By Leland Bryant Ross
The Hymnary.org database shows 60 different tunes that "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" has been set to. In this paper I propose to display and discuss at least 25 of these 60 tunes.
In late July, 2024, Teresa Holman reposted a post of hers from 2023 that included the text of Frederick Faber's hymn "There's a wideness in God's mercy", a recording of herself playing WELLESLEY (Tourjee), and a scanned hymnal page showing the setting, to the Hymns of the Christian Life group on Facebook. WELLESLEY is by a considerable margin the most common tune for this hymn in the Hymnary.org database, and the tune encountered with this text most frequently in American Protestant hymnals. However, it is much less dominant in recent decades than throughout the hymn's earlier history (it was published originally in 1862), and it has never been widely used outside the United States; the Hymnary.org database is very strongly Usonocentric, particularly concerning hymnals published before about 1980. And a fair number of members of the Hymns of the Christian Life group are not located in the United States and did not learn the typical US repertoire of hymns and hymn tunes. So, since I was (and am) ill and unable to go out and do anything useful this week, I decided to stay home and write a blogpost-type article about various tunes that have been linked with this hymn over the decades, in various countries and denominations, as well as other hymns that have been sung to some of them and that some singers may strongly identify with those texts.
The database shows 901 instances of "There's a wideness in God's mercy". Of these, 565 have specific tunes identified. Of these, 290, or slightly more than half, are set to WELLESLEY. However, if we look at the hymnals published since 1979, the picture is quite different.
Here are the tunes paired with WELLESLEY that are found in hymnals published since 1979 in the Hymnary database:
- 25 instances of IN BABILONE (17 RCC, 1 NON)
This is pretty much the universal tune pick in recent decades in Catholic and (US) Presbyterian hymnals; on the other hand, it is in only one recent Non-Denominational hymnal, and the only hymnal showing the pairing and published in the UK that I've found was the 1956 "Hymnal for Colleges and Schools", a joint publication of the Yale and Oxford University Presses. A total of
- 23 instances of WELLESLEY (8 NON, 0 RCC)
- 7 instances of CROSS OF JESUS (NNA)
- 3 instances of CORVEDALE COE
- 3 instances of ST. HELENA (2 LUT)
- 2 instances of ALL FOR JESUS
- 2 instances of BEECHER
- 2 instances of DAILY DAILY (COE)
- 2 instances of GOTT WILL'S MACHEN (2 CAN)
- 1 instance of CHARLESTON UUA
- 1 instance of CIVILITY CRC
- 1 instance of IN MEMORIAM NZN
- 1 instance of LORD REVIVE US
- 1 instance of RIPLEY
- 1 instance of TREGURTHA
... and then there are 7 other tunes that were used with some frequency before 1979 but not since at least in the indexed hymnals, and 1 tune that I just set it to about a week ago:- 94 HE IS CALLING (Vail)
- 20 ERIE (Converse)
- 14 WILMOT
- 10 ARMSTRONG
- 4 GALILEE (Jude)
- 4 RATHBUN
- 4 STOCKWELL
and- 1 RETURN AGAIN
