Everything about Amazing Grace totally explained
"
Amazing Grace" is a well-known
Christian hymn. The words were written late in 1772 by
Englishman John Newton. They first appeared in print in Newton's
Olney Hymns (1779), which he worked on with
William Cowper.
John Newton and the lyrics to Amazing Grace
"Amazing Grace"
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!
Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.
John Newton, Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779)
John Newton, the author of the lyrics to Amazing Grace, was born in 1725 in Wapping, England. Despite the powerful message of "Amazing Grace," Newton's religious beliefs initially lacked conviction; his youth was marked by religious confusion and a lack of moral self-control and discipline.. (He entitled the piece "Faith's review and expectation.")
The song has also become known as a favorite with supporters of freedom and
human rights, both Christian and non-Christian, in part because many assume it to be Newton's testimony about his slave trading past.
The hymn was quite popular on both sides in the
American Civil War.
Extra verses
In her novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Harriet Beecher Stowe quoted three stanzas as seemingly from one hymn, two of them corrupt versions of
Amazing Grace stanzas, and one reading:
Despite its relatively poor mesh with the rest of the hymn (the change from "I" to "we," change of subject, no reference for "there"), a form of this stanza became common as part of
Amazing Grace in
hymnals in the early twentieth century, due in large part to the influential hymnodist and publisher
Edwin Othello Excell. While the stanza is often credited to
John P. Rees (1828-1900), it antedates his birth. It was in print by 1790, added to an old and widely-varied hymn most usually beginning "Jerusalem, my happy home", and was still appearing as part of this hymn in books published around the time of Stowe's book,.
Cherokee lyrics
While on the "
Trail of Tears," the
Cherokee were not always able to give their dead a full burial. Instead, they sang a translation (or rather, paraphrase) previously made by
Samuel Worcester.
For this reason, many contemporary
Native American musicians have recorded the song.
Music
As with other hymns of this period, the words were sung to a number of tunes before and after they first became linked to the now familiar variant of the tune "New Britain" of which the composer is unknown and is in William Walker's shape-note tunebook
Southern Harmony, 1835.
"New Britain" first appears in a
shape note hymnal from 1829 called
Columbian Harmony. The melody is believed to be
Scottish or
Irish in origin; it's
pentatonic and suggests a
bagpipe tune; the hymn is frequently performed on bagpipes and has become associated with that instrument. This tune seems to have been firmly established as the 'standard' for this hymn after an arrangement of it appeared in a series of popular hymnbooks in the early twentieth century. (See also the versions in the
Sacred Harp article.)
Another tune to which it has sometimes been sung is the so-called "Old
Regular Baptist" tune. It was sung by the Congregation of the Little
Zion Church, Jeff,
Kentucky, on the
album The Ritchie Family of Kentucky on the
Folkways label (1958).
The
Blind Boys of Alabama have also helped to popularise a long-standing association to the tune
House of the Rising Sun.
Bagpipes
The association with
bagpipes is relatively modern; for over a century, the tune was nearly forgotten in the British Isles until the folk revival of the 1960s began carrying traditional musicians back and forth between the British Isles and the United States (where "Amazing Grace" had remained a very popular hymn). It was little known outside church congregations or folk festivals until
Arthur Penn's film
Alice's Restaurant (1969), in which Lee Hays of
The Weavers leads worshipers in singing "Amazing Grace."
Performances and recordings
Owing to its ability to be adapted easily, the song is a popular recording choice. In essence, it has a very basic tune. Singers can then very easily add
melismatic phrases, and alter the melody to make it match their own style/genre of singing. It has been recorded by many artists over the last century;
All Music Guide lists over 1800 recordings.
"Amazing Grace" wasn't recorded until 1922, reflecting the penchant of record companies to record marches, standard popular tunes, classical music, and comedic songs and sketches in the years before World War I. By the 1920s, however, many in the recording industry became convinced that traditional music could be profitably marketed to immigrant groups, African-American communities, and white rural southerners.
In 1972, an instrumental version by the Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards spent five weeks at number one in the UK Singles Chart; it also reached the top spot in Australia.
Aretha Franklin recorded a notable version of the song nearly fifteen minutes in length on her live gospel album of the same name.
In gritty ITV prison drama Bad Girls, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, who played Crystal Gordon, performs an abridged version of the song to silence the other prisoners after Rachel Hicks (Joanne Froggatt) hangs herself in Episode Four of Series One.Further Information
Get more info on 'Amazing Grace'.
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