NATIONAL HYMN
Roberts’s text was initially sung to Alexy Lvov’s RUSSIAN HYMN (199), but in 1892, right after the text was accepted for the Episcopal hymnal, George W. Warren (b. Albany, NY, 1828; d. New York, 1902) composed NATIONAL HYMN for Roberts’s text. The new tune was published with Roberts’s text in the Hymnal Revised and Enlarged (1894), compiled by J. Ireland Tucker and W. W. Rousseau. Warren received his general education at Racine College in Wisconsin, but as a musician he was largely self-trained. An organist in a number of Episcopal churches, he played the organ for thirty years (1870-1900) at St. Thomas Church in New York City. Warren composed anthems and liturgical service music; his hymn tunes were collected in Warren’s Hymns and Tunes as Sung in St. Thomas Church (1888). Though the great hymnologist Erik Routley (PHH 31) dismissed NATIONAL HYMN as “a pretentious piece of bombast,” many people enjoy singing it with the gusto appropri ate to civic events. The tune includes martial trumpet fanfares, which may give too much of a triumphalistic effect in church. Use more humble musical forces, especially on the inner stanzas. [Liturgical Use] Worship that focuses on God’s reign over the nations; civic celebrations.
Stanza Arc
The narrative or theological arc traced by this tune's stanzas: Law (divine sovereignty and moral order) → Gospel (gratitude, divine guidance, and protection) → Sanctification (spiritual renewal and transformation)