Love Divine, All Loves Excelling: A Song History
Charles Wesley's "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" first appeared in July 1747 as the ninth hymn in Hymns for Those that Seek and Those that have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ, a collection issued without an author's name but led by Charles, to whom most of its hymns are attributed.[1] It was printed there in four stanzas of eight lines; when the 1780 Methodist hymn book took it up, the second stanza was dropped, and this shortened form later spread through English-language hymnals.[2] Hymnologists connect its opening to a song from King Arthur, with words by John Dryden and music by Henry Purcell; notes on Hymnary.org name Dryden's lines as Wesley's inspiration, and the Hymnology Archive goes further, treating the hymn as a parody of the opera song.[2][3] An adaptation of Purcell's melody, called WESTMINSTER, was printed with the hymn in Thomas Butts's Harmonia Sacra (ca. 1754), and John Wesley included the adapted tune in Select Hymns with Tunes Annext (1761).[3]
Girolamo da Cremona, Antiphonary: Initial, angel, ink, tempera, and gold on parchment, c. 1470–80. An angel in a choir-book initial, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the hymn.
Several tunes have since carried the words, and one of the most widely used is BEECHER, which appears in many hymnals, "especially in America."[3] Its composer, John Zundel (1815–1882), was born near Stuttgart, came to the United States in 1847, and became organist at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in 1850.[4][5] The tune is named for Zundel's pastor there, Henry Ward Beecher, and was first published in Zundel's Christian Heart Songs in 1870.[5] Hymnary.org's guidance for worship leaders names BLAENWERN, a Welsh tune by William Penfro Rowlands, as the setting most favored in Great Britain, and other tunes include the Welsh HYFRYDOL and a tune by John Stainer first published in 1889.[2][3]
Larry Conger includes it, credited to Charles Wesley and John Zundel, in Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, sixteen gospel hymns for the chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning with standard notation, tablature, chords and first-verse words, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]
Sources
- Duke Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition: "Redemption Hymns (1747)".
- Hymnary.org: "Love divine, all loves excelling".
- Hymnology Archive: "Love divine, all loves excelling".
- Hymnary.org: "John Zundel".
- Hymnary.org: "BEECHER".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Girolamo da Cremona, Antiphonary: Initial, angel, ink, tempera, and gold on parchment, c. 1470–80. The Cleveland Museum of Art.