In a former chapter of my life, I worked part time for a music publishing outfit that specializes in resources for church musicians. My role was to edit and prepare musical scores of choral anthems and service music in notation software, in advance of their being uploaded to a catalogue database accessible to subscribers.
At one point, my boss asked that I prepare an edition of a missa brevis by Franz Joseph Haydn—including the Kyrie, Gloria in excelsis Deo, Sanctus & Benedictus qui venit, and Agnus Dei—but “don’t worry about including the Creed, because nobody sings it in the liturgy anymore.”
Much as we may bristle (and indeed as I did then) at this blanket dismissal, it’s undeniable that he had a point, after a fashion. Whether in the context of a choral high Mass or Eucharist, or congregational missa cantata, it is normative in most places in the Episcopal Church for the Nicene Creed to be spoken, rather than sung, in the liturgy.
Some of this is undoubtedly because of the inheritance and limitations of our authorized musical resources: Hymnal 1940, in its four musical settings of the Communion Service, offers two congregational settings of the Creed (one adapted from John Merbecke in the First Service, and the other adapted by Charles Winfred Douglas for his Missa Marialis in the Fourth Service). The 1960 Supplement providing one additional setting (in the Eighth Communion Service, a setting in Mode V from the exquisite Missa de Angelis, again by Winfred Douglas).
Hymnal 1982 offers three unison settings of the Creed:
- S103, a lightly adapted version of the Winfred Douglas plainsong Missa Marialis setting from the 1940 book, with the traditional “I believe” text;
- S104, a simplification and adaptation by Mason Martens of S103 to fit the “We believe” text;
- S105, a more metrical, “contemporary” non-plainsong setting of the “We believe” text by 20th century American composer Calvin Hampton.
One further setting (S361) can be found in the Appendix to the Accompaniment Edition, an adaptation by the late Bruce Ford of the Missa de Angelis (Tone V) from the 1940/1960 Eighth Communion Service to the contemporary “We believe” text.
It is unfortunate that none of the three plainsong settings in H82 include organ accompaniments, which are an elegant and moving feature of their counterparts in H40. They also all suffer from the questionable editorial decision to treat the word baptism in song as a two-syllable word, which inevitably leads to a false stress on the latter syllable (“tism”). Gentle re-editing of the textual underlay to three syllables/notes instead of two can readily ameliorate this fault.
Wonder, Love, and Praise includes one musical setting of the Creed (#849), by Owen Burdick, which is set in four-part harmony with the following instruction: “The congregation monotones on G throughout the Creed. Parts may be done by choir or organ.” This same supplemental hymnal contains a hymn-paraphrase by Sylvia Dunstan (#768, “I believe in God Almighty”) paired with a lovely Irish Gaelic melody, but this is a paraphrase and not the authorized liturgical text of the Creed.
El Himnario contains a singular setting at #453, “Creo en Dios,” paired with a Puerto Rican folk melody, which again is a metrical-hymn paraphrase and not the liturgical text. No settings of the Creed, paraphrase or otherwise, appear in any of the other hymnal supplements of the Episcopal Church, including the two Enriching our Music volumes specifically created to offer, in the words of their collective subtitles, “More … Settings for the Eucharist.”
Congregations desiring to sing the Creed in the context of a sung Eucharist encounter a limited array of musical options—compare to the number of musical settings in H82 of the Memorial Acclamation for Eucharistic Prayer A (four) or Prayer B (three—and this text, properly speaking liturgically, is not even a Memorial Acclamation), to say nothing of the numerous options for singing the Kyrie, Gloria in excelsis Deo, Sanctus, or the multitudinous Fraction Anthems.
On its face, this lack of options in musical settings should not in itself prove a detriment, as our prevailing cultural “tyranny of choice” in matters liturgical can often prove to be a manner of hindrance to vibrant congregational liturgical singing. Much the same as with the sung Lord’s Prayer, we really do only need one good chant setting for the Creed to be sung effectively—and that found at S103 / S104 is, in the words of Winfred Douglas in the Hymnal 1940 Companion, “the ancient melody” of the Nicene Creed for the Western Church.
Nevertheless, the relative volume of musical options presents an implicit communication of emphasis from our authorized musical resources, which would appear to be that the congregational singing of the Creed is not a liturgical priority for worshiping communities (whereas, apparently, the singing of a Fraction Anthem is a must-have).
Anecdotally, in my career as a church musician working in the Episcopal Church (and a frequent visitor of many other parishes), this has been borne out. Only one of the eight parishes with which I’ve been associated over the years has chanted the Creed (congregationally) with any regularity (or at all)—using the Missa de Angelis setting as found in H40.
One parish with which I’m familiar has a longstanding practice of using the S105 setting as a choral anthem on Trinity Sunday, while still having the congregation speak the Creed in its usual liturgical spot: a surefire way to make your church-music professor cry. Similarly, in many places where choral Eucharists or high Masses are a normal fixture of liturgical life, the composed choral settings of the Credo are frequently omitted in favor of (usually) the spoken Creed.
The party-line rationale for that decision is to put the words of the Creed in the mouths of the entire worshiping body. But again, in an otherwise fully sung liturgy, why not sing it? Here at the School of Theology in Sewanee, at our weekly principal Eucharist, congregational singing of the Creed happens sporadically—as this service takes place on a weekday rather than a Sunday, following the rubrics of the Prayer Book, the Creed only appears on principal feasts, not frequently enough to engender any sense of regularity of pattern to the practice.
From a faith-formation standpoint, I believe this is a lamentable missed opportunity. The prevailing counter-narrative is most certainly that in a culture of decreased musical literacy, the singing of this relatively long prose text will prove a hindrance and detriment to the proverbial “people in the pews” to the end that they will stand silently and not utter the words at all. (American Episcopalians—particularly men—do seem to have a hangup with, and resistance to, singing in church, but that is a problematic topic for another essay.)
Going back at least to St Augustine of Hippo, there is a witness to, and realization of, the fact that the singing of a sacred text has a particular power to imprint that text on the singer’s heart in a manner deeper and more lasting than the mere utterance of the same words. The lyrical intonation of the core theological tenets of our faith can provide an inroad for the cautious skeptic, who otherwise might struggle with Nicene doctrine, to join her voice with the assembly in a way that she might flatly refuse to do so when these words are simply spoken. The Holy Spirit works on our hearts from within through the power of song.
Singing is evangelistic, and the marriage of text and note also has staying power—it journeys with us long after the liturgy is ended and we go about the business of our days and weeks. It serves as a memory aid and helps us to remember the words more readily—especially when those words are part of a long prose text.
Repeated singing imprints words on our hearts. This is why children learn the alphabet and multiplication tables through song. Over 40 years on, I still go through the books of the Bible thanks to a song taught by my childhood Sunday school teachers: how much more might the Nicene Creed—the core alphabet of the faith we confess—be similarly imprinted on our souls by means of music?
From this standpoint, perhaps we can approach the limited number of musical options for a sung Creed in our liturgy as a feature instead of a bug—so long as we make use of the options presented to us. A common familiarity can also be an inroad to unity: Common Song is a traveling companion to Common Prayer.
Just as a visitor or newcomer to an Episcopal parish can be made to feel at home, liturgically speaking, with the familiar cadences of the S119 Our Father, or S280 Gloria in excelsis, so too could that be the case with the Creed of S103 or S361. With just a handful of musical options for singing the Creed, the intimidation factor of choosing how to sing it has been removed from the equation.
Charles Winfred Douglas wrote that the liturgy “is a work of art, the highest of all poems.” Singing the core constituent prayers and texts of the liturgy, including the Creed, allows the voice of the soul—to use another of Canon Douglas’s phrases—to pray alongside the voice of the body and the mind.
To sing the Creed in the liturgy is not only to accentuate or even to beautify the liturgical moment or text. It is to commit a fuller presence of ourselves—our souls and bodies—to the core statement that is the expression of the Church as the Body of Christ in the world.
Mark Ardrey-Graves, DMA, is assistant professor of church music and organist-choirmaster of the Chapel of the Apostles at the School of Theology of the University of the South (Sewanee). Before his post at Sewanee, he served parishes in North Carolina and Virginia as organist and choirmaster. He served on the Task Force for Prayer Book and Liturgical Revision during the 2018–20 triennium, and is active in the Association of Anglican Musicians and the Royal School of Church Music in America.
