Immortal Invisible and When A Knight Won His Spurs

[TheTecknician]

Fun fact, just in case you didn't know. The words to these hymns can be transposed to each other's tune. Both are in 3/4 time.

Similarly with Amazing Grace and I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing, although these two have different time signatures.

That's all!

Ok thanks for that.

Unrelated but I was surprised that one our baby's toys was playing "jesus hands were kind hands" then found out it was clair de la lune 😂

I once happened to overhear a community hymn singing session in a church. The pianist was playing the Dambusters March. Apparently it is also used as a hymn tune.

I'm going to have Immortal, invisible in my head now. Still remember the words from schooldays, a very long time ago.

I didn't know that but the words fit so it does make sense. Perhaps the tune Jesus Hands i played badly on the descant recorder decades ago is the same one.

Any time. It's a slow day so ripe for random musings.

I love it when people share things like this, it adds character to the world hearing unusual things people know that you don't.

Also twinkle twinkle and the alphabet rhyme have the same tune 🎵

Gosh When a knight won his spurs takes me back a long, long time to when I was a little child in primary school. I used to love it. I quite like Immortal Invisible as well.
Unfortunately I'm a long time atheist but still with a great liking for hymns and carols.

When I started senior school, the music teacher got every girl separately into her classroom to sing Immortal Invisible by herself. She said it was a good tune to tell who could sing well enough to join the choir. I wasn't chosen!
I love When a knight won his spurs, that reminds me of assemblies.

Immortal invisible was one of the hymns they chose most often at my school, love it.

Also at my school, we sang The King of Love My Shepherd is, but no one else I know seems to know it, and when we had it at my wedding it was only my old school friends singing along! It's such a nice one

I've always found While Shepherds Watched a bit annoying but last Christmas was the first time I was introduced to it to the tune of On Ilkley Moor and it was a million times better

Also at my school, we sang The King of Love My Shepherd is, but no one else I know seems to know it

I know it! It must be in Songs of Praise, the hymn book we used at school. I've still got mine, will look later.

I don't know When a Knight Won His Spurs, though. Will look it up on YouTube.

The tune was also used by Dusty Springfield in the 1960's hit Call the Boys.

That was the hymn that made me fail my audition for the choir at school.
It's very difficult to sing, 4# s if I remember rightly.
Others got "All things bright and beautiful" and "Away in a manger" hmmmm !

"God is our strength and refuge" is sung to the Dambusters March.

Amazing!
They seem so different to my untrained ear.

"God is our strength and refuge" is sung to the Dambusters March.

It seems odd to.me because the music was written for the film and I can't help seeing the film in my head when I hear it.

What an interesting thread! I'm feeling a bit dim, having sung the alphabet song and Twinkle Twinkle countless times without realising the tune is the same. Unfashionable though it may be to say it, I've always felt a debt of gratitude to the Church of England for enriching my vocabulary from a very young age, as it did that of thousands of children in the 1960s and 1970s and before. (I went to a church school until the age of 11.) That this happens now in only a few schools feels like real loss, even though I think education should be secular.

We 9mefimes do Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.

The Harry Potter theme tune - after the first 2 bars it goes straight into Swan Lake in my head.

🫣
I know it's not exactly the same as what's being talked about here but it reminded me 😂

At secondary school we were startled when the hymn was "There is a Green Hill Far Away" and the teacher on the piano played the "Match of the Day" theme tune 😯
Worked through.

"Oh Jesus I have Promised" can be sung to the Match of the Day theme tune

I’m now singing Immortal Invisible. Amazing how one never forgets the words of hymns.

Another one - Sumer is icumen in and the Mending Song from Bagpuss.

Most hymnbooks have a "metrical index" it tells you the metere of the hymn which means that you can find other tunes to fit. DH is an organist and sometimes finds that the tune in the book isn't one the congregation knows and has to quickly find a different one that works.

An example of a metrical index here https://www.drshirley.org/churches/hymns-metric01.html - it tells you that you can sing O little town of Bethlehem to It came upon the midnight clear and vice versa.

I totally agree with this. I went to a CoE girls school where we sang a hymn every single day for the 10+ years I was there. I think it does expand vocabulary and comprehension and teaches musicality and rhythms etc and so much more. I came from a non white, non Christian family and in my adult life have felt totally comfortable singing hymns at people’s weddings and at various memorials etc I’ve been to and I usually know all the words 😀 , I also sing in a local choral society so have sung most of the well known masses and choral works.

There’s something really uplifting about starting the day with communal singing, religious or not, and it’s a shame this has died out from schools now. My son goes to a traditional boys’ private school though where they still have formal church services twice a week so he’s still forced to sing hymns, he knows them all and doesn’t mind them!