By a pleasing quirk of time zone differential, I wake
up on Monday mornings to the inimitable Barry Humphries recalling his youth
through a selection of “Forgotten Musical Masterpieces” on BBC Radio 2. Of course, they are all Forgotten because
they are very much not Musical Masterpieces and they evoke a bygone age in
which society and values were very different.
But there’s no harm in the occasional wallow in nostalgia, and Humphries’
lovely delivery makes this an ideal way to break into the new week before I
switch to hear the week’s parliamentary digest on BBC Radio 4 (a must-hear as
Brexit adds a wonderful dimension of unreality to our lives) and then wander
off to work. Ah! The expat joys of BBC
Sounds!
I was particularly taken this morning by one of
Humphries’ reflections after playing us the long-forgotten musical
non-masterpiece recorded in 1937, “I Wanna be in Winchell’s Column” sung by
Eddie Stone with Isham Jones and his orchestra.
This foot-tapping but wholly unmemorable number prompted Humphries to bemoan
the current trend for the promotion of nonentities; “Column inches used to be
the main measure of fame, but now it’s Twitter, Instagram, You Tube-followers
and hash tags. It’s never been easier
for talentless wanabees to broadcast their thoughts and inflict them on the
masses”.
As one of those “talentless wanabees” (although quite
what I wanabee, I myself don’t really know) I do occasionally broadcast my
thoughts on social media, but I have never felt they have been inflicted on the
masses – inflicted on a Baker’s Dozen is about the best I have ever achieved. That all changed overnight when, in a moment
of extreme boredom, I posted my thoughts about a certain hymn on one of those
pointless Facebook Groups to which we belong merely to share our prejudices
with like-minded bigots. This is what I posted to a group claiming to be fed up
with bad church music (but no evidence has ever supported this; most posts
celebrate the awfulness of modern church music); “Am I the only person in this
world that loathes The Old Rugged Cross?
Musically turgid, theologically mawkish.
Why is it so popular?”
My post was merely an expression of frustration at
having had to endure this grisly garbage in church for the zillionth time and having
been surrounded by those for whom Palestrina and Parry had sparked not an iota
of interest, but who took up this grotesque testament to self-indulgent sentimentality
with obvious unbounded enthusiasm. Not
for the first time in my life, I felt completely alien to the world I was
inhabiting. By posting my thoughts, I
merely wanted reassurance that I was not alien, or confirmation that I
was.
Since this is a musical blog, my Baker’s Dozen of
readership will probably have no idea what The Old Rugged Cross is. And until I was well into my 30s, neither did
I.
It is an old American Methodist missionary hymn which
puts a sentimental gloss on the cross and is indelibly associated with a tune composed
in 1912 by George Bennard. The tune
inhabits a remarkably low and grumbling tessitura until (as if fuelled by the
kind of beverage to which all Methodists were once so strongly opposed) it heaves itself up to a
top note or two a minor 9th above where it all started. Brought up as a high Anglo-Catholic, such stuff never
crossed my church-going existence, and I only knew it when the once-popular BBC
Sunday obligatory religious hour of television started to play “Everybody’s
Favourite Hymns”. Up popped this awful
thing with appalling regularity. Now I
find when I attend Catholic Mass in Singapore, it’s almost a mainstay, thrown
in, I suspect, to satisfy the masses at mass ignorant of its powerful non-conformist
associations.
So, for me, my opinion of The Old Rugged Cross is a personal
taste thing, and as such of no conceivable interest to anyone else. But as a “talentless wanabee” I wanted to
broadcast my thoughts; I never dreamt it would be to such masses. As things
stand at the moment, responses to my post are in the hundreds and growing by
the second. For what it’s worth, there
is a clear 50/50 split between the loathers and the admirers, one admirer
threatening to leave the group because even a hint that The Old Rugged Cross
may be open to criticism is enough to shatter faith in continued existence,
while another posted a somewhat tasteless image of someone vomiting on hearing
The Old Rugged Cross. Such is the
intellectual furrow deeply ploughed by Facebook groups.
Many of the comments which my post prompted referred
to the nostalgic associations of the hymn, the fact that for many Methodists and
Baptists during the 1930s, it served as a beacon of light during the dark days
of the great depression, and such a strong impact did it make, that they still
cling to it affectionately. A handful of
comments popped up from Youngstown, Ohio, where it was written, suggesting it
was the town’s sole claim to fame. Several
comments referred to it as a “Funeral Hymn” – in that it is often sung at
funerals as the generation brought up in the 1930s dies away (sorry, “passes on”)
– and others referred to it as being “loved by older generations for its sentimental
associations”. My trouble is, when I
hear it live in church, I am surrounded by hundreds of under-30s; young people
for whom it can hold no sentimental or nostalgic associations. Nobody will tell me why it is so popular with
the Singapore young.
Barry Humphries’ programme celebrates the nostalgic
value of once-popular music which has all but passed from our modern
consciousness. But while there is a
novelty factor in occasionally being reminded of the Bad Old Days through Isham
Jones, Eddie Stone et al, is it good to try and keep alive something of little
artistic value which was intended only for one time and place? Are hymns like
this, devoid of artistic worth and preserved only for sentimental reasons,
really relevant to 21st century society? Despite the masses getting involved, I still
don’t have a convincing answer.
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