Are hymns dying? 

I love a good hymn, so long as I’m not expected to sing it. Lusty declarations of faith sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth and embarrass the hell out of me, so I pretend that I’ve forgotten to pick up a hymnbook on my way in. If someone shoots me an accusatory glance, then I move my lips like John Redwood singing the Welsh national anthem. (Talking of whom, has it dawned on the jolly self-important Dr Redwood, former Fellow of All Souls, director of Rothschild’s, cabinet minister, etc., that one day he’ll be remembered only for that delicious video clip?)

The earliest Christian hymns were chanted — but when we talk about a ‘hymn’ in everyday speech we mean a harmonised sacred song in which every verse uses the same melody. As a form it’s mainly the creation of Lutherans, who understood that singable hymns were the perfect vehicle for their theology. Martin Luther was a rather good amateur composer: he wrote the words and possibly the melody to Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott, ‘a mighty fortress is our God’ — an image that still sustains his followers.

You can also find Lutheran ‘chorales’, as they became known, in English parish churches. ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ is an obvious example — our German name for the tune ‘Nun Danket’ gives the game away. But I always thought that ‘All People that on Earth do Dwell’, known as the ‘Old Hundredth’ because it adapts Psalm 100, was a proper English tune, so snugly do the notes match the words. Not so. Listen to the electrifying opening of Bach’s cantata BWV 130, in which trumpets and woodwind bounce off each other and then the sopranos enter singing… the Old Hundredth.