I collect hymnbooks, and my New Year’s Resolution for 2022 was to record at least one hymn (it quickly became two hymns) each weekend. These, then, are the hymns I recorded; the hymnbooks credited are the ones I used for that particular hymn.
All these hymns are, so far as I know, in the public domain.
Title | Year | Notes |
---|---|---|
Zangbundel Ten Dienste Van Huisgezin En Samenkomsten (2e Druk) | 1906 | At least I think it’s the 2nd edition from 1906. The cover is too faded for me to tell. The cover also looks very similar to pictures of the 3rd edition, but also similar to pictures of the 4th edition, and it’s clearly not that. This book was a gift from my aunt, who is from The Netherlands. |
The Psalter Hymnal | 1927 | Published by the United Presbyterian Board of Publication and Bible School Work. |
The Hymnary Of The United Church of Canada | 1930 | Published by the United Church Publishing House in Toronto. This particular hymnal came from the Airdrie church. |
Tabernacle Hymns Number 4 | 1960 | Published by the Tabernacle Publshing Company, Chicago |
The New Church Hymnal | 1976 | Published by Lexicon Music Inc. This hymnal was the one my church used when I was a kid. |
Praise! Our Songs And Hymns | 1979 | Published by Singspiration Music of the Zondervan Corporation in Grand Rapids, Michigan |
Worship The Lord | 1979 | Published by Warner Press for The Church of God |
The Hymnal For Worship and Celebration | 1986 | Published by Word Music in Nashville, Tennessee |
Trinity Hymnal | 1990 | Published by Great Commission Publications for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. |
This hymn is calling for the mighty presence of God to be with us.
John Milton—the same guy who wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained—also rewrote a few psalms so they could be set to music. Psalm CXXXVI was the basis of this hymn.
Some of you might see the tune composer’s name and be reminded of the duo Gilbert And Sullivan of operetta fame. You would be absolutely right; it is indeed that Arthur Seymour Sullivan.
This hymn is meant as comfort to those who are facing difficulty in life and reminds us that tough times are to be expected, but God will be with us through it.
I first encountered this song—also called The Crusader Hymn
— when I was in band in Bert Church High School. As I played the bass clarinet at the time, I got to play the bassline, which I can still do from memory.
The hymn Abide With Me was written by Reverend Henry Lyte while he was dying of tuberculosis. While he did compose a tune for it, Eventide by William Monk is by far the more popular tune.
Possibly the darkest hymn I’ve ever encountered, this refers to Christ’s suffering, and asks Him to hear our prayers.
With such a solemn tune, I figured low brass was the most appropriate, so I used my valve trombone for most of the parts, and my tuba for the lowest part.
I wanted to record this with my recorders. While I really wanted to record it a full octave lower than normal, I don’t have a sub-bass recorder in F, so I recorded it only
a fifth lower than written.
This is straight up one of my favourite hymns, exalting the sheer Holiness of God.
A hymn by Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation, praising God for His protection of us.
Another hymn calling on God for His protection.
Hymns often have more than one tune, and I decided that for fun, I would dig up a different tune than usual. The most well-known tune for this is called Toplady
(named for the the lyric’s author), but the tune I played is Redhead 76
(also known as Ajalon); named after its composer, Richard Redhead (1820-1901).
I’ve always loved this hymn, and I think it may be about the oldest I’ve recorded thus far.
A note on the credits below: This hymn is so old, nobody is sure who, exactly, wrote it. It’s known that the original language was Latin (Salve caput cruentatum), but as that was the language of the Mediæval Catholic Church, this hardly narrows the field.
The hymn was first translated into German under the title O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden by Paul Gerhardt, then from German into English by James Alexander.
This was based on a Hebrew hymn, and calls on us to praise The Lord.
LeoniLyon (1751-1797).
I remember this hymn from my childhood. It speaks of the Christian’s love for God from here until death and beyond.
Though the author William Cowper (pronounced Cooper
) was plagued with mental issues—the lyrics even mention his speech impediments—this hymn still speaks of the hope of redemption he had.
Fun fact: One of the people who helped him recover from a mental breakdown was John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace (that song is my July 3 entry, by the way).
During recording this hymn, I discovered that Tabernacle Hymns Number Four (the hymnal I originally used) has some interesting misprints. First, it states that the tune it uses was composed by Lowell Mason. While he did indeed write a tune for it, the tune that the hymnal uses is Cleansing Fountain, which is an early American melody with no known composer. The tune he wrote, Cowper, is quite different. Second, the words to Verse Five are:
The hymnal gets these switched.
When people think of Man Of Sorrows
nowadays, they usually think of this hymn, rather than the one above. It speaks of Christ’s crucifixion, and how he took the punishment due us.
This hymn has a very special memory for me: The one and only recorder duet I ever did with my mom. She learned the soprano line by ear and played it on my alto recorder. I played the bass part on my bass recorder.
Charlotte Elliott, the author of this hymn said to an evangelist that she didn’t know how to come to Christ. His response was Come to Him just as you are.
That experience inspired this hymn, which she first published in her work Invalid’s Hymn Book (she took sick when she was 32 and never fully recovered).
According to legend, this hymn was played on the RMS Titanic as it sank; indeed, the last song the band played before they perished. It is known to have been sung by the crew and passengers of the SS Valencia as it sank in 1906.
There is a Dutch paraphrase of this hymn titled Nader Tot U, O Heer, which is the August 13 entry of this challenge. As I cannot read Dutch, I didn’t know that it was actually a paraphrase of this hymn until I did my post-recording research on it.
Though we will always have our trials, we can take solace in our faith in Christ.
This song is a prayer for God to work within and through us. The author didn’t even ask for the visions that prophets had of old, but instead to simply be an instrument of God’s will.
A hymn praising the majesty and mercy of Christ, adapted from Psalm LXXII
There was no way I was leaving this classic out. I played it on lower recorders, just in case a parent wanted to play it for their kids; that way it wouldn’t be so shrill. In the page for this hymn, I include two versions of the lyrics: One is the classic by Miss Warner, the other being the Senior’s Version
that has been passed around by email for years.
A hymn of evening prayer.
A hymn praising God for the morning.
This is a hymn of confession, not only of the sin we have done, but the good we haven’t.
...yeah, this one kind of hit me in the feels, so I recorded it.
This hymn is a reminder that nothing but Christ’s sacrifice, and our believing in him, will make us right with God.
You may notice that I’ve got only one instrument listed here. That’s because I wanted to try playing all four parts on the same instrument, in this case my melody saxophone, which I usually use when busking.
A hymn dedicating one’s life and everything in it to Christ
This is another of my favourite hymns, though the old hymnal I have didn’t have the tune familiar to me—which gave me the opportunity to play something a little more obscure.
This song—like many hymns—has a tragic backstory. Horatio Spafford was scheduled to go from the United States to Europe on the ship Ville Du Havre with his wife and four daughters. Spafford was delayed, but sent his wife and daughters on ahead. Unfortunately, the ship collided with another on the trip and sank. None of his daughters survived; only his wife did.
Horatio learned of this by a telegram from his wife that simply read saved alone
. He promptly left for Wales to comfort her and on the way he wrote the lyrics to this hymn.
Philip Bliss, a friend of the family, wrote the tune for those lyrics and named it for the ship that took the Spaffords’ daughters.
It was inevitable that I’d do a hymn by the very prolific hymnwriter Fanny Crosby in this challenge; in fact, I’d have to be consciously avoiding her works, and I really see no reason to do that.
This hymn praises God for His assurance that our faith in Christ will save us from eternal punishment.
The recorder version. I wasn’t satisfied with it, as my soprano didn’t sound good near the bottom of its range, so I re-recorded it.
This was an attempt at a mixture of instruments. I think it came out okay.
A song about the joy of prayer.
The Gospel of Mark (specifically Mark 4:39) tells of Christ calming a storm on The Sea of Galilee (notorious for its storms), and encourages us to remember how God can calm the storms of life.
The Book of Psalms is, quite simply, the Bible’s hymnal. Unsurprisingly, the Psalms have been adjusted and paraphrased so they read like traditional English poetry and can thus be set to music (see With A Gladsome Mind and Hail To The Lord’s Annointed above for a couple of examples).
The Psalter I used does not tell who adapted the lyrics, nor can I find anything on Hymnary.org about who adapted it.
This song talks about total surrender to God.
Psalm XXIII—known as the Pastoral Psalm—is probably the most famous of all the psalms.
I asked my aunt for a Dutch hymnbook out of sheer curiosity, so she got me one from around 1900 (so far as I can tell). Unfortunately, I don’t speak Dutch, so I don’t know what the lyrics mean.
The title—which unabbreviated is Als Gij In Nood Gezeten—means If You’re In Dire Straits
. Tidy Roger was kind enough to translate the phrase for me.
Also known as Lord, Through All The Generations, this is based on the oldest Psalm in the entire book: Psalm XC, which was written by the prophet Moses.
Another from my Dutch hymnal. According to Kerkliedwiki (or rather, it’s translation by Google Translate, as the website is in Dutch) it is a sung version of a Trinitarian blessing—that is, a blessing that refers to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A hymn of trust and peace with Christ.
Seeing as May 8 was Mother’s Day, this entry seemed appropriate.
A song praising the power and glory of God. Just a note: there may be some unfamiliar lyrics on the song page; what I've posted are the original lyrics. Most hymnals abridge the last two verses and make them one.
Take Up Thy Cross
In the story of a would-be disciple of Christ (found in Mark 10:17-22), Christ tells the disciple to sell all he has, take up his cross, and follow him. The phrase Take up thy cross and follow Me
has become part of the description of being a follower of Christ.
A cry to God for help during times of persecution and trouble.
This hymn was written as a call to praise God as Lord of all the earth. It was originally written in German, but has been translated into other languages, including English and Dutch—I know about the Dutch translation because the hymnal I used was Zangbundel Ten Dienste Van Huisgezin En Samenkomsten (2e Druk);, with the first line reading Alles, wat adem heeft, love den heere der heeren
and I recognized the tune when I recorded it. For that reason, I'm including the Dutch translation, and also the original German Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren to round out the lot.
Psalm 105 calls upon us to remember the Lord’s might works, drawing its examples from the Exodus from Egypt.
My research into the various hymns leads me down some interesting paths; when looking up the information on this hymn, I discovered that it was actually a translation of an English hymn; the lyrics of which have also been provided.
TheodosiaSteele (1717-1778)
This hymn (and this Psalm) is a cry out to God to hear us, even at our low points or in our low estate.
I tried something new for this weekend: One hymn, but two different tunes (both in the same hymnal).
The tune I did for June 4. For some reason, this tune is titled Bone Pastor in the hymnal I used. I really wish I knew the story behind that!
The tune I did for June 5. Judging from the composer’s years of birth and death, this is the older tune.
This is a translation of the Welsh hymn Arglwydd arwain trwy’r anialwch. It’s a hymn that asks for the Lord’s guidance and providence.
Christ told his followers that what kindness they show to others, they have shown to Him. Even in the Old Testament, the poor were to be treated kindly and mercifully; their mistreatment was one of the many charges he brought against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Psalm XLI begins with telling of the blessings of the Lord to those who show mercy to the poor.
Psalm III begins with a cry to the lord, and finishes with a statement of faith in the protection of God.
A request to Christ to be with us when we worship God.
This is a loose translation of the old English hymn Holy Spirit, Faithful Guide. It’s interesting how many of the hymns in my Dutch hymnal were originally written in English.
A prayer to God for mercy, and an aknowledgment that sometimes what seems like harshness from the Lord is ultimately for our own good.
A hymn that reminds us who is ultimately in charge of the destiny of this world, and to rejoice in that.
There was no way I was leaving this classic off my list, a hymn that speaks of the amazing, unending grace of god, a hymn that’s practically a meme or a cliché nowadays. But, in my mind, there's nothing wrong with going with something so completely predictable; it’s predictable because it’s a classic, and it’s a classic for a reason.
The lyrics are by a man named John Newton, who was a slave trader before his conversion to Christianity, and became an ardent abolitionist afterwards. He lived just long enough to see the British Empire’s abolistion of the slave trade.
Sometimes we find ourself completely adrift if we forget that the basis of our faith is not in our traditions, nor our churchly behavior, but in God’s holy Word. The first verse reveals that God Himself has spoken to us, the other four paraphrase parts of the Bible.
This is one of those hymns that is seemingly from nowhere. Its lyrics—first published in John Rippon’s A Selection Of Hymns—are attributed someone named K—
, but who that was is unclear. Hymnary.org suggests five different people: Robert Keen, George Keith, Thomas Kirkham, someone with the last name of Kennedy or Kennady, or John Rippon himself.
The hymnwriter Charles Wesley (1707-1788) wrote this hymn to celebrate the first anniversary of his conversion. The full poem is actually eighteen stanzas, but most hymnbooks use only about a third of them. The title comes from something a man named Peter Böhler said to Wesley: If I had a thousand tongues, I would praise Christ With Them all
, quoting from the German hymn O daß ich tausend Zungen hätte.
This hymn is a paraphrase of the hymn Come, Lord, And Tarry Not by Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) (which originally had 14 stanzas).
A life of sin will cause God to turn away and leave us to the consequences of our faithlessness. This hymn expresses the sorrow of those who have been so rejected, but also expresses the knowledge and hope that if we turn away from sin, God will accept us back.
Psalm LIX was written by David when he was on the run from King Saul, who had surrounded the house David was hiding in and intended to kill him.
The hymnal I used for this—The Hymnary Of The United Church of Canada has these two hymns right next to each other. While each tune presented below is associated with a specific hymn, the hymnal has a note saying the tunes can be switched. Literally, for the tune Tallis’s Ordinal, it has a note saying Or Gräfenberg below.
and the tune Gräfenberg has a note saying Or Tallis’s Ordinal, above.
I thought it would be fun to reflect that here by offering both sets of lyrics on the page and letting you choose which tune to play.
This is associated with The Excellency Of Scripture in the hymnal.
This is associated with The Interperter in the hymnal.
TheodosiaSteele (1717-1778)
To follow the Lord means, by definition, we let Him lead us. This hymn talkss about the comfort of letting Him show the way.
...considering that the Dutch hymnbook I have contains translations of several English hymns and I can’t read Dutch, I suppose it was inevitable that I’d eventually unknowingly record a translation of a hymn I’ve already recorded. This is a translation of Nearer, My God, To Thee, which was my February 26 entry.
This psalm is one of seven psalms known as The Penitential Psalms—psalms written when one has incurred God’s wrath and is now dealing with the concequences. It calls to God for mercy while admitting one’s wrongdoing.
Psalm XXXIV was written by David after his escape from King Abimelech. In that psalm (and in this song), God is praised for delivering the singer out of trouble; and says that the wicked will come to an end. Both psalm and song also state that we will face danger in our lives, but God will bring us through it—either in this world or, through death, in the next.
It is admittedly hard to trust God when things seem to be going out of control. But we have to trust that He will see us through to the other side, one way or another. Even if we don’t survive physically, those who trust in God have placed their eternal souls in good hands.
LouisBourgeois (ca. 1510-1559).
Displays of worship are good, but meaningless without faith. Even this very challenge I am doing, without faith and obedience to God, is only so much racket. Only through faith and obedience to the Lord does this become worship to him.
The author of Psalm XLII, likely one of the Sons of Korah, compares the desire for the spirit of God to how a hart (an archaic term for deer
, specifically a male red deer at least five years of age) panting for water, describing that desire as a great thirst. Almost every adaptation of Psalm I’ve seen uses that comparison.
Sojourner: a temporary resident. Someone who is living away from home.
A Christian is a sojourner in this world. We know this world, and our mortal lives are temporary and that one day, each of us will move on, to our real home.
I heard this old story about the Devil from a pastor.
The Devil asked three of his servants for a way to turn would-be Christians away from Christ and so condemn them to Hell.
The first said
I will tell them there is no God.The Devil sneered.
These people already know there is a God.The second said.
I will tell them there is no Hell,The Devil sneered again.
They know there is a Hell, and they are terrified of it.The third said.
I will tell them there is no hurry.The Devil smiled darkly.
You will ruin them by the thousands.
A song about trusting in Christ. It’s a reference to Deuteronomy 33:27, which says The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.
A prayer to God, to bring us ever closer to him.
This hymn is another reference to the rich young man mentioned in Mark 10:17-22. Too many Christians
think that having received Christ, they need do no more, but the truth is, as the Apostle James warns us in James 2:14-26, faith without works is dead. So let us take up our crosses, and follow Him.
The whole idea of a Christian being a soldier, or Christianity being a war, is strange to modern ears, but spiritual warfare is a reality. Not for nothing are we told to Put on the whole armour of God
(Ephesians 6:10-17). Are you ready for the fight?
A song praising God.
It seemed appropriate to close out Quarter 3 of the challenge with this song of the harvest season.
A song of Golgotha, or The Hill of the Skull.
This famous hymn is a translation of the Irish poem Rob tú mo bhoile, which was written almost 15 centuries ago (judging by the lifetime of the man it’s attributed to).
These three hymns by Thomas Ken are hardly remembered these days, but they were highly controversial in their time; in England at the time, it was believed that only the Scriptures (especially the Psalms) should be sung in Church. Writing new lyrics for worship was seen blasphemy, akin to adding to the Scriptures. Thus, Thomas Ken told the boys under his care at Winchester College that these hymns should be used solely for private devotionals.
Normally, I would not have grouped hymns by the same author together like this, but these three share something very special: Their final verse, which is now often sung on its own as the Doxology.
I also would have recorded only two hymns this weekend—except my research into the tunes led me to discover the hymn My God, Now I From Sleep Awake through The Cyber Hymnal™, a hymn not in any of my hymnbooks. So, this weekend, for the first time, I played a song I found on the internet but is nowhere in my collection.
A song praising God in the morning, and thanking him for a night of rest, and asking for guidance during the day.
A hymn thanking God for the day, and asking forgiveness for the sins we committed during it.
A hymn for midnight, to be sung should someone have trouble sleeping.
This hymn encourages us to be calm and rely on God, who has final say in what happens.
JeanSibelius (1865-1957).
A song about how prayer, the reading of the Scriptures, and Christian fellowship are necessary for a Godly Life
I love the tune Forest Green, but didn’t feel I could perform it yet because I’d only known of its association with O Little Town of Bethlehem, and it’s not December yet as of this writing. When I found it had been used for another hymn about the snow, and considering that I just write this, the first winter snow fell just yesterday (October 22, 2022), I thought it appropriate to play it.
Some of you may hear this and be reminded of the classic game Lemmings. That association is correct; the soundtrack consisted of medleys of various old tunes, and this was one of them.
This hymn is about Christ’s amazing love and grace in leaving the throne of Heaven and coming to free us from our sins.
The tune Sagina comes from what is basically a fan work—Thomas Campbell, a composer who enjoyed botany and Charles Wesley’s hymns, published a work called The Bouquet: A Collection of Tunes Composed And Adapted To Wesley’s Hymns in 1825; all the tunes therein were named after plants. Sagina (named after a flowering herb also known as pearlwort) is the only one well-known today.
This is probably the most technically challenging hymn I’ve played yet. The soprano line jumps around quite a bit, and the sheer grandeur demanded that I double the lines an octave apart, so my tenor recorder got a major workout; the bass line had it playing C♯ near the bottom of its range (it can only go a semitone lower), to B near the top. But in the end, I think it was worth it.
While it is not Easter as I record this, it would be a fitting hymn for that holiday. It compares the crown of thorns that Christ wore on the cross to the crown of Glory He wears in Heaven, and it describes His exultation after His time on Earth.
This particular hymn was provided with two versions of the same tune: the normal one, and one called Faux Bourdon, in which the melody is in the tenor line rather than the usual soprano. So I decided to play both versions together: the normal version first time around, the Faux Bourdon version the second time around, and a mashup of the two the third.
It was only after I’d recorded this that I discovered I had goofed. I have tried to avoid playing the same tune twice throughout this entire challenge, but my memory failed me on this one: Both this hymn and Let Christian Faith and Hope Dispel—which I recorded back in February—use St. Magnus by Jeremiah Clarke.
A good friend of mine, however, told me not to fret: I wasn’t simply reusing a sound file; I had made two genuinely different recordings, so I shouldn’t worry about using both.
A Dutch Hymn about the glories of Heaven.
Due to my repeating a tune last week (namely St. Magnus), I decided to do three hymns this weekend. This song is calling on God for a revival of our faith and zeal.
A bit of a note here: A lot of hymnals attribute the tune to John Jenkins Husband (1760-1825), but this is because the first two measures resemble those of his tune St. Stephen. The actual composer was the hymn’s author, William Mackay (source: Revive Us Again—Hymnology Archive).
In my Psalter Hymnal, multiple hymns are based on the same Psalm. For example, Psalm L has 3 hymns in this hymnal—and here they are.
This psalm is attributed to Asaph, head of one of the priestly choirs, and it’s unusual in that it shows God addressing Israel, rather than the other way around.
It is not the material things we give to God that matters—everything ultimately belongs to God anyways. What matters is that we truly worship and honour him, in how we pray, act, and speak.
The Bible warns us that not all those who talk the talk walk the walk. Isaiah 29:13-14 says of them:
13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
14 therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.
Another hymn declaring God to be the final judge of all.
The Protestent Doxology was originally the final verse of three hymns by Thomas Ken (1637-1711): Awake, My Soul, And With The Sun, Glory To Thee, My God, This Night, and My God, Now I From Sleep Awake, but that shared verse is now normally sung on its own to the tune of Old 100th, a tune which gets its name from its association with Psalm C.
It has appeared in every hymnbook I own with the obvious exception of my Dutch one.
I usually end my busking sessions by playing the Doxology, so I shall close these pages with it as well.
LouisBourgeois (ca. 1510-1559).