Jesus Shall Reign

We sang "Jesus shall reign" on Sunday and ever since this post has been stewing in my brain. Until I went to St. Andrew's in 1998 I had always sung these words to DUKE STREET. In The Book of Praise (1997) however, the words are married to the tune WARRINGTON. I find myself humming the second tune more easily than the first when I think of the text these days and that seemed rather strange to me given the fact that I have spent more decades of my life singing DUKE STREET.

This pondering led me down the metrical road. I'm not talking kilometers here! Of course, the text is in the same meter no matter what the tune. (This is 8888 or Long Meter.) My focus has been on the tune and how the melodic flow seems to emphasize different words.

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
does its successive journeys run;
his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
till moons shall wax and wane no more.

(When you sing it to WARRINGTON in 3/4 time, the bold type is what you get for syllabic emphasis.)

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
does his successive journeys run;
His Kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

When you sing it to DUKE STREET in 4/4 time, the bold type is what you get for syllabic emphasis.)

Quite honestly, I was surprised at the results when I went through the words. I thought there would be more difference in the emphasis in the words between the 2 tunes, especially given the different time signatures. So maybe, in the end, it just comes down to which tune you are accustomed to singing at any given time. Oh, incidentally, I found another tune used for these words in The Hymnary of the United Church of Canada which was published in 1930 - old to us now, but then it was a brand new hymnal for a brand new denomination! That tune is RIMINGTON, a tune which is new to me.