1,000 Hymns
This page is devoted to work towards a goal of mine, the editing and publication of a hymnbook, tentatively titled 1,000 Hymns: A Hymnbook for Hymn Sings, designed to encourage the proliferation of non- and inter-denominational hymn sings where people who just enjoy singing hymns can get together on a periodic basis and sing hymns of their choice. I hope that at some point hymn sings of this sort can be as widespread and enjoyable as shapenote singings, shanty sings, (folk) song circles and the like. I'm aiming for a thousand hymns and I'm interested in garnering suggestions as to what it would be good to add that I haven't thought of, and what could in the suggester's opinion just as well be omitted.
I'm setting up a Facebook group where these matters can be discussed.
Table of Contents
- The Five Core Hymnals
- What gets in practically by default, versus with a lot of luck
- The hymns in the five core hymnals, alphabetically
I'm using the hymns in five hymnals as a core pool of hymns potentially worth including. These five books are
I'm going on the theory that any hymn that is found in all of these five hymnals should in all probability be in the Hymn Sing hymnal. Feel free to post arguments for excluding any of them in the Facebook group, but be forewarned that the chances of my agreeing are pretty slim. Items (meaning text/tune pairings) found in four of the books are also pretty much doomed to succeed. Thereafter, as the number of hymnals gets smaller, so does the certainty that I'll deem an item worth including.
Christian Life Hymnal, Hendrickson, 2006
In my opinion, this is the closest thing to an ideal hymnal to use for a hymn sing of the sort I envision. It is inexpensive, pretty interdenominational at least in the Protestant sense.Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, Word Inc., 1986
This is the pew hymnal at my church, and would also work fairly well in a hymn sing context.Lutheran Book of Worship, 1978
Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990
United Methodist Hymnal, 1989
It is not by any means a requirement that a hymn appear in any of the five core hymnals to be included in the Hymn Sing hymnal, however. It is not my intent to create a book that excludes hymns of post-Reformation Catholic origin, or Mormon hymns, or hymns used in Masonic ceremonies, or whatever. It is generally my hope to include predominantly stanzaic hymns (with or without a refrain). Items that are in the public domain will probably have a bit easier time getting in, because one of the goals is for the book to be, for its size, fairly inexpensive, and royalties add up. But a copyright (on text, tune, or both) is not a surefire way to get an item omitted.