Mood: Moderate
-
STLT#386, Alleluia Chaconne
Next on the Countdown, it’s the original one hit wonder. (I’m apparently channeling the late Casey Kasem right now… a throwback to my misspent youth.) While a working organist, composer, and teacher most of his life, German musician Johann Pachelbel produced more than 200 pieces throughout his lifetime, earning himself a place as one of the… Continue reading
-
STLT#382, De Todos Bajo el Gran Sol
As I mentioned yesterday, the English version of this lyric is a mashup of Luke 2;14 and an Isaac Watts hymn. I take it on faith that the translation here is good – my go-to on Spanish is currently out of the country, so please, someone, let me know if it’s more or less the… Continue reading
-
STLT#379, Ours Be the Poems of All Tongues
I wonder sometimes if I’m overthinking these things. You see, I first looked at our lyric – another one by Ken Patton – and at first cheered at having an artsy doxology text, since I am an artsy minister. Yay, loveliness! Yay all arts, all songs, beauty! Yay all the other stuff! Yay! Ours be… Continue reading
-
STLT#378, Let Those Who Live in Every Land
Before I begin today’s piece, I want to invite those of you not on Facebook to check out my posting of yesterday’s hymn, because it generated a fascinating discussion about the use of doxologies and changing them up. I am so happy when people engage my meandering thoughts on the songs we all think we… Continue reading
-
STLT#375, As Saffron Trees now Capture Fire
So… this one confused the heck out me at first, because there is no such thing as a saffron tree. There’s a flower from which we get saffron that we use for cooking. Until I realized that saffron here is a color – the color I saw all along the highways between here and northern… Continue reading
-
STLT#374, Since What We Choose Is What We Are
We’ve kinda sung this before. No, I don’t mean that in some UU congregations, the royal ‘we’ have sung it. I mean that on July 16th, we sang an adaptation of this in the hymn Creative Love, Our Thanks We Give. In the full hymn version, we sing these lyrics adapted by Beth Ide: Since… Continue reading
-
STLT#371-373: An Unusual Day
I thought a lot about how to approach the next 12 entries in our hymnal – three tunes, nine different lyrics – and while I could dive into all the words and let the music fall where it may, that seemed to discredit the music, which requires attention. So – today I’ll talk about the… Continue reading
-
STLT#370, All People That on Earth Do Dwell
Dear music directors and accompanists: Old Hundredth can be set in D major. I make this an announcement, because it offended at least two musicians I have worked with when I suggested that we might transpose Old Hundredth down at least to F if not to D. “But it’s in G major and that’s where… Continue reading
-
STLT#366, Heleluyan
This is an amazing alleluia that comes out of the Muscogee Creek hymn tradition – which appears to emerge from the congregational line singing tradition. In a 2014 story on All Things Considered, Dr. Hugh Foley, a fine arts instructor and Native American history professor at Rogers State University in Claremore, OK, explains more about… Continue reading
-
STLT#355, We Lift Our Hearts in Thanks
Our English ethical culturist is back – this time with a more or less decent song of thanksgiving (puzzling placed in the Here and Now section). Good old Perceval Chubb… who once wrote an article stating that Americans ‘have an incapacity for leisure’ and whose O We Believe in Christmas felt pretty empty and apologetic.… Continue reading
Support this site
I am an entrepreneurial minister, which means I am a freelancer, and every part of my income comes from the work I do. The Hymn by Hymn Project was and is a labor of love, but I now am incurring increasing costs for hosting the site.
If everyone who visited gave just $5, those costs would be covered in a single week.
Whether you give once or monthly, your generosity will keep Hymn by Hymn free and available to to the tens of thousands of people who benefit from it.
Please support the project!
links
Learn more about my ministry at The Art of Meaning
Read my thoughts about congregational life at Hold My Chalice
You must be logged in to post a comment.