All Saints Day

[loligo]

That was Sunday, and of course we sang "For All The Saints", which is surely one of my favorite hymns. Then I decided to try to narrow down my Top Ten favorites (not including Christmas carols), and I got so distracted flipping through the hymnal that I completely tuned out the rest of the service

Comments

[em_h]

Hymns! Yay!

We definitely have some overlapping tastes. I was musing last week about which hymns I would want at my funeral (not an especially morbid musing actually; I'd just been to a funeral and was thinking about ritual), and "Be Thou My Vision" was one of them. It's a wonderful hymn, and I sing it to myself in hard times to keep me going.

I also love "Holy, Holy, Holy", for the music and for the golden crowns and glassy sea. It's great it when we sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" at my church, because even the people who mutter their way through most hymns get right up and belt it out.

Other favourites (some of which will be obvious to anyone who's read my first novel):

"My Song Is Love Unknown" (tune by John Ireland; there are other settings, but the Ireland is the one I like)

"Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" (tune: Picardy)

"Oh God Our Help in Ages Past" (tune: St Anne) -- because it's so upfront about mortality, and in such a moving way

"At the Name of Jesus" (tune: King's Weston/Vaughan Williams) -- even despite the triumphalism, which is not at all my style. I like the tune, and I like the way the imagery of the name is handled

"Go To Dark Gethsemane" (tune: Nicht So Traurig, J.S. Bach) -- I might not like this one so much if it weren't so firmly associated in my mind with my church's beautiful Maundy Thursday service, though the tune is also pretty great

"When Israel Was in Egypt's Land" (Let My People Go) -- one of the great spirituals. There are many other great spirituals, but I specially like this one.

Blake's "Jerusalem", though perhaps only Anglicans consider this a proper hymn.

The multi-versioned adaptation of Bunyan's poem: "He Who Would Valiant Be" is the version I learned, but it's in most hymnals as "Who Would True Valour See"; also most hymnals take out the hobgoblins and dragons, which seems misguided

I have an odd liking for the rather minor hymn, "There's A Voice in the Wilderness Crying" (tune: Ascension, Henry Hugh Bancroft). The tune is very catchy, and I like the second verse.

Also "The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Has Ended"; and I'm fond of "For All The Saints", though it might not quite make my top ten.

And, I don't know, lots more. I like hymns.

[loligo]

The only ones on your list there that I know are "O God Our Help In Ages Past" and "Let My People Go". Which surprises me not at all -- at least half the time when hymns are referenced in English books, movies, or TV shows, I don't know them.

I thought about several spirituals, but none of them had the pull of nostalgia behind them, so they didn't make the list. I might have included a few more from Southern Harmony and The Sacred Harp (two 19th century collections of Appalachian hymns) if I could have found links for them; I've only done them as choir anthems, so I can't be sure it's the hymns themselves that I like, and not something added by the arranger.

[em_h]

Well, a lot of my choices are kind of obscure. Though "The Day Though Gavest" would be familiar to anyone with even a glancingly Anglican background (and I bet you've heard it in English movies; it's that kind of hymn), you'd have to be a regular Anglican churchgoer and/or major hymn-fancier to know most of the others. Or have attended an English church school ... though I didn't mention several that have the nostalgia factor for me but are lacking on other levels (like "Forty Days and Forty Nights", which is one terribly penitential hymn to make little kids sing, but sing it I did).

[em_h]

I forgot two more favourites!

"Come Down, O Love Divine" (tune: Down Ampney), and "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" (words by John Greenleaf Whittier, tune: Repton, Charles H.H. Parry). Although the second is a rather ironic hymn, drawn as it is from a poem which was in part arguing against music in church services.

[loligo]

I had to look these up, too. "Come Down, O Love Divine" is especially nice. (I know I've sung something else set to Down Ampney.)

I may have complained about this before: the current UCC hymnal not only made all the lyrics gender neutral (which I have no problem with), they also removed all the Thees and Thous and got rid of as many feudal titles (Lord and King) as they could. This is modernization that I cannot approve of.

[em_h]

I have to admit, I'm iffy about gender-inclusive language in a lot of cases; I'm really quite okay with regarding hymns as part of their historical period -- and while sometimes it does no harm, you just shouldn't go messing with lines like "Pleased as man with man to dwell" or "Born to raise the sons of earth", because you're *never* going to come up with an alternate that both scans, and is even half as good.

The church where my father is now singing has apparently gone through and gender-neutralized even the lines about Jesus as presumed historical person, which really does seem like going a bit far.