Mia Himnareto - my new blog

I've started a new blog, Mia Himnareto - My Little Hymnal, to which I invite anyone interested to turn their attention ;-) - the first substantive post deals with the tune PILGRIMAGE by C(harlotte?) A. Barnard and its associated text, Advent tells us Christ is near, by A. Katherine Hankey.

Peace of Jesus

I was leafing through the 1956/1966 RLDS The Hymnal, wondering anew at the bold deletion of No. 580 (Come, Come, Ye Saints) in 1958, and on a whim decided to visit their website and look for hymns or hymnals. Found this nice piece set to NETTLETON: Peace of Jesus, by Danny A. Belrose, © 2005 CofCCCorp. Into my wish hymnal it goes...

Belovèd, let us love

This is a nice little Horatius Bonar piece, based on 1 John. TCH has 5 verses, and three tunes.

1. Belovèd, let us love: love is of God;
   In God alone hath love its true abode.

2. Belovèd, let us love: for they who love,
   They only, are His sons, born from above

3. Belovèd, let us love: for love is rest,
   And he who loveth not abides unblest.

4. Belovèd, let us love: for love is light,
   And he who loveth not dwelleth in night.

5. Belovèd, let us love: for only thus
   Shall we behold that God Who loveth us.

The 1932 Christian Science Hymnal (CSH), my only other source for the hymn, gives four verses, changing the first line to "Belovèd, let us love: for love is God;" and omitting #3.

I definitely want this in my hymnal—it first appeared in a Baptist hymnal (Sup­ple­ment of the Bap­tist Psalms and Hymns, 1880), according to TCH, and I am sorry it has fallen from our denominational repertoire—but I am not sure what tune to use. I'll be trying out those in TCH (GLOVERNIA, GRANDPONT, DENNIS (Thalben-Ball), the last two also in CSH) but I wonder what tune (if any) it had in the Baptist Sup­ple­ment of 1880, and I am open to other suggestions in 10.10 or 6.4.6.4.

St. Magnus, American Oxford Hymnal No. 277

The American Oxford Hymnal ([AOH], pub. OUP, 1930) gives as hymn number 277 C. Wesley's "Let saints on earth in concert sing", set to two tunes. Odd thing is, both tunes (completely dissimilar aside from both being being C.M. and both being in G and starting on D) are identified as "St. Magnus" by Jeremiah Clark. The second tune is the usual St. Magnus, similar to the MIDI at The Cyber Hymnal ™, which TCH says was arranged by Monk. (TCH also spells the composer's name "Clarke".) Can any of my millions of hymnically informed readers identify the first tune? Here is a link to a MIDI version, for those whose hymnals at hand don't include the 1930 AOH: AOH277A.mid.

My Jesus I Love Thee / Boundless Salvation

This coming Sunday Mrs Haruo and I will probably be doing the special music at church. It will be Communion Sunday, and we have no time to practice (she's out of town), so what Verne the Organist and I have tentatively settled on is two numbers:

• first we will sing three verses of "When Love Is Found" (which was sung at our wedding, and Verne keeps wanting us to reprise), but whereas at our wedding we (the congregation: it was the processional hymn, trilingually in English, Esperanto and Japanese) sang vv. 1-3 per Wren and then Marilyn Hillyer's emendation of v. 5, ending "Lift up your hearts! Let love be fed / Through each deed done, through each word said", this time we will sing straight Wren, but omit vv. 3 & 4. It will, after all, be Communion Sunday.
  

• then we will sing the following text:
  
  My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
  For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
  My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
  If ever I loved Thee, if ever I loved Thee,
  If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
  
  I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
  And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
  I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
  If ever I loved Thee, if ever I loved Thee,
  If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
  
  Oh, who’s like my Savior? He’s Salem’s bright King;
  He smiles and He loves me and helps me to sing:
  I’ll praise him, I’ll praise Him with notes loud and clear,
  While rivers of pleasure, while rivers of pleasure,
  While rivers of pleasure my spirit shall cheer.
  
  And now, hallelujah! the rest of my days
  Shall gladly be spent in promoting His praise
  Who opened His bosom to pour out this sea
  Of boundless salvation, of boundless salvation,
  Of boundless salvation for you and for me.

The words to the last four stanzas will be in the bulletin, and maybe even on the wall, and we will encourage the congregation to sing along. The problem, the thing that makes it a concern of My Wish Hymnal, is the identification of the tune and its composer. The Christian Life Hymnal calls it Boundless Salvation, sets General Booth's hymn of that title to it, and ascribes it to J. Ellis. The Worshiping Church sets Featherston(e)'s "My Jesus, I Love Thee" to it, calls it Affection, and ascribes it to E. F. Miller. And The Cyber Hymnal™ calls it My Jesus I Love Thee by J. Ellis, but mentions it only in connection with Booth's "Boundless Salvation" text.

I hashed much of this over several years ago in a thread at the Mudcat Café, so I hereby incorporate all this verbiage.

What I still need to know is to whom to attribute this tune (MIDI) and what to call it.

Leland = Haruo

Burt carols

Just a list for the moment of the Alfred Burt Christmas carols. These are in surprisingly few hymnals, in my opinion. HWC has one (O Hearken Ye), and HFG has two (Some Children See Him and The Star Carol [Long years ago]). Of the fifteen Burt carols, I would find room in the inn of my hymnal for at least eleven, I think:

• Ah, bleak and chill the wintry wind
• Carol of the Mother (Sleep, baby mine)
• Caroling, Caroling
  
• Christ in the Stranger's Guise (I met a stranger yest're'en)
• Christmas Cometh Caroling
• Jesu Parvule
• Nigh Bethlehem on a wintry night (all 7 verses)
• O hearken ye who would believe
• Some children see him
• The Star Carol (Long years ago on a deep winter night)
• What are the signs of the morning

The other four strike me mostly as too secular-domestic for my hymnal, though they too are well worth singing! These are:

• All on a Christmas Morning (Oh, who are these that throng the way)
• Come, Dear Children
• This Is Christmas (Bright, bright the holly berries)
• We'll Dress the House

I'm also interested in the question of whether any of the Bates Burt carols that antedated Alfred's collaboration survive, since Bates's texts (even moreso than the admirable Wihla Hutson's ones) seem great in their own right to my palate, and it would be a joy to see the others.

Your favorite hymn (see poll above)

I have installed a poll asking people to choose their favorite hymn that isn't in their church's hymnal (and what hymnal is that?). Personally, of the four I listed, I chose "His voice as the sound of the dulcimer sweet", which is set to Samanthra in the 1835 Southern harmony but is not in Fremont Baptist's Word Music Inc. 1986 Hymnal for Worship and Celebration. It is a cento, apparently, from the same Joseph Swain poem that yielded "O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight", with which it shares a substantial amount of text, and which is also not in our hymnal.

The chances that many readers will locate their favorite amongst my four nominees is negligible, so this post offers a place to respond with your real answers.