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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.78:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Stereo
  Subtitles
    English
  Extras
  • Additional footage - "Soundscapes" - 72 Min plus introductions
  • Animated menus
  • TV spot
Symphonic Hymns of the Forefathers
ABC/Roadshow Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 80 mins . G . PAL

  Feature
Contract

You can almost hear the panic in the ABC Video marketing department. “Hymns Of The Forefathers? How on earth are we supposed to make that stand out in the middle of the shelf at a DVD store? It may be a documentary filled with lavishly orchestrated arrangements of old English hymns, but from the title it sounds like a school textbook!”

Sometime later, the brainwave arrives. “Of course! Let’s stick Symphonic on the front of the title - that should get the attention of the less frequent Classic FM listeners!”

It certainly grabbed our attention. After all, music written for or inspired by religious devotion is the very cornerstone of the great classics, from Bach’s cantatas to Mozart and Beethoven’s great masses to Mahler’s epic symphonies. And you certainly don’t have to be religiously inclined to enjoy it all - in fact, most people who’ve run across and enjoyed classical music are probably not even aware that they’ve been listening to some full-scale Christian worship as they wave their hands about in a quiet moment of air-conducting. Actually, one of Bach’s cantatas sings the divine praises of coffee (and quite rightly so) but that’s the exception rather than the rule. Sure, modern composers tend to be inspired by things like terrorism and trains and political intrigue (John Adams, anyone?) but back in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, if you were writing serious music you were probably writing about - or to - the Christian god.

And then there’s that other religious musical form. Hymns. If you were brought up in a religious family, you’ll know them well enough. Dreary, slow incantations listlessly sung completely off-key by a bunch of people for whom singing is right up there on the skills list with nuclear fusion, and accompanied (usually on an organ) by a kindly but utterly tone-deaf and rhythmically challenged old lady with an overbearing fondness for the keys down the bottom that make the church vibrate. Now, obviously these simple songs were designed to inspire people, not sedate them. And some have realised that - most notably the ever-effusive television priest and Crystal Cathedral owner Dr Robert Schuller, who realised early on that hymns have a better chance of uplifting the people if you bring in a full-scale orchestra and let ‘em loose on the week’s tunes.

Hymns Of The Forefathers (the “Symphonic” title only appears on the disc artwork, not in the programming or anywhere on the disc itself) is an interesting attempt to do a very similar orchestral thing, but with much older hymns. These are the bona fide classics of the English church, written long ago and sung with mostly decreasing levels of fervour ever since. Perhaps making his own attempt at rectifying the global inspiration problem, Australian composer Paul Terracini has taken these simple songs and written lavish full-scale orchestral arrangements for them in the style of the Romantic composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Each successive hymn arrangement is preceded by a history of the tune and its composer, delivered by the ABC’s Christopher Lawrence, with some of the detail being quite fascinating. The hymns themselves are accompanied mostly by images of cathedrals and villages in ye olde England.

It certainly sounds BIG - and if these very straightforward and unpretentious tunes are to your liking, you’re going to be right at home here. But no amount of Stokowski-like big-band arranging can hide the fact that these are not the most enthralling of songs. Terracini also seems to be excessively fond of string arpeggios, which seem to creep into this kind of thing an awful lot. Of course, you’re supposed to be singing along to all this (the words are handily supplied as a subtitle stream) and in that case it’ll all feel perfectly lush and full. It’s certainly played with gusto (by the Prague Symphony Orchestra) and equipped with enough Big Loud Bits to ensure that you won’t be nodding off whether the tune grabs you or not.

  Video
  Audio
  Extras
Contract

Shot on digital video in a 16:9 aspect ratio and supplied on this DVD exactly that way, Hymns Of The Forefathers looks very vibrant, sharp and colourful, as you’d expect from high-end video. However, there are instances where video noise creeps in (usually indoor, low-light locations) and the very clarity of the image has caused some problems with the MPEG compression in the form of aliasing, something that’s not unusual with video-sourced material. There’s also some slight macro-blocking evident on one brief water scene. But overall this looks very good indeed. The disc’s layer change is hidden in a fade-to-black near the 11 minute mark of the documentary and will go unnoticed by most people.

Audio, in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, is very good indeed - Christopher Lawrence’s sections deliver his voice with the needed clarity, while the music is very well recorded and sounds very viscerally exciting on this disc (which may also have something to do with the person who did the final music mastering - acclaimed mastering engineer Don Bartley, who usually adds bite and plenty of volume to rock records!).

Aside from a “trailer” for the show, the main extra feature here is the “Soundscape” section, where all the hymns from the documentary and five bonus ones are offered either individually or as a group. Each has its own optional introduction by Christopher Lawrence, and if you select to play them all without the introductions you’ll find yourself watching a complete uninterrupted 72-minute program. It makes for an excellent bonus.

The disc is encoded with DVD Text (with a spelling mistake!) and a jacket picture for players that support it - which immediately had us marvelling at ABC Video being only the second Australian distributor to support these. But as it turns out, this disc (unlike previous ABC titles) was authored by Madman Interactive, who have done a superb job with the fully animated menus and the comprehensive options available to the viewer. The disc even opens with an introduction by Lawrence before the menu screen appears, as well as a polite screen offering you the chance to turn subtitled lyrics on. Our only complaint amongst all this superb authoring is that the disc opens with an extended advertisement for other ABC titles, and the only way to skip it is to hit the “menu” button - bypassing the program’s intro in the process! Luckily a menu option is provided to view the intro again, but we’d like to see this interminable and rather obnoxious ABC advertising removed from their future titles.


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  •   And I quote...
    "It certainly sounds BIG..."
    - Anthony Horan
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