HYMN books are expensive. Even with discounts and donations, a recent set of hymn books for a parish church can run into hundreds of kilos. So, when the dilapidated books stacked in the back of church have outlived the tender loving care of the keeper of the gaffer tape, what’s a PCC to do? Even disposal is hard: if more ancient than modern, they may barely be fit for the nice expense of export abroad. Better to let members of the congregation help themselves for private devotion at home.
Singing in church requires the congregation to be resourced to affix in. Hymn books, hymn sheets, full service orders, and enormous screens and projectors all have their place, although rarely in the identical constructing. Each of those options — screens, paper, or hymn books — requires investment, and indeed some ongoing cost for repair and substitute. (It could also be thought that purchasing a set of hymn books requires no further expense, however the red or green gaffer tape will definitely be needed after just a few a long time).
THE technology to project and display hymns and songs on a screen is cheaper than it was, but you would like someone to master Windows and maintain the wiring. It can cost excess of a set of hymn books, and desires replacing sooner, at greater environmental cost. It requires a school, and an electricity supply that may bear the load. It doesn’t work by candlelight, and makes everyone feel at home as they reach for his or her glasses and wonder what’s on next, and whether it’s a repeat of last week.
Printing a service sheet each week is time-consuming, paper-consuming, and vulnerable to errors great and small. The variety of human hours spent per week on producing a single-use hymn- or service-sheet might usefully be contemplated while waiting for the photocopier technician to reach on a Saturday morning.
A selected souvenir booklet is welcoming, friendly, helpful, and practical; and Common Worship-made-bespoke booklets are aspirational, even de rigueur. And yet, now that now we have carbon net zero, and realise that the staples must be removed before recycling, is it time to re-examine about all this paper, work, and expense, which adds up in additional ways than one? A hymn book uses only paper and ink at its production: a once-for-all, initial ecological cost, offset by a long time of ongoing use. A duplicate of Ancient and Modern or The Revised English Hymnal will outlive your automotive, of course.
SURVEYS reveal that the typical congregation knows and sings about 250 hymns annually. This prompts the query why Hymns Ancient and Modern (2013) incorporates 845 hymns, The Revised English Hymnal has 688, and Hymns Old and New has 568 — to say just three. Of course, not all congregations know or sing the identical hymns, and there are stars of hymnody that everybody knows and sings, and that no hymn book would dare omit.
Meanwhile, there are hymns which have outstayed their welcome within the well-known books, and recent hymns that editors wish to introduce to congregations: publishing them in a well known book gets them noticed and used. Editors all the time live in hope that clergy and organists will notice what’s recent, and consider and check out it. Coe Fen, Guiting Power, and Corvedale are tunes which have turn out to be popular in this manner, as have “Christ triumphant”, “I, the Lord of sea and sky”, the hymns of Bernadette Farrell, and material from Iona and Taizé. These find their way into books, either by the use of novelty, or popular acclaim, copyright permissions notwithstanding.
This is the double-edged sword that a hymn book is a set phenomenon: inflexibility. Supplements equivalent to Sing Praise (2010) and New English Praise (2006) appear, but the large books survive and bear a generation forward in singing the religion. Thus, buying a recent hymn book is an exciting gear change, even inside a well-recognized tradition.
WHICH one to purchase? A congregation is formed, if not defined, by the songs that it sings; so parishes will describe themselves as “an English Hymnal parish”, for instance, because they use that book, and have done for a very long time. Notwithstanding the industrial competition that may exist between publishers, parishes depending on Ancient and Modern, or Hymns Old and New do rarely describe themselves on this quasi-partisan way, though they could as well. It isn’t so simple as “English Hymnal for Anglo-Catholics, Ancient and Modern for Broad Anglican, and Hymns Old and New for everybody else”, but there may be some truth in that.
Communities that use the latter are used to a contents list that’s fundamentally alphabetical slightly than seasonal. Indexes aside, this makes flicking through the pages like browsing a dictionary, as no hymn is connected to those surrounding it. Just as, in a dictionary, “music” may appear next to “mushroom”, so “We three kings” and “We sing the praise of him who died” are adjoining.
This detracts from certainly one of the needs of providing a hymn book: it isn’t simply a reference book, but a treasury. Having a Lent section, or a range for marriage, or natural disasters, isn’t only practically helpful, but aids meditation. Hymns are poetry, in any case, and most reward quiet contemplation, even when that is hampered — or perhaps enhanced — by your with the ability to “hear” the tune in your head. Hymn-singing is fundamentally a company activity, but not exclusively so. Consider what a congregation will do with a hymn book once they are usually not actually singing from it. Give them a gaffer-taped previous-generation book and discover.
THE selection of book says something about what a congregation is and what it desires to turn out to be. A hymn book is an aspirational purchase, made in faith, hope, and love. It is a musical compendium and a theological reference work. Gentle reader, I’m biased. I get that. I really like hymn books — I really like hymn books. To hold one, flick through it, use it as a tool with which to unlock the voice, and a manual for spiritual contemplation — these are personal joys.
Nothing handles, or feels, or works, like a hymn book, especially whether it is built to last — which the very best ones are. When I sing, I’m singing with all those that have held this book; with all those that are singing from the identical hymn book; with all those that have held it, but hold it now not, and yet who sing on one other shore; and, indeed, with all who will sing these hymns in the longer term, some as yet unborn.
This is the facility of hymnody; and a book of hymns opens up a novel type of liturgical and musical communion which a screen or disposable sheet cannot provide. Hymn books are a bargain.
Dr Gordon Giles is the Chairman of the English Hymnal Company, and an editor of The Revised English Hymnal (2024) and Ancient and Modern: Hymns and songs for refreshing worship (2013). He is Canon Chancellor of Rochester Cathedral.
