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Eccles: New hymns?
Rufus T Firefly
Shipmate
I'm always interested to discover new hymns. Widening the repertoire of the church is a healthy thing, in my experience. With that in mind, perhaps we could share the new (to us, anyway) hymns that we have come across.
(Two important bits of explanation:
a) By "hymn" I mean any hymn, song or chant appropriate to use in corporate worship.
b) I do not want to encourage breaking copyright laws. So by all means suggest a title and author and perhaps some small description of the hymn. But please do NOT quote words if they are in copyright.)
I want to start with two hymns that I have found over the past year.
"Where the road runs out" is by Colin Gibson, from New Zealand. Actually I found out that it was written in 1976, but I heard it for the first time 12 months ago. It has been described as a hymn which "blends biblical with New Zealand land and seascape images" and it includes the very striking phrase "be the dolphin Christ", which really appealed to me. I have only heard it sung to the tune of Kingsfold ("I heard the voice of Jesus say") but I believe other tunes are available.
"Table of the World" is by Tony Alonso and is sung to the tune of Nettleton ("Come, thou font of every blessing"). It's a great hymn to send people out, with the theme of going from the table of Jesus to the table of the world.
I like both of these hymns very much - especially "where the road runs out".
I look forward to hearing what new hymns other people have found.
(Two important bits of explanation:
a) By "hymn" I mean any hymn, song or chant appropriate to use in corporate worship.
b) I do not want to encourage breaking copyright laws. So by all means suggest a title and author and perhaps some small description of the hymn. But please do NOT quote words if they are in copyright.)
I want to start with two hymns that I have found over the past year.
"Where the road runs out" is by Colin Gibson, from New Zealand. Actually I found out that it was written in 1976, but I heard it for the first time 12 months ago. It has been described as a hymn which "blends biblical with New Zealand land and seascape images" and it includes the very striking phrase "be the dolphin Christ", which really appealed to me. I have only heard it sung to the tune of Kingsfold ("I heard the voice of Jesus say") but I believe other tunes are available.
"Table of the World" is by Tony Alonso and is sung to the tune of Nettleton ("Come, thou font of every blessing"). It's a great hymn to send people out, with the theme of going from the table of Jesus to the table of the world.
I like both of these hymns very much - especially "where the road runs out".
I look forward to hearing what new hymns other people have found.
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Comments
Like Colin Gibson she is also from Aotearoa-New Zealand - there must be something in the water there
I aim to use as many in our books (NEH plus the supplement) as possible, and we also have words and/or tunes from elsewhere as required - so (for purely musical reasons) we use a lot of Welsh tunes.
Things we don't sing unless requested for a wedding or funeral are: anything by Mr Ke****ck, anything from Hil****g, anything that sounds like bad 1960/70s cocktail lounge music.
The big thing I've found is that when you introduce new stuff it can be enormously helpful to either have a "singing Sunday" where the sermon morphs into a learning new music session, or to have an open "singing Saturday" a couple of times a year. We used that last approach when introducing new congregational settings of the ordinary and it worked very well.
Except for 'Lord for the years' 'Spirits oppressed by pleasure...' What's that about? Not to mention line 4 of verse 2: who can sing that with a straight face?
Do you not think that pleasure and wealth can be oppressive to the spirit, then? That seems to me to be a perfectly orthodox Christian statement about the dangers of shallow earthly distractions.
Oh I understand the theology. Just the way it is expressed comes across as gloomy puritanism. There is no compensating hint of joy in the rest of the hymn. It's all compounded by the plodding dirgey tune it is usually sung to.
For I heard the voice of Jesus say I grew up using Kingsfold but O Rowan Tree is the usual tune here.
Our small singing group are singing this on Easter day, and we are also doing a couple of Taize chants on Good Friday
At the name of Jesus - Christopher Walker
Laudate, Laudate Dominum - Christopher Walker
Table of Plenty - Dan Schutte
Taste and See - James E. Moore
Centre of my Life - Paul Inwood
All that is hidden - Bernadette Farrell
Out of Darkness - Christopher Walker
As the deer longs - Bob Hurd
Most of these are pretty modern. I also think they're pretty good!
Never heard it before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKd8jez22CE
It's being used in our ecumenical Good Friday open air witness.
But it's not a hymn - by which I mean it is not a congregational song. It is a devotional song (whose merits or otherwise we may discuss) intended to be sung by a professional quality singer.
(And if you want my personal opinion, it's a maudlin dirge, but I accept that others may see things differently)
But you have to have musicians who get the jazz theme and especially Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". If you try and play it "straight" it's awful. But with the right musicians, it's a blast.
If you were to say there are some songs which work better as solos, or sung by groups and don't work well as hymns, then I would agree with you. There are a lot that applies to. I'm not sure that applies to this one as I've never personally sung it congregationally. So I can't say whether it works or not. But if people are trying to sing them congregationally, it makes them poor hymns, rather than not-hymns-at-all.
Crossed with post above.
Couldn't agree more! Definitely not one for traditional organists to try!
@Rufus T Firefly I've also sung Sing of the Lord's Goodness, used to be a regular when the music group were playing instead of an organ.
I beg to differ. The woman sings it in a soloist's style but the song is also published in 4 part harmony for a choir to sing. The only reason I posted her version was because I couldn't find a congregational version on youtube.
Beautiful tune - the only time I've actually broken down and cried while singing a hymn was when we sang that hymn to that tune (I was sat on the front row and was desperatly hoping the minister didn't notice I was crying in case he wanted to, y'know, pray for me or something )
How very dare you! Just because some of us are "traditional organists" doesn't mean we have no capacity to do jazz - if you're looking for a fine example, go no further than Dudley Moore.
Retreats, suitably abashed - but you know what I mean!
https://www.giamusic.com/store/sacred-music/
Well sort of. Gibson and Murray have had such a stamp on Aotearoa/New Zealand hymnody for so long that many of the newer/younger hymn writers don't get a look in. Maybe Gillard's "Servant Song", though the Archbishop of York once famously grumbled about whether it was a hymn at all, and a NZ newspaper attributed it to Shirley Murray anyway.
At any rate there are other A/NZ hymn-writers, like Mark Wilson and Ian Render ... it would be nice if they got a glimpse into the kiwi hymnodic gerontocracy occasionally.
So much more inspiring than anything I'm likely to hear at our parish church this Easter. At least I'll have this playlist to console myself. I usually sit with Faure's Requiem playing at home through Good Friday.
I’m glad you like them
The music at your place must be truly dire.
None of that list will be appearing in our place. On the other hand, you'll find Byrd's setting of Ave verum corpus, Duruflé's Ubi caritas et amor, and other things for choir, while the congregation will get to sing hymns such as O sacred head, sore-wounded and Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle (a translation of the Latin Pange lingua.
Perhaps a case of horses-for-courses: then again, why go for the not very good when you can have something sublime?
A/NZ in an NZ context usually means Aotearoa / New Zealand ... not sure if that's what you were clarifying though
I'd assumed you meant 'Australia/New Zealand' i.e. the two big countries in the Southern Ocean with relatively similar roots.
Incidentally, how is it pronounced and where does the stress go?
Is that so? Granted, where I live now it's unheard of to use the NEH. I'm now in the land of the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal. But my impression was that in England it's the default in cathedrals, college chapels, and highish to Anglo-Catholic parishes (except for the most extremely Anglo-Papalist).