Hymn of the Day: O Day of Rest and Gladness ELW 521
Text: Christopher Wordsworth, 1807–1885, alt.
Tune: German melody, 18th cent.; adapt. X. L. Hartig, Melodien zum Mainzer Gesangbuche, 1833

Christopher Wordsworth placed this as the first hymn in his Holy Year (1862) and titled it "Sunday." He had in mind Sunday in the Christian multilayered sense- first day of creation and therefore of light, "eighth" day of resurrection and new creation beyond history, and seventh day of rest and gladness when God rested. On this eucharistic little Easter when the church gathers around word and table to celebrate the wondrous mix of God’s graciousness, it sings “Holy, holy, holy,” which calls to mind the Sanctus.

ELLACOMBE is an anonymous tune that seems to come from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Roman Catholics. In close to our current version, it is found in Xavier L. Hartig's Vollständige Sammlung der gewöhnlichen Melodien zum Mainzer Gesangbuche (Mainz, 1833), where it was used for the text "Der du im heil'gsten Sakrament." It may have an antecedent in the Württemberg Gesangbuch (Württemberg, 1784) where it may have been associated with the text for which it was named in Lutheran Book of Worship (1978), AVE MARIA, KLARER UND LICHTER MORGENSTERN. The name ELLACOMBE "is evidently an English name given to this tune by an English editor, probably after a place or locality."

ELLACOMBE was the tune Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) used with this text, and it is the one The Hymnal 1982 (1985) and Voices United (1996) also used. LANCASHIRE is chosen in some other modern hymnals. ROTTERDAM was used in The Lutheran Hymnary (1918) and Service Book and Hymnal (1958). Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) used HERZLICH TUT MICH ERFREUEN. "The day of resurrection!" is obviously searching for a suitable modern tune! These all work, but none seems quite right. ELLACOMBE, LANCASHIRE, and ROTTERDAM are eighteenth- and post-eighteenth-century products. HERZLICH TUT MICH ERFREUEN is from the sixteenth century. Often matches of text and tune from across centuries like this work well. In this case they feel forced. The quite proper jubilance of the tunes obscures the more crucial and characteristic objectivity of the text. We await the skill of the composer who will create the appropriate tune.