The tune’s strength also comes from the refrain.
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This descending motion from “do” to the temporary repose of “sol” is an ideal metaphor for the incarnation. Moreover, on the downbeat of measure 6, the alto takes the note that the soprano descends toward. We also hear it implied harmonically in measures 4 and 16. The tune’s strength comes in part from an insistent descent to the fifth scale degree, or “sol.” We hear this in the soprano in measures 1, 2, 7–8, 12, and 14 (in 25% of the measures). It is the tune of a hymn that does this more than anything else, and the tune to this hymn, ADESTE FIDELES, is among the most memorable of those surveyed on this site. When God asks us to sing together, we know he does so, in part, to embed his word in our hearts. Its text is known by heart by millions of Christians in many languages. Yet, this hymn is among the most popular Christmas carols for Protestants and Catholics alike.
![oh come all ye faithful oh come all ye faithful](https://www.christmasmusicsongs.com/images-lyrics/o-come-all-ye-faithful-lyrics.jpg)
That the poem is neither strophic, metrical, nor rhymed should not surprise us when we realize that the poet was not at all Reformed, nor did he share the Reformers’ sensibilities about congregational song-in fact, he was an English Jacobite in exile. Sing the first two lines of stanza 1 followed by the first two lines of stanza 2 and the contrast is evident. As will be clear to anyone who has sung all the stanzas of the song, they are not uniform in number of syllables per line. So the poem is neither rhymed nor metrical. This bears no internal regularity nor comparison to the first three lines of the next stanza: None of the following stanzas rhyme any better either. “Faithful” does not rhyme with “triumphant,” “Bethlehem,” “him,” “angels,” or “Lord,” nor do any of those words rhyme with one another.
Oh come all ye faithful free#
For those to whom it has occurred, please feel free to skip over the following proof: Perhaps neither of these shortcomings in the text has occurred to some readers. Nor is it easily to be set in a strophic way. We must bear this in mind when considering the hymn above which is neither rhymed nor metrical (in its Latin original no more than in the translation above).
![oh come all ye faithful oh come all ye faithful](https://www.musicnotes.com/images/productimages/mtd/MN0059863.gif)
But God would not have commanded us to sing, so that the Word of Christ would dwell in us, had merely reading metrical rhymed poetry done the trick just as well. We find it easy to remember those texts because their rhyme and meter fix the texts in our minds with almost as much strength as the tune itself fixes them there. We find it easy to sing our songs because we are given short simple tunes for the lengthy texts.
![oh come all ye faithful oh come all ye faithful](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RkS57yCIk7E/maxresdefault.jpg)
Setting rhymed metrical poetry in a strophic way is central to the mnemonic success of congregational song. The strophic form allows a single simple tune to set many stanzas of text, so that we sing “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound” to the same music as “Through many dangers, toils, and snares.” And hymns are metrical rhymed poems. In part one of this site, we rehearse the reasons why the Reformers led their congregations in the singing of strophic hymns as opposed to other existing forms of music. Oh, come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord. Frederick Oakeley, 1841Īddressed to the faithful, angels, and Jesus Oh, come, all ye faithful, Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful John Francis Wade, 1751 trans.