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.
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).