How do you commemorate something without celebrating it?
It’s a question I found myself asking when faced with a recent commission, a request for a composition to mark the 250th anniversary of the sermon that became known as Amazing Grace. On the face of it, the task looked fairly simple; I was being invited to write a choral piece for a concert that would be the summation of a year-long round of events, lectures, displays and discussions, with one of the world’s most iconic hymns at its centre.
Two major concerns were raised from the outset, however. The first was about the problematic past of the man who penned the sermon that became Amazing Grace. That man was John Newton. Born in Wapping in 1725, Newton went to sea aged 11 and, after an ignominious career in the Royal Navy, transferred to working in the slave trade, captaining slave ships and investing in further operations once a stroke caused him to retire from the sea. A spiritual conversion during an intense storm in 1748 did not initially dampen his enthusiasm for the slave trade but after joining the clergy he served at Olney in Buckinghamshire where he wrote Amazing Grace, and in the later years of his life he became an active abolitionist. He lived long enough to see the Slave Trade Act pass through parliament in 1807, the year of his death.
Reactions to Newton’s most famous words today can be mixed. To some, his slave-trading past cannot easily be ignored or in any sense redeemed by his later activities. And yet ironically, Amazing Grace has become almost an unofficial anthem for the civil rights movement in the US and is especially prominent among Black Americans, sung famously by a raft of soul singers and even by President Obama. The words can also suit any occasion, from wedding to funeral, from protest to presidential inauguration, from reverential church service to massed singalong. The 250th anniversary is certainly worthy of recognition, but Olney’s most famous curate and lyricist brings with him a story that needs contextualisation.
The other concern is a more personal one for me as a musician: the melody. It’s not just any melody; it is one of the strongest, most recognisable, most enthralling melodies to have emerged from western folk music. Often referred to by the name New Britain, it was conjoined with Newton’s words in 1835 and the two have been inseparable ever since. Just say the words “Amazing Grace” to anyone and the tune will play in their heads (and that’s if they don’t immediately start to hum or sing it out loud). Bagpipers play it ceaselessly outside the Houses of Parliament. Newton’s words always come to mind.
It is the words that are being commemorated this year, not the melody. More than that, as I have been invited to write a new piece of music around the words, to end with an audience singalong of the old melody would render anything I have written largely redundant – the folk tune is so strong, it would easily obliterate my new notes. But just as obviously, to write a new piece of music about Amazing Grace without referencing the New Britain tune would be quite unthinkable.
So there was my brief; commemorate the anniversary of Amazing Grace without celebrating or glorifying its author, acknowledge that its history is troublesome, and also without referring too closely to the melody that has contributed so much to making those words globally iconic. OK.
Don’t get me wrong, I was delighted to have been selected for this challenge. One benefit was that I am effectively an outsider; I do not live near Olney or Milton Keynes, the centre of Amazing Grace 250 commemorations. If I am known within the music profession for anything, it is not for any association with singing this hymn. This enabled me to take an objective stance. But I needed someone to help tell me the story, or, more than that, decide what story to tell. My piece could not be a music biography of John Newton or an “origin cantata” describing the birth of the sermon-hymn text.
I turned to writer and academic Rommi Smith. She travelled from her home in Leeds to conduct hours of painstaking interviews with interested parties from the Olney area and indeed far beyond. She painstakingly assembled testimonies from individuals, all of whom had a very personal response to Amazing Grace, responses that were varied and often in opposition to each other.
Rommi presented me with a series of carefully crafted poems based on her interviews, each poem prompted by a different question concerning the meaning and legacy of AG250 for people today. Hence the question mark included in the title of Rommi’s work – Forever? I immediately felt the possibility of musical responses to her words and her clever, varied poetic structures; it inspired me both in terms of my emotional response and also from a musical, architectural standpoint.
I had been asked to write for a local community gospel group, the Sweet Sound Choir, created especially for this occasion. I knew I wanted them to propel my piece with their infectious energy and quickly identified which of Rommi’s poems would suit such writing. I was also composing for an instrumental chamber ensemble derived from majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra Chineke! with the addition of two vocal soloists, a mezzo-soprano and a tenor. My eventual choice of instruments, including strings, flute, trumpet and trombone, and also a saxophone, electric bass, keyboard and percussion, gave me a wide range of colours to choose from. It has allowed me to inhabit many musical styles which I hope will reflect the wide range of personal testimonies.
The resulting piece consists of 10 movements; the answers to 10 questions posed during Rommi’s research interviews. While I begin, almost unavoidably, by quoting the irrepressible New Britain melody, it is soon varied, stretched, parodied, expanded and ultimately lost (which one can interpret metaphorically in any way one wishes) in order that new themes can emerge. The movements vary between voices, solo and chorus, and different instruments come to the fore so that each song has its own sound world. I write in a gospel style for some movements (as I have been gifted a gospel choir!) and in various other styles elsewhere. There is even a piano jazz movement that nods to John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, founders of the Stables venue, where the piece will receive its premiere as part of the IF: Milton Keynes international festival.
I hope the result will satisfy as many parties as possible: those who revere Amazing Grace, those who hold it in contempt, those who feel a personal ownership of it, and those who have magical stories to tell, stories brought about by their acquaintance with these immensely powerful words. I hope Rommi and I will have done justice to the testimonies we have received. And I hope I might have written a couple of decent tunes in the process.
Forever? is at IF: Milton Keynes international festival on 22 July. More about Roderick Williams here.
John Newman’s notes for the sermon that would become Amazing Grace are featured in the exhibition Cantate Domino, at Lambeth Palace Library, London SE1, until 18 September.
