too long — with 9 stanzas. Franzmann wrote a three-stanza hymn (LBW 442 — LBW did not include Luther’s hymn), as did Henry Letterman (LW 430). Leaver concludes with:

These shortened forms of hymnic versions of the Lord’s Prayer are symptomatic of our modern age, which is impatient with hymns longer than three or four stanzas and with services of worship that last longer than fifty-nine minutes. But worship and prayer require time if we are to become attuned to what we are doing and why. (133-134)

Sometimes it gets to the point of sound bite hymnody — first and last verses — or the “Best of the Divine Service” to fit the “allotted” time. Why? I would gladly stay longer to be nourished through the entire Divine Service and hymnody.