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

[katie_m]

2. Be Thou My Vision (tune: Slane, trad. Irish melody)
3. Holy, Holy, Holy (tune: Nicea, John Dykes)
4. For The Beauty Of The Earth (tune: Dix, Conrad Kocher)

Oh, also some of my favorites. Especially For The Beauty Of The Earth.

[naomichana]

As a nice Jewish girl with only intermittent exposure to the Methodist side of the hymnal, I am impressed that I can hum about half of your lists and can recognize most of the rest -- apparently those years singing in the chapel choir did me some good. Also, I am a sucker for good four-part harmony. Why we Jews don't borrow more recent tunes from Christians I don't know, especially since there are several examples of borrowing going the other way and of borrowing from Christian tunes several centuries back so nobody knows it anymore. ;) I agree that "Blessed Assurance" wins entirely on the refrain, and I'd put "Amazing Grace" up there too, and "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee" (as long as we seem to be in All Saints mode).

Actually, I think the only Christian hymn I actively detest on theological grounds is the second verse of "Jesus Comes With Clouds Descending." But I've always skipped all the Passion-related tunes, which seems like the better part of discretion when you have to organize interfaith stuff.

[naomichana]

(Oh, and I somehow forgot to mention "Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing." I frightened my husband the other day by bursting into that as a perfectly logical transition from the discussion of potential male names in the Book of Samuel.)

[loligo]

Wow, you managed to dredge up two hymns I've never even heard before, and one that I know the tune for, but not the words (Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing is set to Nettleton). Go, nice Jewish girl!

I have to say, the United Methodist church that I grew up in had an enormous choir repertoire, but we tended to stick to the same few popular hymns over and over. The UCC church that I go to now has a hymnal that draws on a lot of different traditions: I'm very happy to have learned a bunch of traditional Southern hymns, but not so happy with the number of hymns translated from other languages (especially Spanish) THAT DO NOT RHYME. Dude. Lyrics need to rhyme.

[riarambles]

Anything sung to Hyfridol is of the good, too.

[jonquil]

1. Abide with me
2. Amazing Grace
3. The one that's to the tune of "Deutschland uber alles" ;-)
4. Simple Gifts
5. Joy To The World

[loligo]

1. Abide with me

Oh, good one.

3. The one that's to the tune of "Deutschland uber alles" ;-)

The official hymn name for that tune is actually "Austria": I don't know my Haydn well enough to know whether he originally composed it for some Austrian-themed piece, or if the mysterious people who assign names said "Well, we've already got a "German" and a "Germany", so let's just nudge it over to a neighboring country." *g*

(It's certainly not the winner for greatest number of hymns set to one tune, but it's well up there!)

[jonquil]

It was the Austrian imperial anthem; the Germans only got around to stealing it in 1922. ;-)

[em_h]

Hymns! Yay

[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.