Meridian Magazine :: Hymns for Special Groups

Hymns for Special Groups
By Orson Scott Card

Most of the hymns in the hymnbook are meant for everyone to sing together in sacrament meeting, but we do have times when smaller groups need songs that speak especially for them.

For instance, the Relief Society has “As Sisters in Zion” and “We Meet Again As Sisters” – neither of which I have ever heard sung, but then I wouldn’t, would I?

For priesthood meeting we have “Rise Up, O Men of God,” “The Priesthood of Our Lord,” “Come All Ye Sons of God,” and “See the Mighty Priesthood Gathered.” Of these, the only one I have actually heard sung in a priesthood meeting is “Come All Ye Sons of God,” and even that felt like quite an innovation.

But that’s partly because priesthood meetings are more likely to fall back on the missionary hymns that gained currency back in the days when almost all the missionaries were men. So we’re likely to sing missionary hymns like “Ye Elders of Israel,” “We Are All Enlisted,” and “Israel, Israel, God Is Calling.”

Missionaries, as a group, have quite a few hymns: “Go Forth With Faith,” “Go, Ye Messengers of Glory,” and “Go, Ye Messengers of Heaven” – the last two with words by John Taylor.

Add to those “Hark, All Ye Nations,” “I Saw a Mighty Angel Fly,” “Like Ten Thousand Legions Marching,” “See, the Mighty Angel Flying,” “The Voice of God Again Is Heard,” and “Ye Who Are Called to Labor,” and you have quite a list. Missionaries should be able to go through quite a few zone meetings without repeating themselves.

Why We Don’t Learn New Hymns

Except that we don’t sing these songs very often (speaking of the manly ones; what the sisters sing I don’t know). Part of that is because congregational song practice has been abolished in most wards – how can we learn a new hymn?

Or, I should say, how can we men learn new hymns – because women do practice hymns in Relief Society, at least in our stake.

But outside the sheltered walls of Relief Society, music gets short shrift.

In many priesthood meetings (dare I say most?) the hymn is chosen at the last moment by a conductor who only knows the melody of a handful of hymns, or by an accompanist who can only play a few hymns with any degree of confidence.

The problem of repeating some hymns to death and completely ignoring many others is really a symptom of the deeper problem – the fact that hardly anybody is teaching their children to play the piano or to sing notated music (as opposed to singing along with the radio or CDs).

This is crippling the music program in many wards. There is an unspoken hierarchy in most wards – the accompanists are ranked according to their ability to sit down and play at a moment’s notice. First choice accompanists are the ones who can sight read anything; as we work down the list, we get the accompanists who can play only the hymns they know, and then farther down the list are those who know only a few hymns, and finally we reach those who can barely hack through anything.

That last one is the place I proudly occupy on the list of accompanists in the ward. The trouble is, in priesthood meeting that makes me the second best – at least of those willing to try. And I’m bad enough that the men generally prefer singing a capella.

My worst limitation is that I can only play smoothly in the keys of E-flat or A-flat, so I have to transpose everything on the fly. That’s fine when I’m transposing down, but when I transpose up, it makes many a hymn considerably harder to sing. Better just to find the note on the piano and let somebody wave his arm.

Part of the reason kids don’t learn to play piano is they see no immediate reward for it. Back when my parents were young, radios were not portable and record players were scratchy and tinny and not very loud. To have good music at a party, somebody pulled out the sheet music and started to play, and then others would gather around the piano and sing. That provided the entertainment even for the non-singers.

So of course young men learned to play – who didn’t want to be the guy who had girls leaning over his shoulder at the piano to see the words of the song? And ditto for young women – it was an easy way to get lots of attention. Provided, of course, that you were any good at it.

America was a singing culture then. My generation profited from that because our parents still thought of piano playing as a worthwhile and socially useful skill to acquire. So a lot of people my age were ~~forced~~ given the opportunity to take piano lessons or study some other instrument long enough to learn musical notation and be able to pick out a melody from a sheet of music.

Our children, though, were raised by a generation that got brainwashed with the idea that it’s somehow evil to make kids do things they don’t like. Let’s not even begin discussing how that has poisoned that generation as they now raise their own kids in the same lax expect-nothing-get-less environment. This social change affects church music because when my generation dies out – and we’re getting older by the minute – few wards will have a hierarchy of accompanists to choose from.

Instead they’ll be whipping out boom boxes and playing accompaniment CDs in sacrament meeting. Or singing a capella. The way accompanist-deprived priesthood meetings already do.

Room for More Hymns

Without wishing to sound too critical, however, I suggest that there’s another reason we don’t sing a lot of the hymns designed for priesthood meeting or missionary gatherings: The songs are all so martial.

Martial metaphors are fine – I love to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” as much as anybody. But stirring anthems aren’t the only kind of music that’s appropriate for men (or missionaries of either sex) to sing.

I felt the need some years ago for a priesthood meeting hymn that was not martial or enthusiastic at all, but rather reflected the deeper feelings of a man serving in the kingdom of God. Most of the time we’re not charging out into the world like cavalrymen; most of the time we’re doing our jobs, serving in our callings, and, above all, gathering our family around us and serving them and leading them as best we can.

We need a priesthood hymn that reflects the ordinary but all-important life of an LDS priesthood holder, and this hymn is my attempt at meeting that need:

“We Shall Become Thy Sons”
by Orson Scott Card

We are building Father's kingdom,
Founded on his holy word.
Let the task be great or humble
He has called, and we have heard.

refrain
In thy name, as we serve others,
Father, help us to be brothers:

Trust us with thy little ones;
Thus we shall become thy sons.

Is there one whose soul is hungry?
Let thy Spirit lead us there.
Food of body and of spirit
We have plenty; we will share.

In thy name ...
As we bless the needy ones,
Thus we shall become thy sons.

All the sins we have committed
Weigh upon our broken hearts.
By the Lamb they are remitted
When our will to sin departs.

In thy name ...
We can all be worthy ones;
Thus we shall become thy sons.

Father, by thy gentle daughters
Come the greatest gifts of all:
Help and comfort in our labors,
Homes we build as worlds in small.

In thy name ...
Sealed to these beloved ones,
Thus we shall become thy sons.

The verses progress from callings in the Church – We are building Father’s kingdom” – to service to others, both spiritual and physical – “We have plenty, we will share.” Then the hymn becomes personal – to be a good priesthood holder, we must repent of our own sins, but first of all admit to each other that we have them!

And finally, we give thanks for the women in our lives, who as mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters in the gospel give meaning and help to everything we do. For me, that is the single most important thing this hymn does – it recognizes that “neither is the man without the woman.”

You Can Try Out This Hymn with Music

It happens that this is one time I can present a new hymn with music that is just as new already attached. Composer Mark Mitchell contacted me about an earlier hymn — he has created a wonderful setting for “Let No Hands Be Idle Here” — and when I showed him the text of “We Shall Become Thy Sons” he fired back a simple but exactly appropriate setting for the words.

click to enlarge

(You can download it either as an .MP3 file or as a .JPG file which you would print out using any graphics program. The music is copyright © 2004 by Mark Mitchell and Orson Scott Card. These files are presented for your examination and study only; if you wish to perform them, permission must be obtained by contacting me through Meridian or my own website, Nauvoo (http://www.nauvoo.com).

If you have the sheet music in front of you, you’ll see how deftly Mark Mitchell kept the melody line simple and within a single octave. It’s a challenge to create harmonies for a one-gender hymn, because all four voices take place within the same, narrow range.

If you have only the .MP3, you’ll notice that the music goes on way longer than the words. That’s because Mitchell chose to repeat the last two lines of the refrain. This makes the hymn longer, of course, but provides a good closure and gives greater emphasis to the end of the prayer: expressing to the Father that we wish to be truly worthy of being his heirs.

Then the music goes on just a little bit longer. That’s because Mitchell added a tag in the accompaniment that is sweet indeed.

The refrain is also slower than the verse. I would never have thought of doing that, but now that I look back at my own text, he was exactly right. The first three stanzas are sung by priesthood holders to each other, but the refrain is sung to the Lord. And even though the last stanza is addressed to “Father,” the difference in tone between stanza and refrain still applies.

As for how the melody fits the words: If I’ve done my job right, in each stanza the words match up perfectly – not just syllable by syllable or even accent by accent, but in meaning as well. That is, the climactic word will fall in the same place in each line, the climactic line in the same place in each stanza.

But of course it is rarely possible to achieve perfection on that – the language is not infinitely malleable – and so the composer has to be sensitive to the fact that the same melody must serve four stanzas, not just one. Mitchell has done a superb job of compensating for the fact that in the first line, for instance, the first and third stanzas have a bit of an emphasis on the second accent – “building” and “sins.” The second stanza has the more neutral “one,” however, and the last stanza, has the very unimportant word “by” in that position.

The gentle rise and fall of that opening melody allow us to sing the first and third verses with the appropriate emphasis; yet it is not so strong a swell that “one” and “by” feel out of place – we are still being led on to stronger melodies later on.

I especially like the way the melody of the opening line of the refrain is kept so level and simple in the melody, starting in unison as the harmonies then divide from it, becoming quite full and then coalescing again on a D at the end of “brothers,” with only the melody on the F. That simplicity is then topped by the complexity of the last two lines.

Hymns for Missionaries

I was actually surprised as I went through the hymnbook to find out how many specifically missionary-oriented hymns there are. What need is there of the missionary hymns I wrote?

But I read over my texts and think they might still have something to offer, both to composers who might enjoy the challenge of these nontraditional lines, and to missionary singers who might feel that these hymns express feelings that are not otherwise addressed. And there is nothing male about these hymns. They could be sung as easily by women as men, which is not the case with some of our missionary hymns.

“We Are So Few”
by Orson Scott Card

We are so few
Who preach the gospel two by two,
Who face the stranger at his door.
How can we do more?

refrain
Spirit of God,
Burn in our hearts!
All that we need

The Spirit imparts.
Of all good fruits
This is the seed,
The Spirit of God.

We are so weak.
How can we turn the other cheek
To bear the calculated wrong?
How can we be strong?

Spirit ...
We are so young,
From childhood oh so freshly sprung
That ours are undiscerning eyes.
How can we be wise?

Spirit ...

We have such hope
Who struggle up this rugged slope;
If you, along with us, ascend
We will reach the end.

Spirit ...

This is not an anthem, not a song of soldiers marching triumphant. Instead it attempts to deal with the day-to-day struggle of facing strangers, dealing with rejection, and coping with the missionaries’ own youth and ignorance. In other words, this hymn is for missionaries who are feeling a little humbler than usual and plead with the Lord for help and inspiration.

The first three stanzas pose a problem, which is answered in each case by the refrain, which is a plea for the Holy Ghost to come into our hearts and then an expression of gratitude for the gifts the Spirit brings. The fourth stanza is still a recognition of the difficulty of missionary work, but expresses to the Lord the fact that we do not despair, but rather continue on in hope.

The only problem I see is with that word “calculated” in the second stanza. As a poetic line it is exactly right; as a song lyric it would be adequate. But as a hymn text, it just doesn’t belong there, partly because it’s too ironic and implies a degree of bitterness or anger. (Which missionaries certainly feel sometimes.)

More importantly, the calculated wrong is not really the hardest to bear. The person who rejects us with malice actually encourages us sometimes, as missionaries – we feel like we’re bearing their hostility for the Lord’s sake, and such a tiny does of martyrdom isn’t hard to bear.

What really hurts are the people who dismiss us as being unworthy of a backward glance. No hurt intended – we just aren’t worth paying attention to.

So I toyed with a few changes. For instance:

We are so weak.
How can we turn the other cheek
To bear the cold, dismissive wrong?
How can we be strong?

But now the word “wrong” is wrong in the phrase. So I tried again:

We are so weak.
How can we turn the other cheek
To bear the closing of the door?
How can we do more?

Now it’s the last line that is inadequate. Using this version of the stanza, I tried a couple of alternate closers:

Why won’t they hear more?
Let us offer more?

I even tried the much more specific:

We are so weak.
How can we turn the other cheek
When those we offer and implore
Turn and close the door?

Or perhaps: “Coldly close the door.” But “coldly” is a very hard word to sing, because of the “ldl” combination.

And instead of “those we offer and implore,” might it be better as “strangers that we came here for”? That avoids the rarely used and arch-feeling word “implore.” But it adds a limitation to the song – now it fits only missionaries serving in a place that is not their home.

But I can live with that. Let’s say the last stanza now reads:

We are so weak.
How can we turn the other cheek
When strangers that we came here for
Turn and close the door?

This last approach loses the parallel of each stanza’s last line beginning with “How can,” but since we lose that in the fourth stanza anyway, maybe it’s not such a great loss.

Notice how tentative all this is – and how flexible. I know what I want to say, but the first approach that comes to mind is not always the best. And even it if is, sometimes you have to try a lot of different ways of saying it before you’re sure the first one you came up with is better than the others.

If you’re trying to find ways to salvage a good line that lacks a decent rhyme, don’t overlook the necessity of a rhyming dictionary. A free one online is by WriteExpress (http://www.rhymer.com). You don’t use it to find weird unusual rhymes – it’s just a reminder of perfectly ordinary words that simply haven’t come to mind and might suggest alternate approaches.

Sometimes, too, the rhyming dictionary helps you by showing that there is no adequate rhyme, so you’ll know you have to revise your initial line. Of course, I usually start with the second line and then try to find a good rhyme to go with it for the first line.

Thus the original version of the second stanza began with the word “strong” and I searched for a rhyme for that. “Song” was out; “wrong” seemed possible. When I changed the rhyme, though, I began with “door,” but made the mistake (perhaps) of putting it in the first position, causing me to end the stanza with the weak word “more.” I think it improved greatly when it became “door” at the end of the stanza – a stronger word, with more of a sense of clinching the stanza rather than petering out, the way “more” made it seem.

Musically, this hymn is challenging primarily because of the short first line and the short lines of the refrain. Yet in the hands of the right composer, those are precisely the features that will make this song memorable and, I hope, uniquely effective.

The greatest danger point for the composer is the fifth line of the refrain, where “Of all good fruits” is iambic, though all the other lines begin with an accented syllable (except those beginning with “the”). An oblivious composer would go ahead and stress the word “of,” which would sound awful. A careful one will allow that to be a softer line, with “of” as a pickup to the three equally stressed words “all good fruits,” and then return to the first-syllable stress of the line “This is the seed.”

Spirit of God,

Burn in our hearts!|
All that we need
The Spirit imparts.
Of all good fruits
This is the seed,
The Spirit of God.

Missionaries Plus

Some of the best missionary hymns are nevertheless vague enough (remember, that’s a virtue!) that they can be sung by a general congregation. For instance, “Israel, Israel, God is Calling” is spoken entirely to those whom the singers are encouraging to come to Zion. So the singers never identify themselves; there is nothing to say that they have to be fulltime missionaries.

The following hymn achieves a similar generality in a different way. It can be sung by any group of Saints, and while it can be taken to refer to missionary work (references to “harvest” and “servants in the vineyard” can usually be read that way), it can also refer to all the work of the Church.

“The Laborer is Worthy”
by Orson Scott Card

The laborer is worthy of the wages he is paid.
The harvest time is coming and it cannot be delayed.
The servants in the vineyard then will glean the ones who strayed.

Your calling may be humble but your faith is strong and true.
Your speech at times may stammer but the Spirit dwells in you.
O teach me, brother, sister, what the Lord would have me do!

The world confers its honors but those honors fail the test:
The one who would be greatest must be servant to the rest.
It's by the work of all the saints that all the saints are blessed.

The first stanza definitely sounds like a missionary hymn. But the second stanza is a plea to be taught! In truth, it could be taken as the answer that new converts give to the missionaries – but it is also the attitude that all Saints should always have toward each other, regardless of where we might stand in the church hierarchy.

The third stanza clinches this idea — that we are all equal in the kingdom of God, and reminds us of the Savior’s insistence on humility when he rebuked those who sought high office. Finally, it ends with the finest line I have ever written for a hymn: “It’s by the work of all the saints that all the saints are blessed.” If I wrote no other line than that in all my hymn writing, I’d be content.

Well, obviously not, since I keep writing them. I guess I’m hoping to hit on a perfect line like that again.

And if it turns out that I unconsciously plagiarized someone else’s line, please don’t tell me. Let me die with the illusion that I thought of it first.

Musically, a heptameter line works quite easily; it can be set to music in ballad stanzas, with alternating lines of 4 and 3 accents. But because they are written as through lines, the music needs to reflect the sense of a headlong rush to the end of each seven-foot line. Each line, you see, is a complete sentence that stands alone.

In a choir setting, I believe each stanza should modulate, preferably with the modulation beginning with the last syllable of the stanza before. But for the congregational version, of course you would remain in the same key throughout.

A Man Writing for Women?

One of the great myths in our contemporary society is that it’s harder for a male writer to write for or about women. I can’t understand how such a sexist notion could persist – after all, women have been writing for and about men for centuries and nobody bats an eye. “Oooh, how remarkable! Jane Austen shows such sensitivity to the male psyche in her creation of the character of Darcy!” Puh-leeeeze.

Still, we live in the world we live in, and it feels like chutzpah for a man to think he could write a song for Relief Society. But I’ve spent my life observing women – how they form relationships with each other, and what makes sisterhood work (when it works). So I take the risk of being criticized for “not getting it” and offer this hymn that I hope will serve. After all, “We Meet Again As Sisters” was written by Paul L. Anderson, so I’m not the first to go down this dangerous road.

“To the Broken-hearted Home”
by Orson Scott Card

To the broken-hearted home
Many hands of kindness come.
Loving listeners will hear,
Comfort give for every tear.

refrain
See how we are restored,
Made one by faith and love,
All sisters of the Savior,
All daughters of the Lord.

Eagerly we come to learn
Truth that in our hearts will burn,
Light to guide our works and ways,
Through us blessing others' days.

See how ...

Any part we play in life —
Daughter, sister, mother, wife —
These dear friends see how we've grown.
Never need we be alone.

See how ...

Father, all good things we build,
Saints we've served and hearts we've filled,
Children loved and strangers fed:
Have we walked where Jesus led?

See how ...

In writing this I tried to capture what Relief Society means in the lives of the women I’ve known who’ve served with their whole hearts. Never is the Relief Society so powerful as when the sisters come to a house of grief, bringing food and kindness and the comfort that comes from their sheer presence. So I began there, in the house of grief, where sisters surround a family with a sense of protection and love.

Only in the second stanza do we come to the Relief Society meeting itself. The women of the Church take the responsibility to teach each other very seriously. They prepare carefully, offer visual aids; to put it bluntly, they make a big deal out of it – whereas in priesthood meeting, the opposite attitude is usually taken. Men would feel it somehow pretentious if they brought a lot of visual aids, and special decorations would make us feel faintly ridiculous.

Where men pretend that they haven’t prepared that much so don’t expect anything, now here goes nothing, women work hard and let the work show, so that the sisters know they’re being taught by someone who has taken great care to offer them her best. I think that should be reflected in the hymn.

With the third stanza, I specifically address all the roles that women might play, and the fact that they are all part of the same community of women in the Church regardless of age or whether they have children or whether they’re married at the moment. What matters is that among your sisters, you are known; they see you progress from role to role in life and encourage you all along the way.

And in the fourth verse, I specifically wanted to address the fact that even though Jesus is a man and lived his mortal life in a man’s place in society, women are not in any way disfavored in following his admonition to “Come follow me.” But you’ll notice it is placed there as a question, a self-expectation. The sisters ask the Lord if they are following in Jesus’ footsteps.

Notice also that “Children loved” clearly does not have to refer to one’s own children. This hymn can be sung with equal aptness by all Relief Society sisters.

Now the sisters reading this – or perhaps someday singing it – will have to tell me whether I got it right or not.

A Hymn for Adults to Sing about Children

In the “new” hymnbook we actually got some traditional Primary songs to sing as a whole congregation, including the beautiful and moving “I Am a Child of God” and “Teach Me to Walk in the Light.” I wish they’d add another: “My Light Is but a Little One” – but we don’t all get our whole list. And personally, I vote against including “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree,” no matter how fun it is to do the hand motions.

To sing these songs, adults take upon them the memory of their own childhoods, and also express the feelings we have toward the children we are raising or teaching as adults.

But we don’t have any hymns that allow us to sing, as adults, what children mean in our lives.

Even though we actually have a church meeting that excludes children, but includes both men and women, we don’t have any separate hymns for that situation, I suppose because we normally don’t sing at the beginning of gospel doctrine class.

In reality, though, most of the singing done in sacrament meeting is by adults, and the few children who do sing would not be harmed at all by singing a hymn that took the adult part, just as adults are not harmed by singing “I Am a Child of God.”

“These Little Ones”
By Orson Scott Card

These little ones are sent to Earth
For us to care for from their birth.
They learn from all we do and say:
To speak, to walk, to love, to pray.

refrain
However blessed, however flawed,
These children come to us from God.
Be like a little child, He said,
As home to Father all are led.

These sons are learning to be men:
They run and fall, yet rise again
To serve the Lord in many lands,
With loving hearts and priestly hands.

However blessed ...

These loving daughters, filled with light,
Are lamps, are stars to bless the night —
The stars that children wish upon;
The hand to hold till light of dawn.

However blessed ...

I meant this song to be an answer to a Primary program. All those children jostling their way to the front of the chapel; some boldly singing out, some shyly hanging back, some pretending to be bored because they’re now too old to really be part of a kiddie show. Having lived in the same city for more than two decades, and the same ward for thirteen years, I know almost every child I see in those programs and in the halls at church, at least by sight, and usually know what family they belong to.

I know which ones are behavior problems in Primary or who can’t keep still in sacrament meeting. I know which ones run in the halls and which ones sass their parents. I know these kids aren’t perfect.

But I also know that I love them all, and my eyes fill with tears during those Primary programs, not because I think they’re perfect – good heavens, anybody with a sense of pitch knows they’re not! – but because raising them is the business of life, and in the Church we do nothing more important than helping each other raise our children up to be worthy sons and daughters of God.

So I’m not backing down from the first line of the refrain: “However blessed, however flawed.”

Besides, there’s another meaning of “flawed” – for many children come to us flawed in their bodies. I grew up knowing and loving my mentally retarded Aunt Donna, and my wife and I still miss our beloved son Charlie Ben, who spent his seventeen years of mortal life severely limited by cerebral palsy. They also came into this world from God, and when I think of their deep and abiding goodness and the gifts they gave the many people who helped them and cared for them and learned from them, I think it’s good to have a hymn that specifically includes them.

The second and third stanzas, by speaking separately of boys and girls (and it truly doesn’t matter which of the verses is second and which is last), runs the risk of being a “frogs and snails and puppy dog tails” vs. “sugar and spice and everything nice” kind of cliché.

And some might take my mention of serving the Lord “in many lands” as an implication that girls can’t do that. But in our Church it is expected that all young men will remain worthy and then go on a mission; for young women it’s an option, not an expectation. What I tried to write about was each group fulfilling the best expectations of the Church and of the Lord.

Besides, I also don’t mention girls falling, though we know that boys aren’t the only ones who do that. Not every stanza can say everything.

The girls’ stanza alludes to the parable of the virgins by mentioning lamps. But then I run into trouble. I actually love the lines “The stars that children wish upon / The hand to hold till light of dawn,” but I just don’t think the superstition of wishing on stars is an appropriate topic for sacrament meeting, even though it works very well as a poetic couplet.

So I have an alternate version of that third verse:

These loving daughters, filled with light,
Are lamps, are stars to bless the night —
The lamp with oil to burn till dawn,
The star you can rely upon.

Here the last two lines elaborate the examples in the second line. Lamps and stars, yes, but which ones? The lamp carried by a wise virgin; the star that sailors can steer by. This is nowhere near as emotional as the original version, but it is doctrinally far more appropriate for sacrament meeting.

And when we sing the last two lines of the refrain, we are reminded that no matter how “adult” we become, Jesus taught us that we should become more like the little children that we see among us during sacrament meeting.

So at the end, the hymn becomes a reminder that we are all children in the eyes of God, and differ only in how far we’ve traveled on the same road.

Be like a little child, He said,
As home to Father all are led.

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Post your comments — but not your own hymn texts, unless you wish to surrender copyright! — here on Meridian. And don’t send hymn texts to me! I’m not a music publisher.

However, if you’re a composer and wish to set one of my hymns to music, don’t ask for my permission first. I hereby grant you permission to use my hymn text free of charge in your own musical setting, as long as you don’t publish or sell the result.

In other words, you can perform your hymn as much as you want. But the moment you want to publish it or record it or charge for it, then we need to talk — I’ll need to hear your hymn and decide if I approve of it before you can publish, record, or charge for the combined work. I can be reached at http://www.nauvoo.com or http://www.hatrack.com.

And if I deny permission, then you can simply write your own words to fit the music you wrote. You won’t lose a thing.