A New Hymn

Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men) adapted Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird for stage in 2018. The play is currently on national tour and is, at this writing, being performed at the Durham Performing Arts Center. There is much to be said about the play, its voice and message, and its veracity and fidelity to the original work, but that can be taken up in a different forum. Relevant to this forum, however, is the bridge music used during some of the scene changes.

In the most unobtrusive way, the hymn tune Llanfair is used during the some of the scene changes, at first instrumentally, then as the play progresses, the players that are moving props hum along. In the late scenes, verse 5 from Psalm 30 becomes a passing element in the play’s dialogue: Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. In a subsequent scene change, the a couple of players can be heard (barely) vocalizing to the Llanfair tune, singing “… joy will come in the morning” on the refrain.

On returning to various internet-enabled devices, I was looking forward to learning about the Psalm 30-based hymn with Llanfiar, as I did not quite recall ever having heard it before. Turns out it is for good reason: There isn’t one.

There are many texts that are purportedly associated with Psalm 30; even with Psalm 30:5 [1], but none of those texts is associated with Llanfair, and so far none found ending with “joy will come in the morning.”

Sorkin’s play is not a musical, so there is no score to be searched up, so I searched for mentions of the inclusion of Psalm 30 in the play, and about the singing of it. So far I have not located anyone discussing it print.

I wonder how it came to be. Was it organic, in which Llanfair was chosen as the bridge music, the humming evolved, and at some point a cast member recognized that the rhythm of the last phrase matched the “joy will come in the morning” phrase, and ad-libbed it, and it stuck? Unlikely. Then if instead it was engineered from the start, with Llanfair being selected as the bridge music so that the text can be sung later, how and why does one get that kind of musical engagement in a non-musical play? And why only for scene changes, where even when fully developed, perhaps one or two cast members may be singing the text in a distracted, barely audible way?

The inclusion of Psalm 30:5 in To Kill A Mockingbird is unique to the play, and even there has only a tangential or even puzzling relationship to the storyline and dialogue. Presumably it is an association born of Lee’s phrase from the original text, a narrative remark made in passing, which has (surprisingly) become a touchstone quote for many: “Things are always better in the morning”. The Psalm is employed significantly later in the play than the “morning” quote appears in the book.

So what might a Psalm 30 + Llanfair hymn be like? I propose the following:

God has saved us from the grave, sing His praises ever!

Praise the Lord ye saints of His, praise His name together!

Healed our wounds and made us whole, all our fears removing.

Weeping may endure for the night, joy will come in the morning.

***

Safe from earthly evils e’re, we shall fear no darkness.

On thy might mountain stand, Satan there is pow’rless.

From that lofty temple raise every voice in singing!

Weeping may endure for the night, joy will come in the morning.[2]

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• [1] Some of the referenced texts have only a passing relationship with the verse, see Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go.
• [2] Llanfair is used in the current Methodist Hymnal once, with the Charles Wesley text Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise, with a meter of 7.7.7.7 with Alleluias. The meter for the proposed text would be 13.13.13.15 which appears to be a first.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Sorkin
• https://hymnary.org/search?qu=psalm+30