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A hymnal or hymnary is a collection of hymns, usually in the form of a book, called a hymnbook (or hymn book). They are used in congregational singing. A hymnal may contain only hymn texts (normal for most hymnals for most centuries of Christian history); written melodies are extra, and more recently harmony parts have also been provided.
Since the twentieth century, singer-songwriter hymns have become common, but in previous centuries, generally poets wrote the words, and musicians wrote the tunes. The texts are known and indexed by their first lines ("incipits") and the hymn tunes are given names, sometimes geographical (the tune "New Britain" for the incipit "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound"). The hymnal editors curate the texts and the tunes. They may take a well-known tune and associate it with new poetry, or edit the previous text; hymnal committees are typically staffed by both poets and musicians. Some hymnals are produced by church bodies and others by commercial publishers.
In large denominations, the hymnal may be part of a coordinated publication project that involves several books: the pew hymnal proper; an accompaniment version (e.g. using a ring binder so that individual hymns can be removed and sit nicely on a music stand); a leader's guide (e.g. matching hymns to lectionary readings); and a hymnal companion, providing descriptions about the context, origin and character of each hymn, with a focus on their poets and composers.
In some hymnals, the front section is occupied by service music, such as doxologies, three-fold and seven-fold amens, or entire orders of worship (Gradual, Alleluia, etc.). A section of responsorial psalms may also be included.
Hymnals usually contain one or more indexes; some of the specialized indexes may be printed in the companion volumes rather than the hymnal itself. A first line index is almost universal. There may also be indexes for the first line of every stanza, the first lines of choruses, tune names, and a metrical index (tunes by common meter, short meter, etc.). Indexes for composers, poets, arrangers, translators, and song sources may be separate or combined. Lists of copyright acknowledgements are essential. Few other books are so well indexed; at the same time, few other books are so well memorized. Singers often have the song number of their favorite hymns memorized, as well as the words of other hymns. In this sense, a hymnal is the intersection of advanced literate culture with the persistent survival or oral traditions into the present day.
The earliest hand-written hymnals are from the Middle Ages in the context of European Christianity, although individual hymns such as the Te Deum go back much further. The Reformation in the 16th century, together with the growing popularity of moveable type, quickly made hymnals a standard feature of Christian worship in all major denominations of Western and Central Europe. The first known printed hymnal was issued in 1501 in Prague by Czech Brethren (a small radical religious group of the Bohemian Reformation) but it contains only texts of sacred songs.[2] The Ausbund, an Anabaptist hymnal published in 1564, is still used by the Amish, making it the oldest hymnal in continuous use. The first hymnal of the Lutheran Reformation was Achtliederbuch, followed by the Erfurt Enchiridion. An important hymnal of the 17th century was Praxis pietatis melica.
Market forces rather than denominational control have characterized the history of hymnals in the thirteen colonies and the antebellum United States; even today, denominations must yield to popular tastes and include "beloved hymns" such as Amazing Grace[3] and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,[4] in their hymnals, regardless of whether the song texts conform to sectarian teaching.
The first hymnal, and also the first book, printed in British North America, is the Bay Psalm Book, printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[5][6] a metrical Psalter that attempted to translate the psalms into English so close to the original Hebrew that it was unsingable. The market demand created by this failure, and the dismal nature of Calvinist "lining out the psalms" in general, was served by hymnals for West gallery singing imported from England.
William Billings of Boston took the first step beyond West Gallery music in publishing The New-England Psalm-Singer (1770), the first book in which tunes were entirely composed by an American.[7] The tune-books of Billings and other Yankee tunesmiths were widely sold by itinerant singing-school teachers. The song texts were predominantly drawn from English metrical psalms, particularly those of Isaac Watts. All of the publications of these tunesmiths (also called "First New England School") were essentially hymnals.
Southerners identified with folk hymns of Wyeth's 1813 Part Second and collected more: the titles of Kentucky Harmony (1816) of Ananias Davisson, the Tennessee Harmony (1818) of Alexander Johnson, the Missouri Harmony (1820) of Allen D. Carden. and the Southern Harmony (1835) of William Walker drew attention to the fact that they contained regional folk songs for singing in two, three, or four parts. A new direction was taken by B. F. White with the publication of the Sacred Harp (1844): whereas others had gone on to produce a series of tunebooks, White stopped at one, then spent the rest of his life building an organization, modeled on church conventions, to organize singing events, with the result that the Sacred Harp continues as a living tradition to the present. The other tunebooks eventually yielded to denominational hymnals that became pervasive with the development of railroad networks, with the exception of the Southern Harmony, for which there is an annual singing in Benton, Kentucky to the present day, and Walker's Christian Harmony, published in 1866, with the first convention organized in 1875 (43 all-day singings in 2010); the Kentucky Harmony was republished in altered form as the Shenandoah Harmony in 2010, reviving the world of predominantly minor key melodies and unusual tonalities of Davisson's work.
In the North, the "Better Music Boys," cultivated musicians such as Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings who turned to Europe for musical inspiration, introduced musical education into the school system, and emphasized the use of organs, choirs, and "special music." In the long term this resulted in a decline of congregational singing. On the other hand, they also composed hymns that could be sung by everybody. Mason's The Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music (1822) was published by the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston while Mason was still living in Savannah; nobody else would publish it. This never became a denominational hymnal but was well-received by choirs. Mason's famous hymns, which were also included in Southern tunebooks, appeared later editions or publications: Laban ("My soul, be on thy guard;" 1830), Hebron ("Thus far the Lord hath led me on," 1830), Boylston ("My God, my life, my love," 1832), Shawmut ("Oh that I could repent! 1835") Bethany ("Nearer, My God, to Thee", as sung in the United States) (1856).
In the paper version of the hymnal, I put a QR code that points back to the Youtube video my wife found for these songs. Haven't figured out how to use QR codes on my phone with ODK as yet, so more times for that.
This hymnal is the perfect gift from grandparents, godparents, and parents to children up to 10 years old who want to learn the hymns they hear on Sundays. Use as a hymnal, daily devotional, and an educational tool for years to come.
Last week I received advance copies in the mail for an upcoming hymnal I just finished for our church. I printed it through RR Donnelley and was really pleased with the quality of the final product, particularly the binding (which is of first importance in hymnals, since they get heavily used!). This book came out to 372 hymns, 464 pages, and is printed on an 80gsm stock; not quite the smoothness I would have wanted, but between opacity, caliper, smoothness, and cost, something has to give!
I actually tried reproducing your first system of #145 last night just to get an idea of the work involved. It seems like you have a ton of tiny little spacing tweaks just in that one system! The amount of effort to do an entire hymnal is quite impressive!
One in Faith is a beautiful hardbound hymnal with a broad spectrum of music for your singing assembly: chant, classic hymnody, gospel hymns, spirituals, contemporary and bilingual pieces, and a generous selection of the best service music.
In preparation of this hymnal, the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) spent several years translating the nearly 300 Latin hymns of the Divine Office. These translations were approved by the USCCB in 2019. In addition, ICEL proposed melodies suited to each text including the Gregorian chant melodies of the Liber hymnarius as well as public domain tunes. The hymnal makes use of these suggestions by presenting both metrical and plainsong settings for each hymn.
GIA provides a complete fundraising plan using donor bookplates, which make it easy to raise the money for your hymnal and/or missal purchase. By inviting your parishioners to donate a hymnal in memory of a loved one or to honor their family name, you can easily and quickly raise all of the funds you will need to pay for your hymnal and/or missal purchase.
Hymnals have been important in the life of the Wesleyan movement. John Wesley published his first hymnal in 1737 in South Carolina. The various predecessor denominations of The United Methodist Church all regularly published and revised hymnals for their worship use.
The 1960 General Conference of The Methodist Church authorized a revision of its hymnal, which was completed in 1966. At the time of the 1968 union, the hymnal of The Evangelical United Brethren Church and the 1966 hymnal of The Methodist Church were recognized as official hymnals of the new denomination.
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