How to Write a Hymn

PrayingTwice asked in one of the comboxes: what is your process of writing a hymn or making a translation?

I answered truthfully that most of the preparation for hymn writing occurs in a very remote manner. A person should read the Psalms in prayer, become deeply accustomed to Scripture, and become acquainted with as much poetry as possible. Then it helps to spend a lot of time analyzing the existing liturgical music. What works? What doesn't? Why? Think about phrases that seem to be alive, like a lot of C. Wesley's, and those that seem relatively wooden. What makes the difference?

Then the actual task of hymn writing can begin.

Translations

In college we translated both Greek and French literature, and I developed the following habits for translation. In a notebook, write a line of the text to be translated. Skip three lines and continue writing out the text. Etc. Translate what you can without looking things up in the line above the text. In the line below, make whatever notes you might need, especially regarding grammatical forms. We would usually hash out the details of translations in class and make corrections to our work. There is no real opportunity to do that with hymns, but there are existing translations of many Latin hymns that help with clearing up any ambiguities. I have found this website to be most valuable.

Once you have a clear translation, the process continues much as in regular hymn writing. The main difference is that you have very narrowly defined parameters in meter, content, theological style and tone. This definition occurs dynamically in regular hymn writing: if you start writing about heaven, you will want to draw vocabulary from happy-sounding words, etc. A song about patient endurance would have a more subdued vocabulary. But in translations I feel that I am very much bound to the shape, theology, and tone of the original.

Hymn Writing

When I begin a new hymn text, I usually write about a verse and a half at one sitting, plus any ideas that occur to me regarding where I think the hymn should end up, or any nifty lines. I make a note of the tune that I had in mind when I began writing, and set the text aside. This does not take a long time--but it does take "inspiration" or a creative moment or whatever one would like to call it. This is why I have said that the most important work is done way ahead of the actual writing: without the long-haul process of simply learning as much as possible about the Bible, and without liturgy and prayer, one would never get "a good idea for a hymn." Those good ideas are the sine qua non of hymn writing. If you get one, write it down. Make sure you can find it when you have more time to work--I write hymns on a handheld computer.

Later, it will be time to come back to continue the text for its full length, and to edit. In my mind I "sing" what I have already written, to the tune I noted before. The most important suggestion I can make for this stage is, don't rush. It is better to be good than to be finished. I have seen so many hymn texts that start off with the invaluable "good idea" and then slip down to mediocrity at around the third verse. Words that seem obviously chosen for no reason but rhyme. Unnecessary inversions of normal English sentence structure. Unreasonable changes in person or tense. Cliche rhymes such as "love"/"above" without a really good reason. But mostly, the error is a general loss of the energy and precision that got the hymn off to a good start in the beginning. If you can't finish it well, don't finish it. Maybe you will think of a phrase six months from now.

(And yes, I do use a rhyming dictionary once in a great while, but only if I'm really really stuck!)

I would say just a word about doxologies. If the last verse is a doxology, there is no shame in using one of the many existing versifications of praise to the Trinity (as long as they are not under copyright). However, sometimes it can be very nice to make a doxology that fits very neatly with the hymn that you are writing. That is one of the reasons I like Reginald Heber's doxology to Sing of Mary, Pure and Lowly:

Glory be to God the Father, Glory be to God the Son.

Glory be to God the Spirit, Glory to the Three in One.

From the heart of blessed Mary, from all saints, the song ascends,

And the Church the strain re-echoes unto earth's remotest ends.