Jul 15, 2008
Should competent lyricists update hymns or should they simply write new ones?
Like this post?
If a songwriter is long dead, is it ethically or artistically appropriate to change their work, and then call myself a co-writer?
* * * * *
© 2012 Abuyo. All rights reserved.
I would say write new ones, or, give yourself credit as an arranger, not co-writer.
No more than it would be to re-write “Gone With The Wind” and call myself a co-author with Margaret Mitchell.
I don’t see any problem with updating a hymn’s language if it’s truly necessary (i.e. if the language is potentially unintelligible to 21st-century English speakers). But I think the way to give oneself credit for such alteration is to cite the original author, with “altered by” or “additional lyrics by,” instead of putting oneself on equal standing with the author.
If you do write additional lyrics, don’t claim authorship. I’ve seen people put their name after crediting themselves as writing “additional lyrics”, which gives the modern writer credit but doesn’t imply that you are co-writer. (Plus, you know who to go to if you hate the new verse.)
No.
Before those two questions you need to ask this one: Is it legal?
If it is, and the rights holder gives you permission to rewrite or rearrange the song, then it is entirely appropriate ethically.
Artistically… I guess it depends on the quality of the work of the modern (re)writer.
Which song are you thinking of?
Is this another jab at Chris Tomlin? ;-)
I think it is important to respect the wishes of the “dead songwriter”. For instance, Charles Wesley told his brother John:
“Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or (a) mending them at all.”
In any case, I don’t see a problem with rearranging the music in most hymns, but the lyrics should stay the same.
Adding extra lyrics can be effective and helpful, but thanks to Mr. Tomlin we will now have people wondering why we sing the “old” version of Amazing Grace when the new one is so much better…
The ethical question is basically the golden rule:
Would you want someone taking what you’ve written and then changing it?
If not, it seems ethically inappropriate even if it is legal.
At the church I attended as a kid: someone painted a mural in a classroom. A few years later, someone else revised it, and put a tag on it crediting the original artist with the “concept,” and themselves as the “finish artist.” This, without the original artist’s permission or knowledge. Needless to say, it didn’t go over very well (lack of permission, how the credit was handled, and that someone felt they needed to improve on the artwork.)
I do see your point, Abraham.
For me, the words are why we pass hymns down through hundreds of years. I don’t have a big problem with updating KJV language to something more modern. I don’t have a big problem with adding a chorus like what Chris Tomlin did for Amazing Grace. I think the point for me of updating hymns is to bring the amazing truths that the songs embody to an audience that may be put off by a pipe organ rendition for example. It’s when we start messing with the message of the song that we start to get in trouble, IMHO. I don’t think anybody’s advocating that here, so I’m fine with it.
if you changed lyrics or added a verse. if you changed the music, it would only be arrangement credit.
Whatever they do, I hope no one ever changes “I love you Lord (and I lift my voice)”. That one’s perfect as it stands!
Abraham,
It depends on the artistic merit of the person who wants to change my song and share writing credit with me. For example, if old Zimmy found one of my songs enticing enough to add a lyric to or change a bar here or there, I’d be thrilled!
If, on the other hand, a C-list amateur wanted to rewrite (aka butcher) it I’d be calling my lawyer.
This is a huge problem with the artists I work with in my studio. Most are early in their careers and first time recording artists. I often make suggestions on lyric and arrangement choices and they are rarely heeded, but (and this is very rewarding for me) more often than not, after they have another project and a few years under their belts, they’re embarrassed by their first album for the very reasons I tried to point out at the time.
You’re gonna hate what I’m doing to Cowper… ;o)
I’m all for changing the music.
It’s changing the lyrics that seems like a stickier issue.
Is music less important to the song? The question almost sounds ridiculous – “Is MUSIC important to SONG?”
Now, I’m a lyric guy, so I want to say that the music is less important, but Marshall McLuhan would certainly say “no”. The medium is at least part of the message, if not completely the message itself.
I don’t understand the “ethical” issue. In school, we called it “piggybacking”. If it’s under copyright, then you’ll need permission to change it in order to publish it, right? If it’s not, then you can do whatever you want to with it.
I would NOT use the title “co-writer”, though. I like arranged by, or additional lyrics by, etc. instead.
Is this that different than blending two or more songs into a medley? Is it different than taking an old classic (i.e. Shakespeare play) and modernizing it to fit our culture? I say you need to acknowledge the original and claim that you’ve re-arranged it or added to the original.
Are we reluctant to changing the hymns because they’re used in church and we tend to think of them as holy? Isn’t that just religious talk?
I think that a talented artist should spend most of their time creating something original and unique. Updating someone’s creation should not be confused with improving that creation.
I don’t mean music is less important.
I just mean that since most hymns weren’t written for only one tune, it’s not an issue of artistic integrity to switch tunes around, including writing new ones.
Yes (lyrics or music). I think it is less riskier if the song is not a famous one. You should get credit for any tweakage or even major changes.
I suppose it’s a question of degree too. I mean changing the “thees and thous” is one thing, but changing the sense of someone else’s stuff without making it clear that you’ve done so seems a bit iffy. You ought not deliberately to claim that someone else wrote something that you did, any more than you should say that you wrote something someone else did, as a matter of courtesy, not to mention honesty.
In response to the Golden Rule angle: I daresay people ought not to be too precious with what other people do to their lyrics, since they are only arrangements of air and therefore their originality (and thus the degree of “ownership”) is also a question of degree. Intellectual protection is not a natural, but a conferred right, agreed by and in the interests of the majority. That’s what underpins copyright laws, for example, or at least, pretends to.
There are plenty of respectful ways of making old songs new, just as there are plenty of disrespectful ways of ruining them.
I think that a lyricist who has been working with a tune in mind, and the best ones all do, will use the dynamics of the music to amplify and augment the emotional or intellectual qualities of the words, so sometimes music and lyrics have to be taken together artistically.
I wrote a new melody for a hymn that needed some slight theological clarification. I also made a chorus out of some preexisting material.
I hope that wouldn’t offend the original author. I tried to respect what he had written and prevent misunderstandings in the modern day.
Honestly, though, end of the day, I care a lot less about respecting the author than I do about God-glorifying music that benefits the Church.
As an afterthought:
Here’s a song my wee brother Greg wrote for a BBC religious programme: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw8hmQalHag)
Were I to cross from land to land
Or sail afar by sea
Descend the depths or climb the heights
My Lord remains with me
Before the blood ran in these veins
The days ordained for me
Were written in your book O Lord
Before I came to be
I grieve to hear your enemies
Speak hatred Lord, of You
Long though they scheme with ill-intent
Their days are numbered too
How precious are your thoughts to me
How countless, Lord, they are
More than the shores have grains of sand
More than the skies have stars
Come search and test this heart, O lord
Dispel each anxious thought
And lead me onward evermore
To tread the path I ought
How blessed am I, so bound with love
Surrounded, yet so free
In doubt or blessing, life or death
My Lord remains with me.
It’s clearly a song inspired out of Psalm 139. Does Greg get the “co-author” credit or do we stick David down as “Author”? I think that to call it David’s work is to do the bible a disservice, as his song had more in it. Having said that, it is hard to sing the original version in the modern idiom, since most of us lack the Hebrew, and we haven’t got a recording of the original music.
Originality and uniqueness… sure, there’s something to be said for that, but let’s not make too much of it. Bono has it correct here:
“Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief”
And I think Dylan would agree… since he has always borrowed generously from the past and present (and who knows, maybe the future).
ED: I have to take issue with your statement:
“I think that a lyricist who has been working with a tune in mind, and the best ones all do…”
That is simply not true. Sometimes a song springs from poetry written years earlier. I guess it depends on who you consider “the best ones” but in the genre that I’m a part of there are any number of ways a song gets written. Sometimes the music suggest a lyric and sometimes the lyric suggests a melody.
However, I absolutely agree that we as songwriters “use the dynamics of the music to amplify and augment the emotional or intellectual qualities of the words, so sometimes music and lyrics have to be taken together artistically.”
I would say take a long, hard look at yourself and ask whether your poetry is on par with, say, Charles Wesley’s. If not, don’t add to his lyrics. If so, you should probably be writing your own songs.
Here’s one of mine for those interested. I wrote the lyrics first, inspired on a pencil sketch… the melody came a bit later:
http://www.michaelkrahn.com/music/MP3/She%20Remembers.mp3
some of these “old hymns” are even older than we think and had verses added later that are now standard.
also, some of the my favorite hymns are actually originally swedish, german, or celtic, but were translated into english. it’s the same sort of idea, isn’t it? usually i think both get credit.
p.s. i’d love an updated “a mighty fortress.” great song, but what’s a bulwark? (i mean, i know technically, but i always have to think really hard about it and remember.)
I always feel weird about raising my Ebenezer… it just feels incomplete without saying Scrooge right afterward.
This could be a fun thread: weird hymn words.
Whenever I’d see “bro’t” I used to switch into rap mode.
so i’m a bit of a purist, and would be against the switching of words. even words that have similar meanings often have different connotations and emphases. there are some things where i wouldn’t object to (someone mentioned thee’s and thou’s being updated to you’s) but things like ebenezer, there’s a lot of meaning that can’t be expressed if you don’t know the Biblical foundation of the lyrics.
i would stress that we need to be talking about and explaining lyrics before we sing them, so we understand to some degree the depth of truth in them, and so words and phrases that seem unfamiliar we can sing with earnest, rather than just repeating words from a page or screen.
for music, i’m more flexible with, though i’d try to know the original melody and harmony and find music that fits the same tone and structure of it. if a song is somber and heart-wrenching, a light and fluffy melody or a hip-hop beat probably won’t fit the idea of the song.
overall, write your own music if you want to do something. use the creativity God has given you for yourself, rather than trying to improve on someone else’s work. pulling from other people’s work is one thing (e.g. using lyrics based off the Bible); trying to just alter someone else’s work is another. so if you must change a song, don’t claim it to be the same thing, but rather make it your own new thing. that’s my two cents, anyway.
no.
I’m all for prolonging the life of a song through minor revision, especially when that song has something doctrinally unique to offer; or it can be used in a medley with something more modern, so that a doctrinal truth is spoken to us from across the ages.
I have great difficulty with claiming the finished work as a new copyright and collecting royalties from it.
Many years ago, I felt very strongly compelled to write two additional verses to Jack Hayford’s “Majesty” for our local church. Someone suggested sending Jack a courtesy copy, which resulted in my receiving a very encouraging letter from him. He also reassured me that I wasn’t the first one to do this. I would have been thrilled if the thing had gone into wider use, but if I were eligible for royalties, I probably would want them directed to a charity or to Jack’s ministry, since the essence of the song was all his own.
I don’t think “co-author” is appropriate. Isn’t it usually called a remake? I’m thinking of Grand Funk’s remake of Carole King’s Locomotion. I realize they didn’t change or add to the lyrics, but to me it would still be a remake. (Actually, I think GFR got sued for that, but it’s not always the case.)
Or even with movies there are remakes, including, for example, the American Christmas Carol starring Henry Winkler as Scrooge, It’s a Wonderful Life with Marlo Thomas as a female version of George Bailey (I’m not sure if they kept the same title for that one). For our Christmas and Easter dramas at church, the program will say that the script it based on a play by someone else. I think it should be the same for music and lyrics based on someone else’s work.
[...] — searchlightevents @ 8:45 pm Abraham Piper gets the discussion going on this at 22 Words. There are some really good comments on this [...]
What if I’m a writer and not a musician? Couldn’t I life a classic melody/arrangement and put new words to it?
I think that’s completely up-to-snuff.
I’m having trouble commenting. Maybe if I sing my comment instead of just typing it …
Sorry for going off a bit on a tangent, but I am weary of people who think learning new words (or old ones – ie: KJV) is too difficult, so we should dumb everything down. I love that verse that includes “Ebenezer” because a pastor took the time to teach the congregation of its meaning. I love reading King James version (not exclusively), but in order to learn new / old words and for the beauty of the language.
We miss out on some rich theology when somebody goes in and changes the work another had done. At least say it is the “new version” of so-and-so’s song…
well, for me, i think it’s less about “it’s too hard to learn the words” than a question of “why not use the language we already speak?” i don’t want to dumb anything down, but i think using a person’s “heart language” can certainly be very powerful. of course, arguably, using archaic or upper-register language often makes people feel more religious in our culture, because we ARE so used to KJV-style poetry and prose in God-contexts. which, to me, just means somebody needs to write something worthwhile in PDE (present-day English). but that’s just me.
I think Michael Krahn has made some excellent points here, especially in regards to Dylan and the “every poet is a thief.”
Only in the last century, in our modern era of copyright protection and music as Big Business has it become thought of as strange or unethical to change older songs and folk ballads or write new songs based on older ones. Folk artists have always done this. Dylan did quite a bit of this on his latest album, “Modern Times,” as he always has.
Again, it depends on who is doing the revision, the extent of the revision, and how skillfully they go about it. I don’t feel like there is anything wrong with writing a song based on an old hymn and saying “written by ____, based on the hymn by ____.” If you just edit and revise some thees and thous, then of course it would be less appropriate to give yourself a writing credit.
Bobby,
I agree with what you’re saying. The fact that songs are being changed is not where the problem lies.
The unethicality comes in when a songwriter rewrites an old song, makes money from it, then turns around and says no one can change what he’s done with it to make money from it.
If he’s against people doing that, then he’s a hypocrite for doing it in the first place.
I may be oversimplifying, but it smacks of the unforgiving servant.
I’d love to add to the “change the words to a song to update it for today” debate for a second . . .
I think that on one end, its perfectly fine to change the lyrics of songs that don’t make sense today. After all, this isn’t the original Hebrew we’re talking about here. A Mighty Fortress could be updated with no problem ethically, so long as you kept Luther as the author. The problem with updating language comes with everyone knowing the song one way, even if they don’t understand it.
The best example that is culturally relevant to everyone is Christmas carols. Some language survives there that we really don’t understand, or at least have to ask about, and yet we don’t change the songs because it would be too difficult. “Angels We Have Heard On High” has a Latin chorus, which most people have to look up. “O Come All Ye Faithful” uses an archaic (if not completely obsolete) form of the word “you”. But who is going to change them? Even if you make the little change of “ye” to “you” in a song where that is seemingly insignificant, nobody is going to sing it that way. Another example is “What child is this”, where at least once a year, if you sing carols in church, you sing about where “ox and ass are feeding”. Despite causing the teenagers to giggle, there’s no way to really change it at this point – it doesn’t work with the song, and would require turning the song into a different song to update it. There is a cultural power in a popular song – its like a living snapshot into when it was written. Sure, it changes in little ways over the years, but if it is ubiquitous enough, the language will not tend to update. So if the secular culture doesn’t update songs that are meaningful to them, I don’t think the Christian culture will either.
In Come Thou Fount, I don’t think Ebenezer should be replaced. First off, its a proper name for something, not an archaic usage for something (like saying “God does not faint” when faint doesn’t mean what it used to). Even those who first sang the song had to know their Bibles to understand the reference.
co-writer no, arranger yes.
Abraham,
I’m an amateur arranger and LOVE to take old text and put new melodies to them. I know this might seem morbid, but if the original composer is dead, they won’t give a care. I re-write the music to old texts so that they can be sung, because the music, most of the time, doesn’t fit the words. We are in a new era of church history, and we need old truths to be proclaimed in a fresh way. Keeping the same melody is like lukewarm water. Putting a fresh one to the words is like a cold glass of water on a hot day.
Great discussion.
As my friend Bobby Gilles has already said, copyright protection (and the concept of intellectual property in general) is a relatively new and very capitalistic idea. You’ll notice that the law on when something becomes public domain is continually extended – it’s about as old as Mickey Mouse, and you can be assured that when that window of time gets tight, the law will be extended again.
In terms of the question itself – consider what Isaac Watts did. Essentially – Watts did this very thing with his Psalms of David, which were theological and contextual interpretations of the Psalms. (They were contextual in the sense that they were very much in the vernacular of his community.) No one faults Watts when he did this to Psalms – inspired scripture. What makes the “canon” of Hymns more sacred than the “canon” of God’s word?
We can’t escape poor examples of this sort of thing, but there are excellent examples as well. We also can’t escape the fact that there are very bad examples of songs adapted from scripture – though those should, in principle, be more offensive!
I would argue that the hope remains that the “cream rises to the top” – the good examples will last the test of time and be a benefit to the church, and the poor examples will end up in the discount bin at the Christian Bookstore.
I should mention – for the sake of disclosure – that I’m wrapping up production on part one of a two-record series of rewritten Isaac Watts hymns with my church, Sojourn.
Prepare yourselves for a shameless plug:
http://www.sojournmusic.com
I completely agree w/ Mike. I think the very nature of the question reveals how tightly (and subconsciously selfishly), we hold onto our own creations, when we ought to be more freely giving away things that aren’t really ours to begin with.
There’s lots of thorny copyright issues of here, but I think it’d be a big step for Christian artists of all shades to figure out how to be more generous with their art.
And in turn, for the Church to be more generous in supporting them as they do so.
That’s a big shift from the way we tend of think of things now, but I think it would do all a lot of good in the ego department if we focused less on who wrote what song and more on support the artist who serve us.