Anthem
A hymn is a song or lyrical text that expresses positive feelings, joy and celebration.
In antiquity it was a choral composition in honor of a divinity and is taken up with full liturgical value in the Christian Latin literature of the Middle Ages (for example, the Pange lingua written by Thomas Aquinas to commemorate the day of Corpus Christi). The word derives from the Greek language ὕμνος (hymnos) and passed to almost all the languages of Europe in the same sense or meaning.
It is also the musical or literary representation of an event so elevated that it produces the need to translate it into music or text.
A hymn can be dedicated to gods, a saint, a hero or a famous person. It can also be dedicated to celebrating a victory or other memorable event or to expressing joy or enthusiasm, in which case it is better called an ode. It can also be a musical composition that identifies a community, a region, a town or a nation and that unites those who interpret it. These last hymns are usually either marches or lyrical poems.
History
Among the oldest hymns are the Sumerian and Greek royal hymns (late 3rd millennium BC), the Great Hymn to the Aten, composed by Pharaoh Akhenaten in Ancient Egypt, the Vedas, a collection of hymns in the tradition of Hinduism, the psalms, a collection of songs from Judaism, the Gathas, hymns in honor of Ahura Mazda, and the hymn of Ugarit.
The oldest complete annotated work of ancient music is a Hurrian song, a hymn written in syllabic Ugaritic cuneiform dedicated to the goddess Nikkal.
The Western tradition of hymns begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, which were written in the 7th century BCE. C., praising the deities of the religion of Ancient Greece. A collection of six literary hymns (Ὕμνοι) by the 3rd-century BC Alexandrian poet Callimachus has survived. C..
The Greeks garnished the hymn with the rhythms of poetry and the melodious charms of music. They had many kinds of hymns: the invocative, the laudative, the admirative, the votive, the theogonic and the philosophical. The Orpheus hymns belong to the invocative genre. They were also composed of different genera by Homer, Cleanto, Callimachus, Theocritus, Anacreon, Tirteo, Sappho, Simonides, Pindar and others. The choruses of the Greek tragedy were nothing more than hymns or invocations.
The secular hymn reached the highest degree of perfection with Horace's Carmen saeculare, composed by order of Augustus for the celebration of the ludi saeculares of the year 17 B.C. C., in which a choir of young men and maidens alternately sang this hymn of praise to the gods Apollo and Diana.
The oldest known hymns are those of Moses and Deborah, the prophetess who sang one in thanksgiving to the Hebrew God, 2710 years before Christ. Ezra has collected in the Bible the largest number of Hebrew songs with this epigraph: Sepertheillim, that is, book of praises.
Hymns were sung to the sound of harps and lyres (only the strings accompanied the voices) by alternate choirs; the first sang the hymn, and the other, at certain intervals, repeated an intercalated couplet or a refrain, thus imitating the seraphim, whom the prophets had heard alternately sing: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord. God of hosts. Four thousand Levites, whose chief was Asaph, celebrated these songs in turn in the temple of Yahweh under the reigns of David and Solomon, two famous hymnographers of Israel.
Latin hymns
Since the first centuries of the Christian Era, the use of singing psalms and hymns was introduced into religious ceremonies. The creation of the hymnody is attributed to San Ambrosio (397), who composed an infinity of them full of anointing, sublimity and energy. Later, Saint Benedict and the monastic movement promoted by him would follow until the hymn was accepted for divine services.
Some popes like Innocent III, Clement VII and Saint Gregory made them of a sublime majesty. Among the hundreds used by the Catholic Church we will mention the Stabat Mater, produced by Innocent III, who also composed the Veni Sancte Spiritus; the Dies irae, a composition by the Franciscan Tomás Celano; or the Ave maris stella, which came from the pen of Saint Bernard.
But the hymns that stand out for their majesty, sublimity and august locution in ideas are those composed by the doctor of the Church Santo Tomás de Aquino for the prayer of the Blessed Sacrament and festivity of Corpus Christi; thus, the Pange lingua.
From the primitive hymns, when the music was purely melodic, it later turned to plainchant melodies and hymns in polyphonic style were not composed until the century XIII. The most famous work will be the one composed by Palestrina in 1589: Hymni totius anni.
The hymn Te Deum is an early Christian hymn, a traditional thanksgiving hymn. It is usually sung at times of celebration, including Thanksgiving at the end of the year.
Patriotic song
As Juan José Carreras, from the University of Zaragoza, has pointed out, the meaning of a hymn or song «is the result of a continuous interaction between poetic text, musical practices and political context». In the specific analysis of political song, two fundamental aspects must be taken into account. «The first is to take into account the ability of sound to appropriate a certain space (remember: a flag is displayed in a place, but it does not occupy it as occurs with the sound of a band or a chorus —in addition, until the invention of the phonograph, auditory perception always implied a co-presence between transmitter and acoustic receiver, with all that this implies). The second (and no less important) is the extremely powerful identification effect that the practice of singing in common in unison the different verses or the chorus of a song has: an effect that those "hymns" that lack lyrics, since the mere hearing of a sound emblem does not have the same emotional implications as its collective manufacturing through song".
It was the French Revolution that discovered the enormous political potential of singing done in unison as an effective collective expression: «its flexibility, simplicity of musical making and fluid exchange between oral and printed culture allowed this This type of songs played an extraordinary role in political mobilization, realizing the Rousseauian ideal of the "communion of souls, represented by the unison of voices"”. The most famous and influential patriotic song was the chant de guerre of the Army of the Rhine, which will be known as La Marseillaise. a song achieved not only fame, but influence in events; and that when sung it encouraged the warriors in the fight, or the seditious in their acts of violence, something that was hardly an example in modern times until the day of the French Revolution arrived. The exalted liberal editor Mariano de Cabrerizo in the prologue to his Collection of patriotic songs (1823) wrote the following:
Patriotic songs produce the double advantage of serving a time of effective incentive, and enjoyable deafness to good patriots. To their impulse they are denoted to combat; the fire of civics electrifies their hearts, forget the most expensive interests, and only see, hear and long for the health of the nation, and the extermination of the enemies of freedom.
In Spain the patriotic song appeared during the War of Independence. The first documented case was the order given in 1810 by the captain general of Valencia Luis Alejandro de Bassecourt that «the drummers teach their bands the patriotic songs that I have distributed with this order, so that the sing as the columns march to the attack, the chiefs and officers taking care that the troops repeat the chorus". >, a chant de guerre to motivate the troops during the pronouncement led by Lieutenant Colonel Rafael del Riego, which will become an "exceptional acoustic symbol — an authentic place of democratic memory — that has endured for through time". In this case it is known from an eyewitness that the letter "was printed in San Fernando and San Miguel, who was then commander, carried it in packages, put in the holsters, from where he took copies to distribute them". From the co Antonio Alcalá Galiano testified to the continuous presence (and influence) of the Himno de Riego during the Triennium when he stated in his memoirs: «From 1820 to 1823 the Himno de Riego was removed, and contemporary events can hardly be understood."