[Magdalen] Hymnals and Perspective.

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

The '82 is certainly puzzling. They decided that congregations ought to
sing unison, for very, very shabby reasons they probably thought were
competently arrived at. I'm sure they felt they did their best.

Removing harmony for no good [good] reason has to be one of their worse
mistakes.

A real bizarre move was changing of just two or three chords in a hymn and
-- gosh, it's not an earlier version. Uh, no, it's the same dang hymn, but
now we who memorized the harmony have to relearn it for no good [good]
reason.

Pointlessly removing the amens because of their own narrow view of what it
meant -- to them -- was another stupid gaffe.  They printed a detailed
discussion of why they removed the amens. I read it and said, "Using purely
their own words, one can easily construct a solid argument for leaving the
amens just as they are.

Just as with the "Once to every man and nation" silliness, their thinking
appeared remarkable for its shallowness.

The fonts are easier reading than the 1940, however.  You grab the
positives where you can find them!

Maybe it's time to abandon the hymnal and go for a paperless edition from
which the needed stuff can be copied into service bulletins. One concern,
justified, of the new hymnal was its size, and even so they left out many
essential hymns such as "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing." I mean, we need to
have  hymns for the whole Church, not hymns for whites and hymns for blacks
and for the the whatever oppressed, etc., which is what they've done with
the segregated hymnals.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 8:10 PM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

> Having grown up with the 1959 Broadman and 1975 Baptist, when I converted
>> the 1982 Episcopal left me wailing over and over, "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE
>> >HARMONY?!" I suppose heritage with the 1940 Episcopal would have elicited
>> the same wail, but maybe moreso.  With my background of "director-led"
>> >congregational singing (lusty, I believe would be the right word), I don't
>> think I even had a chance.
>>
>
> As most TEC parishes used the little hymnals with no harmonies at all back
> in the day, I think lots of them were pleased at the addition of harmonies
> in H82.And of course, for those who want ALL of them (despite notes that
> the others be sung in unison) CPC does (or at least did) publish a hymnal
> with full music for all 720 hymns (no service music, however).
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>