A
hymn tune is a
musical composition to which a hymn text is sung. Some tunes consist of only the
melody, sung in unison or parallel octaves, with or without accompaniment. In other tunes the melody is accompanied by one or more other voice parts, with four voices being the most common.
From the late sixteenth century in England and Scotland, when most people were not musically literate and learned melodies by rote, it was a common practice to sing a new text to a hymn tune the singers already knew which had a suitable meter and character.
The practice of naming hymn tunes developed to help identify a particular tune. The name was chosen by the compiler of the tune book or hymnal or by the composer. The majority of names have a connection with the composer and many are place names. Most hymnals provide indexes of hymn tunes by name and meter.
By contrast, in Germany and Scandinavia, tune names were not typically used even when a hymn tune was used for more than one text. The custom in such cases was to use part of the first line of the first text with which the tune was associated to refer to the tune. When chorales were introduced in England during the eighteenth century, these tunes were sometimes given English-style tune names.
