The Story of the Hymns and Tunes, page 9 by Theron Brown
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tisfactory way, as in most cases it is impossible to dissociate the two. The melody is the psychological coëfficient of the metrical text. Without it the verse of a seraph would be smothered praise. Like a flower and its fragrance, hymn and tune are one creature, and stand for a whole value and a full effect. With this normal combination a complete descriptive list of the hymns and tunes would be a historic dictionary. Such a book may one day be made, but the present volume is an attempt to the same end within easier limits.
CHAPTER I.
HYMNS OF PRAISE AND WORSHIP.
"TE DEUM LAUDAMUS."
This famous church confession in song was composed A.D. 387 by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, probably both words and music.
Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur Tibi omnes angeli, tibi coeli et universae potestates, Tibi cherubim et seraphim inaccessibili voce proclamant Sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
In the whole hymn there are thirty lines. The saying that the early Roman hymns were echoes of Christian Greece, as the Greek hymns were echoes of Jerusalem, is probably true, but they were only echoes. In A.D. 252, St. Cyprian, writing his consolatory epistle[2] during the plague in Carthage, when hundreds were dying every day, says, "Ah, perfect and perpetual bliss! [in heaven.] There is the glorious company of the apostles; there is the fellowship of the prophets rejoicing; there is the innumerable multitude of martyrs crowned." Which would suggest that lines or fragments of what afterwards crystalized into the formula of the "Te Deum" were already familiar in the Christian church. But it is generally believed that the tongue of Ambrose gave the anthem its final form.
[Footnote 2: [Greek: Peri tou thnêtou], "On the Mortality."]
Ambrose was born in Gaul about the middle of the fourth century and raised to his bishopric in A.D. 374. Very early he saw and appreciated the