There are few hymns with richer more meaningful words than “And Can It Be.” Words that celebrate the gospel and dispel our wretched sense of entitlement that bedevils us Western Christians. So how wonderful it was to hear this new music to such an old hymn. I sometimes don’t like new tunes for a hymn that I love. Sometimes people even tend to fight against the whole idea of putting old hymns to new music. This is of course ridiculous as I don’t think there is a single popular old hymn that is still sung to the melody it was first paired with (I am of course happy to be proved wrong by someone who is more knowledgible than me). But this new tune in many ways fits this old hymn better than the previous one.
It is beautiful, melodic, and prompts genuine meditation. I hope and pray that one day this tune will be widely adopted, and this old hymn would as a result have a breath of fresh new life. The church would be richer for it. You can also visit Phatfish’s website to download the sheet music or learn about their other songs.
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