10 - 0 for Montgomery

During our discussion and evaluation yesterday of the Top 11, 2011 new songs I kept on asking myself, “What defines a good, solid text?” Thanks to James Montgomery I now have a pretty good idea. Although I would love to quote all of it I’ll highlight the main parts based on our discussion. 1) A text should have a distinct subject so that the reader is not confused in the least by the meaning (158). 2) It should have a complete thought and flow so that you cannot remove anything without “injuring the unity of the piece (158). 3) “The reader should know when the strain is complete […] while defects and superfluities should be felt by him as annoyances.” (158) Montgomery then really drives his idea of a good text when he contrasts it with a poor, “They (song writers) have begun apparently with the only idea in their mind at the time; another (idea), with little relationship to the former, has been forced upon them by a refractory rhyme; a third became necessary to eke out a verse, a fourth to begin one; and so on, till, having compiled a sufficient number of stanzas of so many lines, and lines of so many syllables, the operation has been suspended.” (158-159) Ouch! That is not even the end of Montgomery’s “rant” it goes on for about a half a page more! Finally though, Montgomery seals the idea of a good text, resonating with what we have said in class, when he writes, “how contrary a character, how transcendently superior in value as well as in influence, are those hymns, which, once heard, are remembered without effort, remembered involuntarily, yet remembered with renewed and increasing delight at every revival!” (159) And for those who think this is written biasedly out of a love of hymns, Montgomery was writing in a time when his only options for church music were the hymn and the psalm. This one is all about text. And Montgomery scored!