John Bacchus Dykes

Often, the composer deserves just as much credit as the hymnwriter for producing a great, inspiring hymn. Take Holy, Holy, Holy, for instance. Reginald Heber’s words, taken from Isaiah 6, certainly do an amazing job describing the awesomeness of God, but they’d have fallen flat were it not for the equally amazing tune composed by John B. Dykes. Dykes was not just a one-hit wonder, though—he composed a number of stirring hymn tunes, and it is for this reason we now present a John B. Dykes collection.
John Bacchus Dykes was born March 10, 1823, in Hull, England—appropriately, the son of a shipbuilder. He had relatives in the clergy in the Church of England, though, and Dykes also pursued a ministerial career. A talented musician, he was an assistant organist in his uncle’s church by the age of ten. He attended Cambridge, where he was active in several extracurricular musical organizations—Thomas Attwood’s Walmsley’s musical organization and the Peterhouse Musical Society (now Cambridge University Musical Society), the latter of which he became president of. Graduated in 1847, he was ordained a deacon at York Minister in 1848. In 1849, he became a minor canon (priest) at Durham Cathedral, an office he would hold the rest of his life. He was also appointed as precentor (worship leader), an office he held until 1862, when he was appointed to the living at St. Oswald’s, another church located very close to the Durham Cathedral.
At this time, there was a split in the Anglican Church between the more evangelical/Protestant wing and the more Catholic-style wing. Dykes aligned himself with the Catholic position. Interestingly enough, the bishop who oversaw Dykes’s parish, Charles Baring, was on the evangelical side—this led to controversy, with Baring refusing to give Dykes another curate to help him in his work as his church expanded. Dykes wound up appearing before the Court of Queen’s Bench to seek to have the court force Baring to appoint an assistant, but the court declined to do so. In ill health, Dykes passed away in 1876 at the age of 52—scholars disagree over the exact cause of death.
Interestingly, though Dykes was Catholic-leaning in his beliefs, his hymns (for which he wrote the tunes only) are not so. The reason for this is probably that Dykes wrote tunes for words by other members of the Church of England, and many of the authors he wrote for (Reginald Heber, Horatius Bonar) were more evangelical in their beliefs. Dykes had a great gift for music, though. One thing he did which few composers have done was to write tunes that started in minor yet ended up in major, changing to reflect the changing character of the words to which they were set. This practice proves very effective in “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” and “Christian, Dost Thou See Them?” Dykes also wrote very chromatically, much like Chopin harmonically, typical for the Romantic era but very effective. The results are hymn tunes with lyric melodies and emotional harmonies—easy tunes to sing.
Of the tunes contained herein, “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” are probably the most famous. There are several other fine representations of Dykes’s skill too, though. He wrote a little-known alternate tune to “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending,” which also supports those words well. The hymn “O Come and Mourn” is in minor, but unlike a lot of minor hymns, this is appropriate, as the hymn mourns Jesus’ death on the cross. “Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand” is quite similar in message and in character to “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Though this collection contains ten pieces, one of them, “Offertory No. 5,” is a compilation of four of Dykes’s hymns which were a little too short to have their own arrangement. I hope these hymns are a blessing to you!