82 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998

.~
Volume XXIX, number 2 ASIAN MUSIC Spring/Summer 1998

Wahibah, Munir Elias TOWARDS A CHINESE CHRISTIAN HYMNODY:

1952 al-Zajal: Taarlkhuhu, Adabuhu, I'lamuhu, Qadiman PROCESSES OF MUSICAL AND CULTURAL SYNTHESIS
Wa~zadithan ("The Zajal: History, Text, and Singers, in the by
Past and Present"), Harisa, Lebanon. Vernon Charter and Jean DeBernardi

I In this paper, we consider the development of a Chinese Protestant

hymnody from 1867 -. a date which marks the publication debut of The
Chinese Recorder -- to 1936, the publication date of a highly successful

I union hymnal, Hymns of Universal Praise.! We explore the processes and

products of culture contact, focusing on the development of a single musical
genre, the Chinese Christian hymn, and exploring its fate as 'contexts and
agents' shift through time (Qureshi 1992).2

The debates and failures surrounding early attempts to transmit

Western liturgical music to China suggest that many obstacles prevented the
straightforward adoption of these Western cultural forms in China. The
Chinese musical scale was pentatonic, and converts found the tempered

I,

~
scale and harmonic arrangements unfamiliar and difficult to learn.
Missionaries debated whether to translate lyrics into literary or vernacular
languages, and had difficulty mastering Chinese rules of poetic
composition. Many recognized that they had failed in their efforts to
8 :1
"j transmit familiar hymns. Consequently, some expatriate missionaries
1 promoted, and even initiated, moves towards the nationalizing and
j indigenizing of a Chinese Christian hymnody.
,~
1
,1 The problems were much debated in the Chinese Recorder, a
~
monthly journal in English that is the primary source for this study.
~ Founded in 1867 by Methodist missionaries in Foochow (Carlson
l 1974:62), the Chinese Recorder later was moved to Shanghai, and with an
I expanded editorial staff representing a wide spectrum of Christian mission
i1
j
agencies, it became for more than seventy years one of the most significant
sources of information and thought among missionaries throughoLlt China.
Latourette notes:

By its news of the various missions and articles on China

and missionaries in China, it served to tie the Protestant
missionary body together, and to influence missionary
thought (Latourette 1929:437).

From its earliest issues, the Chinese Recorder published news, articles
about missionary life, and information about significant publications, as
well as articles on missionary strategy and philosophy, Chinese history and
culture, and current events. From the 1870s onward, it featured a large
number of editorials, articles, and letters debating the issues that surrounded
the production of hymns in Chinese. Before the turn of the century, writing

84 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
about hymns was almost exclusively the domain of Western missionaries.
By about 1900, however, Chinese writers and musicians were beginning to
contribute to the Chinese Recorder and to contribute their views to the
ong,oing discussion.
The Orchestration of Culture Change
At the same time that we explore this history, we also question
certain frequently proposed assumptions regarding the spread of Western
cultural forms, including music. In the case of Christian missionary
activity, many regard the conversion process as a process "inextricably
bound up with the spread of colonial power" (Mosse 1994:85). As Mosse
notes, for such authors:
Christian converts are perceived as living firmly within the
orbit of the mission's influence, decultured and alienated
from their religious and cultural roots (Mosse 1994:85).
While they dci'not regard African Christians as 'decultured,' the Comaroffs,
for example, argue that missionaries sought to impose a western work ethic
on Africans, and acted in effect as a tool of Western ideological control. In
Africa, as in China, missionaries regarded hymns as a priority and as a
powerful means by which to proselytize.
The Comaroffs quote an early British missionary, who observed
that through hymn singing "the great truths of salvation would become
imperceptibly written on the minds of the people" (Comaroff and Comaroff
1991:241). These efforts, they imply, were sometimes met with rejection
and resistance, and they report that 'recalcitrant Tlhaping' once drowned out
an attempted perfonnance of Sankey's hymns with a cacophonous din.
They conclude, however, that South African Christians ultimately
appropriated and domesticated mission music:
. . . most notably in the secessionist churches. Its cadences
would be made to take on the pulse of indigenous self­
assertion, to harmonize the aspirations of independent, black
salvation (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991 :241).
They do not, however, explore the many dialogs, experiments, and
negotiations that led from the rejection of Sankey's hymns (which many
Chinese Christians did not appreciate either!) to these new musical forms,
nor do they explore the alchemy by which 'foreign' traditions may become
central to the project of identity construction. 3
';;~
i;j
~
:;
.~. Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 85
,1.-
,~
f'
As well, the Comaroffs' narrow focus on issues of power,
domination, and resistance may ultimately be a debilitating assumption. 4 In
particular, they do not explore sources of 'resistance' that are not driven by
considerations of power but rather by culture. Here Sahlins is a better
guide to the dynamics of cultural encounter. He suggests that "cultural
~ change, externally induced yet indigenously orchestrated, has been going
"
;'P on for millennia" (Sahlins 1985:viii). In his study of Hawaii, he
~ emphasizes that local values, and in particular, local prestige systems,
~
'Po
shaped cultural responses to western colonial expansion. Prestige may
explain why Hawai'ian chiefs embraced Western commerce, while the
Chinese imperial order rejected it (Sahlins 1988), In the flow of musical
II
and poetic practices, however, many other factors also worked against the
easy transmission of Western hymns to China.
Transmitting the Western Musical Canon
Hymns were a topic of considerable interest to missionaries, as well
as a source of considerable frustration. For Protestants, whose ritual was
simple, singing had been a central aspect of their worship since the
Reformation, when Luther had brought hymn singing to the fore as a means
to involve the congregation in active worship. Missionaries in China
viewed the best hymns as a fusion of music and poetry with Christian
sentiment, and believed that these works of art could inspire religious
feeling and commitment. Both Goodrich and Soothill argued, for example,
that the best hymns blended doctrine with feeling, so that the convert would
experience "doctrine fused through heart" (Goodrich 1877:223):
An impulse to a better and holier life can come just as easily
through good music as through a sermon; good music takes
the shortest cut to the heart, it goes straight there; a sermon
has to take a by-way through the mind first . . . (Soothill
1890:227).
As well, church music tied Protestants into a musical and poetic tradition
which, one missionary noted, "enshrined for them so many sacred
memories and emotions" (Bonsey 1909:283). He concluded that this
tradition should be transmitted to Chinese Christians:
I can conceive no higher ideal than to seek to lead the
Chinese church to inherit the wealth of hymns, psalms, and
chants which already exist with all the treasures of music
which the West possesses (Bonsey 1909:283).
Still, that tradition was not easily 'inherited.'
 86 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
The problem had many dimensions. First, the translation process
highlighted the fact that the two linguistic traditions were radically different
both in semantics and style. Not surprisingly, the issues here mirror
debates regarding translation of the Bible. s Second, the two poetic
tBaditions were radically different in form, with English poetics defined by
meter and rhyme schemes that could not be achieved in the Chinese
language. Chinese poetics, by contrast, followed rules of tonal rhyme that
the missionaries found difficult to master even after years of study. As a
consequence, educated Chinese often deemed their hymn lyrics to be
'execrable' (Fitch 1895:467). Finally, the Western tunes and harmonic
settings which accompanied many of the early translated hymns were so at
odds with indigenous musical practice that only after painstaking and
(/, extensive teaching could Chinese congregations sing the European
'treasures' that the missionaries so cherished. Their singing was often so
disastrous that, according to Bonsey, "many foreigners hold the creed of
some of the older missionaries that the Chinese will never be able to do
more than 'make melody in their hearts before the LORD'" (Bonsey
1909:284). Thus the missionaries had problems with the translation,
transmission, performance, and reception of their hymns.
While many missionaries deplored their early lack of success in
transmitting the Western musical canon in China, others considered it their
responsibility to encourage Chinese to create an indigenous hymnody that
grew out of their own musical and poetic traditions.6 This movement
towards the creation of an indigenous hymnody gained considerable
momentum after the May Fourth Movement and adoption of Mandarin as
the national language, and resulted in the 1936 publication of a union
hymnbook, Hymns of Universal Praise. This hymnbook, described by one
of its creators as "the first truly indigenous Chinese Hymnal" (Fitch
1935a:546), also has been a primary Source for other widely-used hymn
books -published within the last two decades inside and outside of China.7
Let us retrace the steps that led to the successful union hymnbook,
considering first the difficulties of translating the poetry of Western hymns,
and second the obstacles raised by musical reception.
Problems of Translation: "We Shall Have our Watts, and
could at least approach the Bible as a literary text designed to be read, and
Wesley, and Cowper in the land of Sinim"
could distribute diverse versions of the Bible to diverse audiences. Indeed,
Early missionaries encountered considerable diffiCUlty in finding
equivalents in Chinese for the poetic language of Christian hymns.
Missionaries were painfully aware that they often did not succeed in writing
inspiring poetry in Chinese. When translators insisted on literal
translations, the results ranged from the baffling to the nonsensical
(Champness 1906:678; Bitton 1909: 198-199).B At the same time, the
missionaries recognized that they could not communicate their message
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 87
unless they found ways to compose lyrics that "while elevated in sentiment
and clear in thought, shall be simple in language and truly poetical in style"
(Bonsey 1909:284). The problem was that of finding language that was
simultaneously elevated and clear, simple and poetical.
Chauncey Goodrich was the first of many writers to express what
was to become a recurring refrain throughout the history of the Chinese
Recorder:
Oh! if one were born a poet, and could drink in the language
with his mother's milk, having at one all the advantages of
Christian culture in a Christian land, and a classical
education in China, meanwhile never falling into the ruts of
the schools; and if, in addition, he could catch the breath of
God upon him, he might write hymns, which (north and
south perhaps,) should go singing down the centuries. By
and by -- not yet -- we shall have our Watts, and Wesley,
and Cowper in the land of Sinim (Goodrich 1877:226).
In the meantime, however, many missionaries sought to translate hymns,
and new hymn books abounded.
In seeking a poetic style with the sacred and spiritual qualities of
English hymns, the missionaries confronted a dilemma. In late nineteenth
and early twentieth century China, 'literary' or 'classical' Chinese was the
language of education and culture. With its "rich store of elegant
expressions" (Walker 1913:114), this form of Chinese was the closest
equivalent to the poetic sacred style of English hymns. Although the
missionaries knew that only a small elite fully mastered the classical
language, many translators deemed literary Chinese to be the only style
"worthy to enshrine rich gems of religious inspiration" (Munn 1911 :708).
As well, the missionaries were sensitive to the fact that educated Chinese
regarded the colloquial hymn lyrics to be vulgar and unrefined. 9
While Bible translators faced many of the same dilemmas, they
missionaries who distributed books and tracts often had little knowledge of
how Chinese readers received and interpreted their literature (Cohen
1957:46; Spence 1996). Hymn writers, by contrast, wrote lyrics that were
to be sung collectively, and the issue of reception constrained them
immediately.
In articles in the Chinese Recorder, missionaries repeatedly
acknowledge the difficulty of composing lyrics that were both
comprehensible and cultured. Goodrich, for example, thought that the ideal
88 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
hymn should be "written in a style low enough to be readily and generally
understood, and high enough to command respect among men of culture"
(Goodrich 1877:224). His own hymns apparently were aimed at the
educated Christian, and a review of a Chinese Hymnal that he had co­
authored (Blodget and Goodrich 1887) described it as "one you can leave
lying about in the chapel without shivering every time a literary-looking
stranger comes in and picks one up" (Anon. 1887:362).
Objections to the use of the literary register arose primarily from
concern for practicality and utility, especially in village and rural
congregations. One reviewer comments on the Hymn Book of the
American Episcopal Mission, published in Shanghai in 1895:
It is probable that only the well educated Chinese Christians
will be able to get much help in their devotions by the use of
most of these hymns. The language is not understood of the
people. The majority of the native Christians will sing the
sounds of the characters and dimly get an idea here and
there, but there will not be much devotion in it. They will
not be able to sing with the spirit and with the understanding
also ... But the style ought to be as easy as it is possible to
make it, approaching the colloquial as nearly as practicable.
This would be much more helpful to the great, body of the
native Christians than a high style of WIn-ii [literary
Chinese] (A.P.P. 1895:446).
In 1904, a federation of Protestant missions initiated the first attempt to
compile a union hymn book for Protestant missions in China. The news
was initially welcomed, however when missionaries learned that three
quarters of the hymns in the union hymn book were to be written in "simple
and perspicuous" literary Chinese, and only one quarter in "pure and
dignified" Mandarin (Fenn and St. John 1904:553), some protested.
Hinds, for example, argued that in a period in which reformers were
promoting making Mandarin the national language of China, it was
"reactionary" to continue writing hymns in literary Chinese (Hinds
1904:521). He compared literary Chinese lyrics not to the poetic language
of Wesley's or Luther's hymns, but to Latin verse divorced from the
"language of the people" (Hinds 1905:85), and argued that the same spirit
of accessibility that drove the Reformation should inform hymn writing in
China (Hinds 1904:522). Hinds firmly supported the use of regional
spoken languages for the composition of hymns, noting that "if gospel song
is to play any important part in the life of the members of the church, it must
be given to the people in the language of every-day life" (Hinds 1904:522).
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 89
After viewing a draft of the hymn book at the 1905 Pei-tai-ho
conference, Mateer observed that:
... the urging of it for adoption in our church in this district
is a waste of breath. We have our hymn book which
approximates the language of the people, thereby enabling
them to sing with the spirit and with the understanding; and
we are not likely to turn our faces toward the dark ages by
trying to sing in a dead language (Mateer 1906:310).
The Federation of Protestant Missions continued to discuss the desirability
of having a union hymnbook, but little more is said of this failed project.
Many missionaries strongly supported the use of spoken regional
languages for hymn composition. The practice was not new: Goodrich
noted in 1877 that there was an "endless multiplication" of hymnbooks
precisely because of China's varied linguistic landscape, and explains the
situation in these terms:
This jargon of languages pervades China, making this land a
great language kaleidoscope. Every turn brings you a new
dialect, or such variations of idiom, sound, tone, and
character, as to give a new -- not to say beautiful and
attractive -- picture. It has seemed obvious, that for every
important variation in dialect, there must be a new hymn­
book, to meet the special exigencies of that region (Goodrich
1877:221).
In 1911, there were at least forty~three different hymnbooks written in the
"various dialects of China" (Munn 1911 :708).
The use of regional spoken languages, some missionaries argued,
would also allow for greater emotional scope in the hymns, which were,
after all, meant to inspire Christian passion. Munn sums up the perspective
of many missionaries when he writes that:
The spoken language of a people, the vehicle in which they
express their hopes and fears and loves and hates with
unpremeditated and unchecked intensity, is the truest and
best vehicle for expressing passion, and the natural channel
through which poetry pours out her soul... such possibilities
in classical Chinese are refined away by an excess of poetic
diction (Munn 1911 :702).
Munn strongly recommended that hymn writers disregard traditional poetic
conventions, and develop the "vast possibilities of the spoken language"
 ,

90 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998

I Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 91

(Munn 1911 :708). The project was one of linguistic innovation to create an
appropriate style.
The missionaries were linguistically inventive, and their successful
experiments included the development of ways to write China's unwritten
languages so that they could publish Biblical texts and hymns in the
'dialects.' 10 In the process of seeking equivalents for Christian vocabulary,
they also extended the vocabulary of vernacular languages by introducing
literary-derived terms into them. The Christian sacred register was thus
created by incorporating literary vocabulary into vernacular discourse
without adopting literary grammar. ll A Foochow missionary, Walker,
made the following observation:
We need translations which will enrich and elevate the
poetry in Chinese (A.P.P. 1895:445).
poetical vocabularies of our Chinese vernaculars. Some
I The apparent simplicity of writing poems in Chinese, combined
II with naive attempts at literal translation, were to blame for many badly­
accented "misfit" translations (see, for example Walker 1902:443). One
writer notes in an 1895 review that:
I
I
I
...the Chinese language is so full of homophonous
characters that it seems to be a matter of little difficulty to
string together a lot of rhymes. Hence, not a few of the
I
Christian hymns that we meet appear to have been made by
the yard and cut off in lengths to suit... A close study of the
I
~.
hymns thus far produced must convince one that it is well
nigh impossible for a foreigner, even with the help of a
competent native writer, to make Christian (or any other)

years ago a distinguished American preacher said that he

Among the most common poetic shortcomings of foreign
aimed to familiarize his people with one new word each
translations noted by critics is the disregard for tonal inflection in relation to
Sabbath. So here in Foochow the religious vocabulary is
poetic structure. In both classical and colloquial Chinese poetry, characters
growing in richness; for the local dialect is not like a child's
are classified as having either ping inflection (words with even tone) or ce
coat but like his skin. Quite a number of our hymns are
inflection (words with oblique tone). Part of the pleasing effect of Chinese
contributing to this growth; and it is to be hoped that an ever
poetry relates to the fact that rhymes agree not only in phonetic sound, but
increasing number will continue to do so (Walker
also in tone. Furthermore, the orderly sequence of ping and ce inflections
1902:442).
within each line is considered an essential feature of poetic effect (Wiant
1965: 611', Lanneau 1926:30-31). When such poems are set to music, the
In developing a vocabulary with which to frame Christian ideas, however, melodic contour of the music is adjusted to the tonal contour of the poem,
the missionaries and Chinese Christians often borrowed sacred language or vice versa (Wiant 1965:73). In 1902, Walker noted critically that in most
from the literary vocabularies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. 12 cases,
Increasingly they found themselves drawn into Chinese networks of
meaning and allusion. ... the hymns in our Foochow colloquial pay no attention to
a proper sequence of tones, because there are so few
foreigners to whom the tones have become so thoroughly a
Problems of Poetical Style: "Hymns Made by the Yard and part of the word as to make them a live thing in Chinese
Cut off in Lengths... " poetry as the accent is a live thing in English poetry (Walker
1902:441).
As well as facing problems in the choice of language in which to
translate hymns, the missionaries also confronted significant difficulties Missionaries were aware that failure to follow these rules led educated
with poetic style. The problems that they faced in translating Western Chinese to view their efforts at poetic composition as mere doggerel. 13
hymns suggest that the melodies of the hymns and the poetry of the lyrics
were not easily divorced. Indeed, in a 1909 symposium on church music in Another source of weakness in much of the translated hymnody of
China, Chinese Christian participants were unanimous in their suggestion the period stemmed from a conflict of poetic and musical meter, a fault
that Chinese scholars should undertake the task of writing original Chinese which, according to Fitch, rendered many of the existing Chinese hymns
hymns following Chinese ideas of music, with lyrics written in the style of "simply execrable":
Chinese poems (Bitton 1909:202-203). As the editor of the report on the
Symposium concluded, "it would seem that the translation of our foreign Chinese language being monosyllahic the impression seems
hymns into Chinese has been a failure" (Bitton 1909:210). to have prevailed that all that was necessary for metre in
Chinese was to put just eight characters into each line for
92 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
long meter, -- eight and six for common meter and two-sixes
and an eight and a six for short, and the thing is done!
Consequently we have productions which are wholly
wanting in proper rhythm or cadence, where the accent
comes upon a word which should have no accent in
Chinese, and which are exceedingly unpleasant to read aloud
(Fitch 1895:467).
In particular, many literal-minded translators produced lines which, when
sung, would strongly accent grammatical particles like the possessive de
(Champness 1920:267).
As a Foochow missionary accurately observed, Chinese languages
are primarily made up of bisyllabic compounds "and this structure gives
character to their poetry and to their music" (Walker 1902:440; emphasis
ours). He had identified a key problem: European languages had shaped
the rhythms and melodies of Europeans hymns. Chinese languages were
very differently constructed, and many of the poetic meters used by
European hymnwriters could not be achieved in translation.
Further problems arose when hymn writers attempted to
simultaneously satisfy the requirements of both English and Chinese
poetics:
The hymnologist has attempted to make the hymn subject to
both Chinese and English rhyme and rhythm; the result is
often a sort of doggerel which can scarcely be called Chinese
of any style... To the Chinese who cannot read, and their
number is legion, the performance is about as intelligible as
that of a Buddhist priest chanting Sanscrit [sic] in the temple
(Sydenstricker 1924: 131).
No wonder the English and American missionaries frequently expressed
their hope that Chinese hymn-writers would emerge. W. E. Soothill, of the
English Methodists, a music scholar and sinologist who later occupied the
chair of Chinese studies at Oxford University (Latourette 1929:382),
expressed in 1890 what was the sentiment of many:
Oh, for the day when the native poets of China shall arise in
their strength to purge our hymn books of the watery stuff
they contain and give us soul-inspiring hymns to rouse the
church into a blaze of enthusiasm for Christ (Soothill
1890:227).
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 93
Problems of Musical Reception: "If you don't want good
tunes spoiling,... "
Teaching singing to Chinese converts who were poor and often
barely literate, and for whom singing with a group of people was a
completely new experience, was one of the tasks which missionaries
regularly undertook in their churches and mission points, along with
evangelism and catechism of believers. A firm belief -- rooted in a
Protestant tradition of congregational worship reaching back to the
Reformation -- that singing was the birthright and calling of all believers,
led missionaries to expend much effort in this direction. One contributor to
the Chinese Recorder remarks that "it is only with the greatest difficulty that
the average Chinaman can learn even one of our tunes" (Anon. 1887:402),
and another refers to "missionaries whose ears are sadly pained by the way
our Chinese congregations sing tunes" (Richard 1891 :384).
The primary problem, as Soothill pointed out, related to two pitches
ofthe Western diatonic scale:
Here let me lay down an axiom for universal guidance in
choosing tunes that are suited to the native voice; if you
don't want good tunes spoiling never choose one that cannot
be played entirely on the black keys of the piano, or one that
at least has no sustained notes on any of the white keys. The
Chinese cannot, except after long and careful training... sing
a tune in which the major fourth or seventh appears,
especially if it be a sustained note (Soothill 1890:224).14
At the same time, missionaries noted that "the pentatonic tunes are sung
with much greater correctness and heartiness and are more conducive to the
spirit of true praise and worship than tunes in the full scale" (Shipway
1901:626).
Even more problematic than melody was the concept of harmony,
which had long been a defining feature of Protestant hymn singing in
Western countries. One account described a man who heard singing in four
parts for the first time, and who "was so emotionally stirred with horror that
it seemed as if his hair stood straight on end" (Wiant 1965:95). Wiant
noted that "a Chinese ear does not seem to enjoy the simultaneous sounding
of different pitches, but revels in the simultaneous sounding of various tone
colors" through the blending of different instruments (Wiant 1965:5).
One solution that the missionaries might have adopted was the use
of Chinese instruments and instrumentation in Church services. While
some contributors to the Chinese Recorder recommended this, European
and Chinese Christians strongly resisted this proposal. It would appear that

94 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
many Europeans had as little appreciation for Chinese music as Chinese did
for Western music:
Ask a European for a definition of Chinese music and he
would probably reply, "Chinese music is a combination or
succession of sounds, having very decidedly the property of
pitch, so arranged as to distract the ear; the distress derived
from Chinese music arising from its exciting excruciating
sensations and raising painful mental emotions" of, say, a
hot summer's night made hideous by a feline chorus, the
bass being supplied by one's own watch-dog tearing his
throat out to scare the serenaders away (Soothill 1890:222).
While noting this response, Soothill argued that if trumpets, harps and
cymbals were used in Jewish services, and violins and flutes in English
services, then perhaps Chinese Christians should use "the instruments
THEY TAKE DELIGHT IN" in their own Church services (Soothill
1890:227).
While a few shared his views, many missionaries continue to regard
Chinese musical traditions as "poor and paltry" (Sheffield 1909: 188). And
foreign and Chinese Christians polled in the 1909 "Symposium of Opinion
Upon Church Music" agreed that "anything more than a good organ" was
not needed, and that Chinese musical instruments were inappropriate for
Church services due to their "irreverent associations" (Bitton 1909:204­
205). Thus the missionaries continued to prefer the organ and harmonium,
while Chinese felt their own musical instruments to be too closely
associated with unchristian amusements (including, no doubt, both 'singing
girls' and the operas performed at temple fairs) to be appropriate for use in a
sacred setting.
In this period, the Chinese Recorder served as a bulletin of
information for missionaries on usable music for congregational singing.
Reviews of new hymns and hymn books often commented on the Chinese
response to different melodies, and missionaries shared successful hymn
settings. They reported the results of their experiments with Chinese tunes,
and of their adaptations of Western pentatonic tunes, both sacred and
secular. 15 For example, Richard noted that many American gospel tunes
like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Steal Away to Jesus" were written
in a pentatonic scale, and thus,easier for a Chinese congregation to learn and
sing (Richard 1890:310). Because of this, gospel music became an
important part of the repertoire of Western music accepted in China.
In some cases, the Chinese Recorder identified or reproduced
collections of traditional Chinese music, including Buddhist and Confucian
chants and folk-songs. While pioneers in this area, such as Timothy and
:1
;
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 95
i.
11
"I
:j
'1 Mary Richard and W.E. Soothill, were enthusiastic advocates of the use of
~ authentic Chinese music, many missionaries approached material from
~
51 native sources cautiously, applying the caveat that if used, it must be free of
J "idolatrous or other evil associations" (Bonsey 1909:285). Still, some
l
'i,
missionaries got caught up in the project of collecting "Chinese melodies."
1 One hymnwriter described her adventurous practice of "listening for tunes
'Ii1 in temples, in the country, on the city streets, and so on," and recording
them in a notebook for future use (Anderson 1934: 107-8). Among the
~.
'~
melodies that she acquired and adapted for a Christian service were a
;~
northern patriotic song, a melody borrowed from a Buddhist Mass for the
Dead, the tune sung by an old waterwheel, a shepherd's song, a work song
sung by coffin-bearers, a Tibetan tribal melody, and a Confucian chant
(which was transformed into a "Grace before Meat" [sic» (Anderson
1934:108-9).
It appears that missionaries sometimes inadvertently borrowed
melodies that held disturbing associations for Chinese Christians. In certain
cases, these tunes (like colloquial Chinese style) were deemed to be 'low
class.' In a 1901 article a Chinese Christian objected to the use of 'Chinese
native songs' for Christian services:
... it is really demoralizing and is unfit for religious purposes
when the song sung conjures up by association the many
bad and sometimes immoral ideas with which such songs are
associated... [these] songs are never sung by gentlemen, and
are, as a rule, used in theatres and sung by the lower classes
of people. Even if the songs are not connected with immoral
ideas, yet its music drags us down to the sensual and
material phase of life. I hope that missionaries will take
special note of this (Wang 1901:339).
One way to avoid the problem was, of course, to compose new pentatonic
tunes to replace Western melodies. Examples of such newly-composed
melodies were frequently printed in the Chinese Recorder, and thereby
disseminated throughout the various mission fields. As well, sometimes
Western melodies were altered to avoid semitones, as for example in
Couling's 1895 Pentatonic Tunebook, which recast "Silent Night," for
example, in pentatonic form. In many cases Chinese singing the hymns
would adjust Western melodies to the contours and inflections of Chinese
song (Walker 1906:498-89).16
Some missionaries also noted affinities between Chinese song and
the pre-polyphonic music of the Western Church. One Anglican Church
replaced its regular liturgy with a remarkable musical composition that
demonstrated to one missionary "the inherent and striking similarity
between native Chinese song and the well-developed system which we calI
96 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
Gregorian" (Hammond 1920: 180). The melodies of this "Mass of the Holy
Cross," composed by Mr. Chiu Chang-nien, a former magistrate and
scholar, were closely molded to the natural "rhythm and cadence" of
Chinese speech, but also owed a great deal to Chinese musical forms. Each
secti<m of the Mass had its own distinct musical features: the Kyrie echoed
the theatrical music of the Tang dynasty, the Credo and Lord's Prayer
resembled Taoist chants, the Gloria in Excelsis was "done after the manner
of modem patriotic songs", and the Benedictus evoked "the wordless
refrains of boatmen doing heavy work" (Hammond 1920:181). The music
was performed with no instrumental accompaniment, though Hammond
notes that organ accompaniment could be added to "make the music more
conventionally beautiful to Westerners" (Hammond 1920: 184).
Transmitting Western Tonality and Harmony
For many missionaries, however, the adoption of Chinese melodic
patterns was as much a practical strategy of accommodation as it was an
impulse towards indigenization of the hymnody. While pentatonic melodies
were a useful expedient to encourage hymn-singing in China, the long­
range goal remained the transmission of "good sacred music."
c. S. Champness, who frequently contributed pentatonic melodies
to the Chinese Recorder, wrote in 1905:
It is not necessary to use only pentatonic melodies. It is
possible to train our scholars, by dint of great patience and
perseverance, to sing the difficult soundsfah and te correctly
(Champness 1905:560).
"Patience and perseverance" of this sort was directed towards training in
singing Western music. Mary Farnham saw the effort as "broaden[ing] the
standard of music in China" and "elevat[ing] the Chinese in religion and
civilization" (1906:216). From a "Symposium of Opinion Upon Church
Music" came the conclusion that:
... the training of the young for the full development of the
Chinese voice and the ultimate standardization of Chinese
music with that of the West must still go on (Bitton
1909:212).
Missionaries were deeply committed to instilling in the Chinese an
appreciation for full Western tonality and harmony, and ultimately for the
music of the Western musical canon. Whatever the difficulties for the
Chinese, it is clear from the proliferation of four-part hymn settings from
the late nineteenth century and onward that musical education from the
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 97
missionaries' point of view meant imparting to the Chinese a Western
musical vocabulary.
While much musical education took place in the churches, probably
the bulk of formal training in Western musical practice occurred in schools,
colleges, and universities, and many of the articles in the Chinese Recorder
dealing with the practicalities of teaching music to the Chinese come from
missionaries who taught in these institutions. I? Accounts of the beginning
and gradual growth of a Chinese choral tradition within the Christian
schools and institutions of higher learning begin to appear in the Chinese
Recorder around the tum of the century. The first such is an review of the
commencement exercises at North China College, Tungchow in 1898, an
event that featured (among other things) a performance by the college Glee
Club of the "Hallelujah" Chorus from Handel's Messiah, which evoked the
following response:
To every newcomer, this is a revelation -- a revelation of
aesthetic capacities on the part of these so-called dull natures
wholly unbelieved, and for some such thing as this,
unbelievable... After this, let no one be disheartened. The
capacity is there; it only needs to be developed (Kingman
1898:513).
In 1901, the leading schools in Foochow organized an annual choral
festival with the stated object "to foster and develop among the Chinese a
love and desire for good sacred music" (Anon. 1904:268). The first such
gathering on Easter Monday, 1901, saw three performances before
audiences approaching 2000 people:
The music was very simple and entirely in unison, there was
no separation between the choir and the congregation; there
was no conductor and there had been no rehearsal
beforehand... (Pakenham-Walsh 1919:424).
While the initial event appears to have focused primarily on hymn singing,
over the years the Foochow Choral Union Festival became the flagship of
all such festivals. It developed ambitious programs of anthems and major
choral works, performed by choirs made up of singers chosen from sixteen
leading schools, colleges, and universities from the surrounding district. ls
Similar annual festivals at Kuling and Nanking developed around
productions of major oratorios such as Handel's Messiah (Geller
1916:426), Mendelssohn's Elijah (Geller 1917:262), and Haydn's Creation
(Anon. 1936:537). Records of such events reflect the progressive
expansion of formal musical education with a strongly Western orientation,
which occurred in colleges and universities throughout China in the four
decades before World War II.
98 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
Creating an Indigenous Chinese Hymnody: "A Nation's
Hymnology Must Have its own Style..."
. The period of social upheaval after the turn of the century, which
saw the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in the revolution of 1911 and the
awakening of nationalist movements directed against foreign influence,
Manchu rule, and the hegemony of the literati, was also a period during
which the Chinese Church began more and more to articulate its own claims
to self-determination and the right to define its own identity. This
movement lent even greater urgency to the project of creating an indigenous
Chinese hymnody. In 1911, William Munn of the Anglican Mission,
dismissed in one stroke nearly a century of missionary hymnology:
Up to the present it cannot be said that there is such a thing
as a Chinese hymnology. A nation's hymnology must be
produced by the nation itself, for outside sources can never
thus adequately express the nation's religious genius. A
nation's hymnology must have its own style, its own
thoughts and aspirations, its own devotion and religious
fervor expressed in its own manner (Munn 1911:701).
With the transfer of control from missions to churches between 1913 and
1922, an autonomous and unified federation of Chinese churches,
representing the large majority of Protestant Christians in the country.,
assumed the direction of its own affairs.
Chao Tzu-Chen (1888-1979), a leading educator, writer, poet, and
outspoken Christian nationalist,19 articulated their goals in a 1927 article
entitled "The Chinese Church Realizes Itself':
The Church transplanted from the West seems to us to be
entirely buried under a mass of forms, traditions and
customs. We want to brush aside all these things in order to
make manifest the essence of Christianity, so that we may
accept what we can, discard what we should discard,
improve what can be bettered, and create what we need
(Chao 1927: 302-3).
Throughout this period, Chinese Christian writers and musIcIans were
contributing significantly to the composition and critical study of their own
hymnody, both independently and in cooperation with missionaries, and
many of the hymn books published after 1900 reflect the contributions and
the growing influence of these authors. 2o
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 99
While great works of Western sacred music were performed with
increasing frequency in China, congregational singing also continued to
develop as an important aspect of Protestant ritual. Despite denominational
differences, Christian churches recognized that shared music could be a
force for unity in the Protestant effort in China. As Bonsey observed in
1909, "no matter how widely the church may be divided in doctrine and in
ritual she is practically one in her service of praise" (Bonsey 1909:83). The
'":i
d. impulse towards unifying ritual forms found one expression in the
i;~
production in 1936 of a shared hymn book, Hymns of Universal Praise,
i.i after years of interdenominational collaboration (Fitch 1935a; 1935b; 1935c;
<; 1935d).
:,
This project was initiated as a broad cooperative effort of Chinese
scholars and missionaries from six leading Protestant church associations:
the Chung Hua Shen Kung Hui (Chinese Episcopalian Churches), the
Church of Christ in China (representing Presbyterian, Congregational, and
Reformed traditions), the East China Baptist Convention, the Methodist
Episcopal Churches, North and South, and the North China Congregational
Church (Fitch 1935a:544). Together these organizations represented
twenty-five denominations and three quarters of the membership of Chinese
Protestant churches (Lacy 1948:197).
Many of the issues identified· above continued to plague the
interdenominational committee, and two of the compilers analyzed the "keen
differences" that existed among the committee members (Yang and Fitch
1934). Some committee members preferred traditional hymns, while others
argued that the hymnal should be progressive and include new hymns that
expressed "new religious experiences" (Yang and Fitch 1934:294). Not
surprisingly for this period, some participants took a nationalist stance,
arguing that "in a Chinese Church, all the hymns should be purely Chinese,
both in poetry and music," while others stressed the internationalism of
Christianity, which they felt should be expressed in a musical canon that
included the hymns of many countries (Yang and Fitch 1934:294).
As well, debates continued regarding hymn lyrics. The pairing of
melody and lyrics, for example, continued \0 he a problem. Some relt that
the lyrics should be independent of the mLlsic (which made the literal
translation of Western hymns easier), while others (more musically aware,
perhaps) held that "the wording should be strictly adapted to the music."
The adoption of Mandarin as the national language had made it possible to
write hymn lyrics that "could be understood by all," but despite this, some
still preferred literary Chinese, which they felt offered greater freedom of
expression. Some believed that Chinese rules of rhyme should be
followed, while others held that the translator should "use the same system
of rhyming as is found in the original western hymn" (Yang and Fitch
1934:296).
r
100 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
With respect to music, opinion remained divided on a number of
issues. Some recommended the rhythmical freedom of plain chant, while
others insisted on the "orderliness and symmetry" of regular rhythms,
which they thought help people "learn and memorize" the hymns more
easily (Yang and Fitch 1934:296-97). Some believed that all tunes should
be in a Chinese style or of Chinese origin, while others believed that
Chinese should be introduced to dignified, "high class" [presumably
European] music which expressed the "loftiest ideas of worship" (Yang and
Fitch 1934:297). Some cited European precedent for the use of Chinese
folk-song melodies, while others argued that folk-songs should be strictly
excluded since "the association of ideas called up by folk-songs are too bad,
so bad that it detracts from the sacredness of worship" (Yang and Fitch
1934:297-98). Some recommended that all Chinese tunes be sung in
unison, while others argued that limited harmony should be used (Yang and
Fitch 1934:299).
Despite these difficulties, on completion of Hymns of Universal
Praise Fitch announced that the "problems that seemed insurmountable have
been cleared away." He describes the hymnal as the "first truly indigenous
Chinese hymnal," and claimed that the hymns combined "literary
expression with more simplicity of style, so that both the educated and
uneducated may feel the inspiration of what is sung" (Fitch 1935a:546).
The committee also prepared aids to help ministers develop musical
appreciation in their congregations, including a series of recordings of the
hymns sung in "the universal Mandarin dialect" (Fitch 1935b:629. 21
Within a year of its release, Hymns of Universal Praise had sold
nearly 200,000 copies throughout China, and for more than forty years, it
was the most widely used hymnal in Chinese churches inside and outside of
China (Sheng 1964:193; Cheung 1989:17). From a total of 512 hymns
selected for this publication, 453 were translations from Western sources
and 62 were original Chinese compositions (Sheng 1964: 189). The
musical content comprised 548 tunes, 72 of which were Chinese and 2
Japanese (Sheng 1964:191). Not surprisingly, many of the Western hymns
were "gospel songs translated from the treasury of the West" (Sheng
1964: 193). Since much gospel music was already written in a pentatonic
scale, these melodies represented a convergence of Western and Eastern
musical taste.
The large proportion of Western hymns suggests that many
congregations had by this time assimilated these hymns, and identified them
as their own. But even these Western hymns had undergone a process of
'indigenization,' for two Chinese Christians (Ernest Y. L. Yang and Dr.
Timothy Lew) had carefully revised all translated lyrics, and the resulting
lyrics had a decidedly "Chinese character" (Fitch 1935d:768). The smaller
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 101
number of Chinese compositions, which drew on traditional and
contemporary Chinese poetical and musical forms, reflected a relatively
recent and emerging repertory, one that fit well with the growing trend
towards the 'contextualization' of Christianity in Chinese culture.
One remarkable example of the new hymns was Chao Tzu-chen's
contribution to Hymns of Universal Praise (No. 56). In this hymn, Chao
made effective use of the tenth century melody Ju Meng Ling, which is
associated with the zu poetic form (Wiant 1965:72). This classical genre
employs thirty-three characters in each stanza, following a precise sequence
of even and oblique (ping and ce) tones. This hymn first appeared in Chao
and Wiant's Hymnsfor the People (1931), a collection of fifty-four hymns
in the new Mandarin vernacular. Wiant describes the hymn as "the very
first attempt on the part of a Chinese scholar to express Christian experience
in purely Chinese forms and by the use of purely Chinese cultural
expressions"(Wiant 1965:72).
Conclusions
As we have demonstrated, Christian missionaries in China could not
easily transmit Western musical and poetic practices to Chinese Christians.
Indeed, they early recognized that they must accommodate their musical
offerings to Chinese aesthetic taste if they were to develop an emotionally
powerful hymnody. To this end, missionaries like C. S. Champness,
Chauncey Goodrich, Mary and Timothy Richard, and W. E. Soothill
closely analyzed the linguistic and musical differences that made the
transmission of Western music difficult, and encouraged the creation of a
Chinese hymnody that was deeply rooted in Chinese poetical and musical
norms. The upsurge of Chinese nationalism accelerated the process of
indigenization, and adoption of Mandarin as the new national language
resolved many of the issues that had previously prevented the creation of a
unified hymnody. The missionaries and Chinese Christians were quick to
explore its potential, and the success of Hymns of Universal Praise is in
large part due to the new respectability of vernacular style, coupled with the
unifying power of a shared spoken (and sung) language.
Some authors might view the indigenized hymnody that developed
in China by the 1930s as a form of resistance to the imposition of Western
hegemonic forms. Sheng, for example, argues that the "native Christian
exhibited his rebellious spirit in the hymnic lines" (Sheng 1964:458). We
have sought to demonstrate, however, that this creative work emerged out
of a two-sided flow of cultural meanings and cultural forms, in which both
missionaries and Chinese Christians actively directed the development of
this musical genre. In the process, Chinese Christians simultaneously
inherited many enduring works from the poetic and musical heritage of
 102 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
world Christianity, and created new musical forms shaped by the aesthetic
visions of their own artists. The synthesis that they achieved thus entailed
both a coexistence and a blending of traditions.
University of Alberta
Notes
1 With the reopening of churches in China, after the Cultural Revolution, a
new hymn book, Hymns of Praise, was published in 1983 by the China
Christian Council and the National Committee of the Three-Self Movement
of Protestant Churches in China. Nearly three quarters of the hymns in this
book are drawn from Hymns of Universal Praise. (Reynolds and Price
1987: 119; Cheung 1989: 124ff)
2 This period in Chinese Christian history has been well documented in
studies by Bays (1996), Latourette (1929), Lovett (1899), and others.
These authors pay scant attention to a matter that was of consuming interest
to many of the missionaries, however -- namely, the question of developing
a hymnody for China.
3 In a parallel case, Seeger (1987, 1991) relates that the Suya Indians of
central Brazil construct and tell their own history by appropriating and
performing songs acquired from outside the community. "By taking and
performing the songs of other groups, the Suya incorporate some of the
power and knowledge of those groups for the benefit of their own
community" (Seeger 1991 :32).
4 Recent ethnomusicological scholarship has brought similar issues to the
fore, identifying music with resistance to political or cultural domination
(see Coplan 1985; Erlmann 1985; Kivnick 1990). Michelle Kisliuk, for
example, describes how BaAka pygmies of the Central African Republic
recontextualized missionary hymns by incorporating them as a "god dance"
into the BaAka dance repertory (Kisliuk 1996:31).
5 The language issue troubled missionaries as early as the mid-nineteenth
century, not only with regard to the language of hymns, but also in relation
to the translation of the Bible and other printed materials. In Shanghai,
several of the missionary societies that had recently begun work in China
formed a cooperative venture that led to a translation of the New Testament
that was completed in 1850. When they turned to work on translation of
the Old Testament, however, the committee disagreed over the question of
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 103
language. This led the team to split, with ~ne group producing a rendering
of the Old Testament in the literary or WIn-li style, while the other used
ordinary language that could be read by people with limited education
(Carlson 1974:58-9). While the Shanghai translation primarily was
intended for the literati, the reality was that for many decades to come the
response to Christianity came primarily from the poor and the lower
classes, most of whom had little or no education. As a result, subsequent
efforts tended to focus on producing translations in China's regional
languages, including Mandarin.
6 For discussions of the indigenization of Chinese and other hymnodies,
see: T. Richard, "Thoughts on Christian Missions" (1880); M. Richard,
"Chinese Music" (1890); Popley, The Music of India (1921); Weman,
African Music and the Church in Africa (1960); Jones, African Hymnody in
Christian Worship (1976); Friesen, A Methodology in the Development of
Indigenous Hymnody (1982); Chenoweth, "Spare Them Western Music!"
(1984); and King, Pathways in Christian Music Communication: The Case
of the Senufo of Cote d'Ivoire (1989). Babiracki (1985) and Nettl (1985)
note some cases of indigenizing initiatives in formerly missionized locales.
7 Sheng notes that other groups, such as the Lutherans, "drew freely from
its contents" in the following years (1964: 193). Many churches outside
China still use the revised edition of this hymnal, which was published in
Hong Kong in 1977, and which retains three quarters of the hymns from
the 1936 publication. As noted above, Hymns of Praise, printed in 1983
with the sanction of the Chinese government, also relied heavily on the
same source. See also Cheung (1989).
8 For example, one mISSIonary translated a phrase from the American
gospel hymn, "The Sweet By-and-by," a euphemism for heaven, with a
Chinese phrase that might be rendered "The Sugary Future" (Bitton
1909:200).
9 One Chinese contributor to a "Symposium of Opinion on Church Music"
deplored them as "the most inferior class of Chinese doggerels, . . . only
suited for illiterate Chinese" (Bitton 1909:196).
10 The missionaries produced two innovations. First, they used the
alphabet to develop romanized transcriptions for a number of Chinese
regional languages (sometimes misleadingly described as 'dialects').
Missionaries in Fujian Province also devised means to write regional
spoken languages using characters, often inventing characters to represent
words that had no written equivalent in literary Chinese. A Foochow
missionary noted that this "use of authorized characters in an unauthorized
 104 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1998
way" offended the literati, but defended the practice as "necessary if we are
to produce Christian literature in a form that the people can understand"
(Champness 1906:674-675). As a consequence of these innovations,
missionaries could publish "excellent idiomatic hymns" in colloquial
languages (Champness 1906:674).
11 Religious practItIoners of China's popular religious culture also
employed this strategy in their oral teachings, drawing on the 'deep
vocabulary' of written texts to express religious concepts (DeBernardi
1996).
12 Sheng demonstrates that the lyrics of many translated hymns were
saturated with allusions to classical Chinese texts and popular Chinese
culture, a fact that he attributes to the influence of the missionary­
translator's Chinese assistant (Sheng 1964: 109). From Confucianism the
Chinese Protestants derived a vocabulary of human relationships and moral
values, including an emphasis on fIlial devotion (Sheng 1964: 195-245).
From Taoism came phrases describing both the evanescence of life, but also
the vocabulary describing ascent to heaven, life after death, and immortality
(Sheng 1964:246-269). Terms for 'hell' and its sufferings derived from
Buddhism, as did terms for salvation that are based on the metaphor of God
as a raft or ferry that helps humans cross the sea of suffering (Sheng
1964:270-343). Finally, lyric writers commonly wove popular proverbs
into hymns (Sheng 1964:344-369).
13 Walker, who was particularly attentive to these issues, learned after
many years of doing translations that, despite his efforts, he had not been
following Chinese rules of tonal rhyme. He noted with mingled chagrin
and amusement that Chinese Christians had not corrected his erroneous
rhymes since they believed that his unwitting 'innovations' represented an
inferior 'English' style of poetics (Walker 1913:114).
14 Similar references to the problem of the fourth (jah) and seventh (ti) and
semitones are found in Richard 1889:580-81, C.E.C. 1891:385, and
Champness 1905:560. ­ (Fitch 1935b:629)..
15 One missionary observed, with reference to tunes such as "Auld Lang
Syne" and "Ye Banks and Braes", that there "are obvious objections on the
score of association of ideas" (Bonsey 1909:285). Presumably such
associations did not trouble the Chinese Christians who sang them at their
ceremonies (including funerals).
Charter and DeBernardi: Chinese Christian Hymnody 105
16 For examples of the experiments with musical arrangements and
adaptations reported in the Chinese Recorder, see Edkins 1887:224-25
(lyrics written by a Chinese Christian to accompany a well-known
European melody); Richards 1889 (Chinese melodies adapted for Christian
hymns); Walker 1902:444 (an arrangement of Adeste Fideles); C. E. C.
1905:297-9 (selections from a pentatonic tune-book published by the
Baptist Mission in Shantung), Champness 1905:562 (pentatonic melodies);
Champness 1906:92-4 (new melodies for well-known hymns), Walker
1906:496 (experiments with pentatonic music); Champness 1911 :45
(pentatonic tunes); Champness 1919:835-6 (alternate music for Scripture
Choruses).
17 Notable among these were J.E. Walker and C.S. Champness, the
musical writings of the latter in the Chinese Recorder exceeding the number
of any other contributor.
18 The growth of this event is traced in the Chinese Recorder: Anon.
1904:268; Lloyd 1905:314-5; Anon. 1906:334-44; Anon. 1907:402;
Pakenham-Walsh 1919:423-25. The 1906 festival boasted a choir of 800
singers!
19 One source refers to Chao as the "Robert Browning of the [Chinese]
Church" (Fitch 1935a: 546).
20 For a detailed survey of Christian hymnals published in this period, see
Sheng 1964: 148-52.
21 The written companion to the hymnal contained "the history of about
120 of the most interesting and inspiring hymns in the new hymnal,"
including some of the indigenous hymns, with the aim of "educating our
Christians in the background of Christian hymnology, with its story of
heroism in personal experience, of great movements within the Church, of
persecution without and the significance of song in the life of the Church"
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