Pondering POXON

John Middleton, retired United Methodist pastor who now engages in writing, leading retreats, and composing new hymns, wrote to me recently about Jim Strathdee's hymn tune, POXON, found in The Faith We Sing (no. 2185) as accompaniment for Shirley Erena Murray's "For One Great Peace." We also used the tune with Jim Strathdee's permission for one of John's texts, "Common Ground, Holy Ground" (available elsewhere on this site). We had a couple of interesting exchanges over the tune. John's considerable hymnic gifts lie much more with text than music, but I found his comments on POXON to be worth sharing and thinking about.

  1. He was struck by what he called a "brightness" or "lightness" to the tune.
  2. The tune is in a major tonality, and even the blues chord at the fermata does not yield any quality of minor.
  3. His use of a guitar accompaniment worked well with POXON at a recent retreat.
  4. He keeps recommending "For One Great Peace" in The Faith We Sing to musicians, but he has yet to find one who has looked at it or used it.

And here's how I responded to John's observations. I, too, greatly appreciate POXON. I think it is the perfect setting for the Murray text in TFWS, for which the tune was composed. But in thinking about the tune apart from its original textual context (is that redundant?), just as a piece of music, here's what occurs to me:

1. I understand what John means by brightness or lightness. There is no attempt here at musical grandiosity or profundity. When Beethoven sounds forth with his first four notes (three repeated notes and a downward leap of a third) in the 5th Symphony, there is already a feeling of seriousness and profundity. You have already been grabbed by fate's knocking at the door. But POXON's opening rising fourth followed by three repeated notes has the opposite effect, I think. The tune's musical quality that attaches to Murray's simple, transparent, immediately accessible and understandable text survives on its own, even without the text. And it survives when associated with another text, such as "Common Ground, Holy Ground."

2. The tune is a long arch form, one of music's most commonly used forms. It starts low, rises through a succession of short phrases, peaks at the climax, then falls back gradually. This form so permeates music of all kinds that it gives the listener or singer a sense of satisfaction upon performing or experiencing it, most often subconsciously. 20th century composers learned that a good way of heightening musical tension was to set up this arch form, then to interrupt or change it. Having set up the listener to experience the satisfaction of the arch form, the tension is created when the satisfaction of completion is denied. But in POXON, the form, and hence the experience of subconscious satisfaction, is complete.

3. The tune is a short succession of mini-phrases in rising sequence — I think the main source of what John calls "lightness." They have a sense of lift to them. This contrasts to the quality of longer musical phrases, such as "Praise to the Lord the Almighty ..." or "When in our music God is glorified," for which we must remain actively engaged for longer periods before we're allowed to momentarily relax, breathe, and be impacted by the phrase.

4. All this is done in the key of D major, which many traditional music theorists consider to be the brightest or happiest tonality, and the tonality often used for majesty and triumph — think of "The Trumpet Shall Sound," and the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah, both in D major. But I think POXON is much more like a simple folk tune, more related to O WALY WALY, "Home on the Range," and many nursery-rhyme tunes than to Handel's grandeur. I might prefer "folk-like" to "lightness" and "brightness."

5. The use of guitar accompaniment for POXON is a good match. I use a simple chordal style when accompanying it on the piano rather than a more pianistic style that might get in the way of the text or tune. A steady beat with lots of rhythm and harmony underneath the melody would destroy this style's effectiveness. Allow the text's short phrases to be expressed in the tune's short musical phrases, somewhere between rubato and espressivo.

I also agree with John's observation that many musicians still don't know or use TFWS 2185, which is too bad because its text and tune are both excellent, made even better by their marriage. The same holds true for "Common Ground, Holy Ground"on our website. I am confident POXON will become more known and used as time goes on, and I commend these two hymns for use in worship.

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