Add "Ah Holy Jesus"

[jim-duke]

Add "Ah Holy Jesus"

[Jim-Duke]

@Ibab642 and @crazycub212 :

I've completed my research of Ah Holy Jesus. After looking at dozens of alternate renderings I ended up preferring the very words I started with. @timcaldwell raised a good point about the song that I'd like to consider. Some have objected to the song "I'm the one"; and the thought that we are each, personally, responsible for the death of Christ. The second verse reads:

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon You?
It is my treason, Lord, that has undone You.
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied You;
I crucified You.

That verse is reminiscent of "I'm the one". For my part, I have no objection to this verse or the entire thrust of the song. In fact, I'm highly supportive of it. I added more details of my opinion in the README.md

[crazycub212]

I don't object to the language in the song, in fact, I think this song
upholds the idea that my salvation depends on the death of Jesus. On that
fact, I find this accurate for us all to sing. I vote for the inclusion of
the song into our "library", but certainly caution the use of songs that
may bother part of our local church family.
So, to avoid muddied waters, I vote for the song's addition, but myself
would likely not lead it (assuming I remember some have issues with it),
due to how some may (likely) feel about it.

On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 11:31 PM, Jim Duke [email protected] wrote:

@Ibab642 https://github.com/Ibab642 and @crazycub212
https://github.com/crazycub212 :

I've completed my research of Ah Holy Jesus. After looking at dozens of
alternate renderings I ended up preferring the very words I started with.
@timcaldwell https://github.com/timcaldwell raised a good point about
the song that I'd like to consider. Some have objected to the song "I'm the
one"; and the thought that we are each, personally, responsible for the
death of Christ. The second verse reads:

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon You?

It is my treason, Lord, that has undone You.

'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied You;

I crucified You.

That verse is reminiscent of "I'm the one". For my part, I have no
objection to this verse or the entire thrust of the song. In fact, I'm
highly supportive of it. I added more details of my opinion in the
README.md
https://github.com/Jim-Duke/bumbyextras/blob/master/Source/ah_holy_jesus/README.md

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[Jim-Duke]

I spoke to Tim Duke about our modernizing the language in Ah Holy Jesus. He made some convincing arguments that we already are maintaining archaic word usage (and Your life's oblation). And that Shakespearean language is more consistent with the tone of the song, the phrasing, the musical style, and the poetic structure. I have to agree with him for the most part. Some phrases, however, are simply too alien to the modern reader. Using Thee, Thy, Thine is one thing. But, taking the 2nd line of the first verse as an example: "that we to judge thee have in hate pretended?" That is far more difficult to understand than: "That mortal judgment has on Thee descended". I believe that we can mix the style of using the Shakespearean pronouns; but avoid words such as "pretended" in ways that mean different things than they do now. So, perhaps the following form is a good compromise:

1. Ah holy Jesus, how hast Thou offended
   That mortal judgment has on Thee descended?
   By foes derided, by Thine own rejected,
   O most afflicted.
2. Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?
   It is my treason, Lord, that has undone Thee.
   'Twas I, Lord Jesus. I it was denied Thee;
   I crucified Thee.
3. Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
   The slave hath sinned, and yet the Son hath suffered.
   For my atonement, though I nothing heeded,
   God interceded.
4. For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation,
   Thy mortal sorrow and Thy life's oblation,
   Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
   For my salvation.
5. Therefore, dear Jesus, since I cannot pay Thee.
   I do adore Thee, and will ever pray Thee.
   Think on Thy pity and Thy love unswerving,
   Not my deserving.

The above also introduces another change. For the capitalization, I am using traditional poetic capitalization where the first word of every line is capitalized. I have also capitalized all references to Jesus as is the typical style in the bible.

[timcaldwell]

Sounds good.

---

Tim Caldwell
Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 3, 2016, at 9:15 PM, Jim Duke [email protected] wrote:

I spoke to Tim Duke about our modernizing the language in Ah Holy Jesus. He made some convincing arguments that we already are maintaining archaic word usage (and Your life's oblation). And that Shakespearean language is more consistent with the tone of the song, the phrasing, the musical style, and the poetic structure. I have to agree with him. Unless one of you objects, I'm going to revert the language to be exactly as Roberts originally wrote.

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[Ibab642]

I also believe that the words of the song are fine. I lie the idea of us modernizing the words when it's appropriate to do especially when these are going to be new songs for us.

[TDuke94]

Quick checklist-style review:

Copyright information seems correct

Attributions are correct

Notes:
The shapes assigned to the notes is off. The order of the scale (in shapes) starts at LA, as opposed to DO, which is not the convention used in our main song book (even for minor songs).

Words:
If archaic words are to be used, they must be used consistently. There is no conjugation of "have" in early modern english as "has" (i.e. you would never say "he has" but rather "he hath", and so on). This seems to only be an issue for the verb "have" which is always in the present tense in this song, the rule is as follows:

• 1st person singular and all plural forms: "have"
• 2nd person singular: "hast"
• 3rd person singular (all genders): "hath"

An additional argument in support of the archaic for this song: while the rhyme scheme is not dependent on archaic words, the meter - particularly in the second verse, where "Thee" at the end of the line sounds better than "You"

The Layout looks good.

Slides look fine.

[pianoman5001]

Using the rubric found in Jim's 12/18/2016 email, here is my review:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. 1st Measure: The basses go down to RE on the 4th beat when they should be staying at FA. If they go down to RE (which the Tenors and Altos are singing), then the song would be missing out on the very crucial Eb which gives that Cminor chord its minor sound. Otherwise, it's just a perfect fourth and sounds very different. I also agree with Tim in that the shape notes are not assigned correctly.
4. I agree with Tim in the consistent use of archaic language. However, I do much prefer the lyrics taken from Hymnary.org or cyberhymnal.org over the sumphonia songbook. I particularly don't like the addition of the word "yet" in the 3rd verse, 2nd system;
5. Slide 2: "mortal" is missing a dash between the two syllables even though it seems Lilypond separated them between the two notes. Otherwise both the songbook format and slides look okay. However, there seems to be a lot of places where multi-syllable words are not split between the different notes. I understand it may not be needed in every case, but this song seems to have a lot more occurrences of this than other songs.

[Jim-Duke]

Posted on behalf of @timcaldwell
Comments are embedded in the attached PDF file:
Ah Holy Jesus - With Tim Caldwell Comments.pdf

[Jim-Duke]

In response to @TDuke94 

• Replaced some occurrences of "has" with "hath" - with you sitting by my side so I got it right :)

• Fixed the problem with the shape notes. I had used the wrong aiken notehead macro in Lilypond.

[Jim-Duke]

In response to @pianoman5001

• Agree that the chord should be a Cm chord; but after examining several other hymnals the preferred solution is for the altos to hold on the FA. That would have the basses drop to the tonic of the Cm with the Tenors doubling the basses an octave up.

• That meter of the 3rd verse at the 2nd system is awkward no matter what you do. I agree that "yet" should not be added. That breaks the meter. The meter of the verse is really "5.6.5.6.5.6.5" - not "11.11.11.5". In all other verses the 2nd poetic subphrases end nicely at those metrical boundaries. With the addition of "yet", if creates a 4.7 meter; with the music using a 5.6 meter there. To fix that, you need to pronounce "sinned" in two syllables - "sin -- ned" - with a pronounced "ned" as the 2nd syllable. That makes it fit the meter ("The slave hath sin ned" - 5 syllables; "and the Son hath suf ferred" - 6 syllables). That is how Robert Bridges wrote the translation; and how man hymnals wrote it - by hyphenating the word "sinned" as "sin -- ned".

• The hyphenation of "mortal" is in the lilypond source. I'll try to insert some word separation; I'm not sure how successful I'll be. There are several spacing constraints fighting with each other and it's hard to get exactly what you want sometimes. But I'll try. EDIT: there were more than one "mortal" in the text. One was not hyphenated, the other one was. I added the hyphen - now the hyphens show up as they should.

[Jim-Duke]

In response to comments by @timcaldwell

Much of your punctuation corrections I adopted after confirming them with multiple sources. I disagreed on a couple points:

- I take your blue circles to mean that I should render the words in lower case. Those words are at the beginning of sentences and are capitalized in standard poetic style.

• The exclamation point you noted at the end of the first verse is present in some of the hymnals, but less than half. And when reading the words; why would that line have extra emphasis and not the other equally powerful verses? I strongly lean in favor of leaving the exclamation points out to conform the all the other verses.

[timcaldwell]

Sounds good.

…

---- Tim Caldwell Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 27, 2016, at 1:15 PM, Jim Duke ***@***.***> wrote: In response to comments by @timcaldwell Much of your punctuation corrections I adopted after confirming them with multiple sources. I disagreed on a couple points: - I take your blue circles to mean that I should render the words in lower case. Those words are at the beginning of sentences and are capitalized in standard poetic style. The exclamation point you noted at the end of the first verse is present in some of the hymnals, but less than half. And when reading the words; why would that line have extra emphasis and not the other equally powerful verses? I strongly lean in favor of leaving the exclamation points out to conform the all the other verses. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[pianoman5001]

My only note here is that this song song could probably benefit from combing the stems on the voices where appropriate. Since the first slide of every verse is already fairly "packed" with a lot of words, it might help to reduce the "busy"ness of the slides to reduce the amount of separate stems there are. Other than that I think this song is good and that this issue can be closed.

[Jim-Duke]

I'm reluctant to make the slides differ from the sheet music. I've created a new issue to deal with combining parts (Issue #34 ). We'll deal with that in our next pass.