Favourite hymns

[Essex Boy]

by the way...the window that was installed in their memory was the nativity scene...and includes our family cat looking on along with the other animals in the stable.

What a pity you're not doing this at Christmas because you could get away with the "Carol of the Field Mice" from The Wind in the Willows, which ends thus:

And then they heard the angels tell
"Who were the first to cry NOWELL?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morning!"​

 

[rareboy]

well that would be fulsome at the very least.

 

[rareboy]

What a pity you're not doing this at Christmas because you could get away with the "Carol of the Field Mice" from The Wind in the Willows, which ends thus:

And then they heard the angels tell​

"Who were the first to cry NOWELL?​

Animals all, as it befell,​

In the stable where they did dwell!​

Joy shall be theirs in the morning!"​

I had also thought that it would have been fitting, but the timing didn't work out for the installation and so they've lined it up for decoration day at the cemetery.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I had forgotten about that one. It is a favorite.

In Trip To Bountiful, they used that as a musical theme to represent Geradine Page's longing to return to her childhood home, a small town in Texas named Bountiful. It was an effective device. She won the Academy Award for it, albeit that was a catch-up recognition, not becausse the acting was anything demanding.

 

[TickTockMan]

Growing up at every family funeral my older cousin (great aunt's kid) would sing this song. It is the only song I can think of that fits the thread, though to honest I don't know what a hymn is and I am too lazy and tired to look it up right now.

 

[Araucaria]

I grew up listening to this hymn, which praises God for all the wonderful qualities people ascribe to Him.

 

[Alistair]

Growing up at every family funeral my older cousin (great aunt's kid) would sing this song. It is the only song I can think of that fits the thread, though to honest I don't know what a hymn is and I am too lazy and tired to look it up right now.

A hymn is simply a song that praises God. I chose videos with Alan Jackson because he sang all of the songs in a traditional (Protestant-American) church style.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Growing up at every family funeral my older cousin (great aunt's kid) would sing this song. It is the only song I can think of that fits the thread, though to honest I don't know what a hymn is and I am too lazy and tired to look it up right now.

Religious music breaks down in multiple categories, some of them overlapping. If you subtract the instrumental composition, then vocal songs are what you have left.

Vocal praise music then falls out into categories depending on how the music is used, from what traditions it comes, and even how it is worded. I'm not versed on religious music outside Western Christianity, so don't apply this outide that.)

There is much music that derives from the Catholic Mass, the formal, structured, sacramental service of worship that evolved in the Holy Roman Catholic Church over centuries, but has been in place for many centuries. It was once only in Latin, so was liturgically in common across the planet, from South America to Europe to the Far East. Musical traditions within the Mass varied from culture to culture, but were initially obviously dominated by the European influences.

The music was focused on choirs and organs and formal music.

Then, the Protestant reformation saw movements that increased the congregation's singing. Germans and Swiss and later others were especially enthused about singing hymns, or songs of praise, in the congregations. Those hymns were sometimes written by famous composers like Brahms, or adapted versions of music great composers wrote for operas, oratorios, or masses, or requiems (masses for the dead, memorials).

But, there were also many hymn writers for both the music and the poems that begain spreading all over. This happened about four or five centuries ago, and was really not unlike our modern explosion of "desktop publishing" as the computer has enabled more people to dissemminate more creations. Four and five centuries ago, it took time for the moveable type printing press to proliferate, but eventually they did, and hymnals became a thing, eventually put in the hands of worshippers in many denominations, written by men and women.

Way back there, carols were also being written. Carols were originally secular music, and associated with dance, but later changes saw them increasingly blur into religious themes, usually more cheerful than hymns, and often less devotional than narrative like ballads. Carols today are included in Christmas services, but are still treated a bit differently than the more classical hymns traditions. It's very difficult to make up a strict set of rules to describe one versus another.

Less formal worship traditions (think megachurches, Pentacostalists, Charismatics, etc.) don't make such distinctions and simply refer to their songs as "praise songs," intentionally stripping away the formal language that makes liturgical music stand apart. And, in that evolution, for many, the modern praise songs do have little distinction from the secular music that exists alongside them. The same is true in reverse. Amazing Grace is often sung in country and western venues, including bars, with no particular intent to worship at all, merely as a cultural crossover, a song associated with family and tradition.

I was originally a Music Education major in college (after pre-pharmacy) and took a couple of years of music curriculum, before switching to English, so church music is very near to my own interest, and I have participated in diverse denominations from Fundamentalist to Episcopalian.

Hope that helps give a little depth to the question.

 

[Colby-2023]

 

[camper]

What about I Feel The Winds Of God Today.

 

[peeonme]

These two were my favorites as a boy.

 

[Peloso]

Dermot Mulroney, Patrick Warburton and Jon Hamm. I'd drink their bathwater.

Wait. Did you say hymns or hims?

 

[rareboy]

I am glad to say that I believe that based on my P's funeral services, the organist for the upcoming event seems to be happy with the selection.

I have enjoyed the suggestions.

Some of them more militant. Some more evangelical....but at the end of the day, songs that go right to the heart and gut.

 

[LilBit]

I had forgotten about that one. It is a favorite.

In Trip To Bountiful, they used that as a musical theme to represent Geradine Page's longing to return to her childhood home, a small town in Texas named Bountiful. It was an effective device. She won the Academy Award for it, albeit that was a catch-up recognition, not becausse the acting was anything demanding.

I was in the stage play a few years back. The character repeatedly sings "There's no Friend Like the Lowly Jesus," and it took months for me to get that song out of my head.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I was in the stage play a few years back. The character repeatedly sings "There's no Friend Like the Lowly Jesus," and it took months for me to get that song out of my head.

I can see how that was a better stage play than movie. For the most part, it is a series of dialogues.

I'll have to look up the hymn. It sounds like an actual hymn from that era.

The lyrical nature of Softly and Tenderly is a bit lullabyesque, and quite mesmerizing. More than a few hymns become earworms for weeks and weeks after hearing them.

I attribute it to how ingrams are formed in the brain. I've recently watched Dune Part Two severeal times, and the term "Na-Baron" is new to me, so stuck in my brain, like and earworm does, and I really, REALLY have no use in this world for that Harkonnen title.

On an equally pointless note, I mistyped "Geraldine" above, and apologize. At my age, I'm just proud of remembering old details, even if my typing is shit.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I was in the stage play a few years back. The character repeatedly sings "There's no Friend Like the Lowly Jesus," and it took months for me to get that song out of my head.T

I looked it up, and it bears a strong resemblance to Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus. Both harken from that same era, and the yippie skip of the dotted eighth notes seem typical of that era. Knowing that film/play, I'm guessing it was slowed down and more melancholy than in church singing. Sevral modern re-writes of it were popping up online, it having been adopted by the P&L crowd as a performance tune.

The piano rendition I heard made it sound almost like a bar tune in a Western.

If anyone else is curious, here it is as a hymn: https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/992

 

[Nude_Dude]

How Great Thou Art

My mother died - aged 96 - in January, 2023
Her favourite hymn was ALSO "How Great Thou Art"
I am an atheist - as was my late father.
But, as a muso, I love gospel music for its genuine emotion and passion.
Particularly, anything by Mahalia Jackson.

 

[LilBit]

I looked it up, and it bears a strong resemblance to Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus. Both harken from that same era, and the yippie skip of the dotted eighth notes seem typical of that era. Knowing that film/play, I'm guessing it was slowed down and more melancholy than in church singing. Sevral modern re-writes of it were popping up online, it having been adopted by the P&L crowd as a performance tune.

The piano rendition I heard made it sound almost like a bar tune in a Western.

If anyone else is curious, here it is as a hymn: https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/992

In our production it felt like a dirge.

 

[NotHardUp1]

In our production it felt like a dirge.

I led congregational singing for years. Although I have no idea about your director, I'm sure the script notes may have stated pensive or meditative. Many people don't seem to have good awareness of tempo when it drags. If you're good, you'll immediately sense it's too slow.

In church settings, often there is an unspoken sense that something needs to be slow of reverence, when a faster tempo really wouldn't seem rushed at all. I often had to pull my organist or piano up to tempo to keep the congregation awake. Mopey singing is fine for doleful characters in cartoons, not so much for actual people.

 

[Araucaria]

I led congregational singing for years. Although I have no idea about your director, I'm sure the script notes may have stated pensive or meditative. Many people don't seem to have good awareness of tempo when it drags. If you're good, you'll immediately sense it's too slow.

In church settings, often there is an unspoken sense that something needs to be slow of reverence, when a faster tempo really wouldn't seem rushed at all. I often had to pull my organist or piano up to tempo to keep the congregation awake. Mopey singing is fine for doleful characters in cartoons, not so much for actual people.

There have been quite a few times that I have felt a surge of annoyance when when the leader or organist starts a hymn at a tempo that drags, immediately after a sermon that went on too long. People don't realize that breaks the worshipful mood the church service is trying to inspire. At that point I'm going, "...and there's four verses of this damn song?" All I'm thinking about is just getting out of there.