I've always had a problem with hymns. Now I'm entirely atheist, so one might reasonably assume that my problem with hymns springs from that. But it doesn't, in fact; as both a sci-fi reader and a pure mathematician (readers can choose whichever of those analogies they feel is more appropriate ;-) I have a strong ability to work within a set of axioms I don't personally believe, and when I look at the words to a hymn my feeling mostly tends to be ‘yes, all that makes perfect sense if you start from those premises’. Devout Christians clearly don't live on the same planet as me, but I can visit their planet in my mind without too much difficulty.

Where I start to have a problem is where the hymn departs from my expectation of it given what I imagine to be the premises of its author. Specifically: hymns are, as I understand it, written by deeply religious people who consider the glorification of God to be a major, if not the paramount, duty and privilege in their life. This being the case, I would expect hymn writers to either do a really good job of it, or find someone else who could. Not so much in the words – not being a believer myself I'm not really qualified to judge the quality of the words in a hymn – but more in the music. In my experience hymn music, by and large, sucks.

This is particularly noticeable as a non-believer, because when I go to the occasional church service (weddings and so forth), I don't already know the hymn tunes; so I bluff and mumble my way through the first verse while listening carefully, and thereby hope to have learned the tune for when the second verse comes round. But in most cases I don't, because the tune looks as if someone slung a bunch of notes together in an almost entirely random order and it is simply Not Memorable. Every time my finely honed musical instincts think it's obvious what the next few notes are going to be, they do something totally different; and not something inspired and better which leaves me thinking ‘wow’, but something totally random that leaves me thinking ‘Huh? What was the point of doing that then? The tune isn't going anywhere!’.

I've had this rant brewing for several years now, and was reminded of it by the wedding I went to yesterday (although this is not primarily a rant about that wedding; a couple of yesterday's hymns were well above average). So I've ranted it in person at a few people since then, and the most common response I get is ‘no, that's not quite fair, there are one or two good hymns, how about <foo>?’. I'm unconvinced that being told there are ‘one or two’ good hymns is actually a contradiction of my claim that most hymn music is drivel :-)

And the thing is, it isn't as if religious composers aren't capable of doing a good job. A lot of Christmas carols, for example, are really good, or if not really good at least decent workmanlike jobs in which the musical structure makes sense, with a sensible balance between repeating melodic motifs and introducing new material, with a harmonic structure which moves from a beginning to a middle to a resolution in a comprehensible manner. More like that, please, and less of the kind that sound as if someone attached a random number generator to a pipe organ.

Right, rant over. Offended Christians can start shouting at me now…