November 9, 2012
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Favorite Hymns
When I first came to my current parish, someone made the off-hand comment, “Oh, can we get some new hymns? The last pastor just did the same ten hymns over and over and over.”
I didn’t know how seriously to take that comment, but hymns are my thing.
And I thought, Okay, you want variety? I’ll give it to you.
So I’ve been keeping track. I keep track of what passages and hymns we’ve done, ordered by liturgical year. Two weeks from now, I’ll close out my first full liturgical year in the parish. (The church year begins with Advent.)
I’ve avoided using any one hymn more than twice in the whole year, except for my summer Great Hymns series, where we sang the same four hymns the whole month. (Pedagogical, you know. We’re going to learn these hymns, and we’re going to learn about these hymns.)
I’ve used a whole lot of Wesley and Watts hymns. A good many Fanny Crosby hymns, although there aren’t quite so many of those in the current UMH.
I’ve tried to use a good sampling of historical periods, although I confess that I shortchanged the 1880s-1920s, and I studiously avoided most things written after 1950.I was looking through the hymnal for this month’s hymns, and I kept finding old favorites we haven’t even gotten to yet.
And yet, every week, I schedule at least one of my favorites.Apparently, I have a lot of favorites.
I was thinking the other day about what hymns I’d like to be sung at my funeral. (Stephen and I have officiated at twelve funerals between us in the past year. I promise, I’m not maudlin.) And I was having a hard time picking just, you know, . . . ten. Marching to Zion, O God Our Help In Ages Past, All The Way My Savior Leads Me, I’ll Praise My Maker While I’ve Breath, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah, Arise My Soul Arise, Come Let Us Join Our Friends Above–gosh, how can you pick??
Advent is just around the corner, and those are some of my favorite favorites. Lo He Comes With Clouds Descending, Wake Awake For Night Is Flying, People Look East, Creator Of The Stars Of Night, I Want To Walk As A Child Of The Light (one of my few post-1950 favorites), and possibly my favorite hymn of all time (except for the dozen others that are in the top slot) O Come O Come Emmanuel.
I’m really, really bad at picking hymns. I just want to sing them all. Every week. (Except Silence Frenzied Unclean Spirit. Because, . . . dayum.)
Do you have favorites?
Do you have a favorite “season” of hymns?
Comments (7)
I did a funeral one time two days before Christmas (which happened to be the deceased’s favorite part of the church year). She was a former organist who was dealing with cancer and thus had time to talk to me a little bit about what music she wanted us to consider for her service.
She gave me a 3 page, single-spaced list.
And so, the family and I decided to do a modified Lessons and Carols, interweaving scriptural stories of life and death and resurrection with lots of carols and stories of her life. It is still one of my favorite funeral services, and what I would really like for my own. So deciding just got a *little* bit easier, and though there’s several 1950-1980 hymns of which I’m not exactly enamored, there’s a lot of new hymnody that really intrigues me.
I, too, try to keep hymns to only 1-2 times a year, although I can be overridden if we haven’t done something in 4 months and the text weaves into the rest of the service and provides a way for the congregation to have a moment of proclamation or prayer. What is the balance for you in quantity vs. helping the congregation to hear and sing a hymn enough to have it “in” them? I find that if I am introducing a new hymn, I probably need to do it at least 4 times in any given year (in different contexts) for them to grab hold. As it is, I look to help each congregation have a core group of 80-100 hymns with another 200 that they are familiar with, including a basic set of tunes in different meters that can be used with texts that we don’t have tunes paired with currently.
Hymns are my thing, too. I think I was about 17 when I first said, “Yes, this one for my funeral!” It was Ralph Vaughn Williams For All the Saints.
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is today’s answer for favorite hymn. We left a funeral last month and when we got into the car I looked at my husband and said, “Please do not EVER think I would want I’ll Fly Away at my funeral.” He got a chuckle out of that.
I love some of the truly ancient hymns: Of the Father’s Love Begotten; Only Begotten, Word of God Eternal; O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High. I love looking for the composer’s name and seeing “Poitiers Antiphoner.” Some anonymous soul wrote that beautiful music.
Thanks for a lovely start to my weekend.
Hymn-lover here too!
When someone mentions “new hymns,” I tend to cringe because that “new,” and “contemporary” and in a church setting usually do not mix well.
I’m with you on the post-1880 revivalist hymns. Either the content is sentimental or the music is “calliope,” as one FB poster put it.
I’ve always wanted the hymn “Jesus, I Am Resting, Resting” sung at my funeral. Only then will I better understand what that means. My husband has always wanted “The Church’s One Foundation” at his.
This past week we sang an old favorite of mine that we’d not sung in several years, “Hallelujah, Praise Jehovah” (Lowell Mason’s Ripley tune). The last half of the first verse was recalled following the election results.
Thanks for this post! I needed to read this after this hard week.
I love it when church leaders want to learn new hymns *that are IN the hymnbook!* But I’m so dismayed at how quickly the hymnbook and hymns are falling out of favor with churches. Press on, Sarah!
Janie
I like Advent hymns too: People Look East is one of my favorites and I’m always dismayed if we don’t sing it. As part of the choir I am invited to the hymn selection meetings where we plan the next three months or so. I can’t always make it, but I try to go so I can get my favorites sung!
I love O Come O Come Emmanuel. I’m partial to Ralph Vaughn Williams too.
I have always liked What Wondrous Love Is This, in part, I think, because it’s so unlike anything we sing in my own church. My husband is the choir director for our congregation, and since his budget is $30/year, he’s always looking for public domain hymns he can arrange himself. He found What Wondrous Love Is This, but when I immediately expressed my enthusiasm for it, I think it turned him off a bit. (He can be contrary.)
I had never heard of Silence Frenzied Unclean Spirit ’til now, so of course I had to look it up. Wow. That was a thing.
Cynthia, that does sound like the loveliest of all possible funerals.
And I like your approach–variety not for variety’s sake but in order to give congregants a good selection of hymns that are truly “theirs.”
Thanks, all, for sharing your favorites with me!
I love both the modern praise songs and the old, old hymns. For my funeral I want the very well known ones that I truly love – Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, and The Old Rugged Cross. These still make me cry at times and they are tuly timeless. Our church blends the old classics with modern “praise songs” and I have fallen in love with 10,000 Reasons. Just putting in a plug for the modern praise songs.