Favorite Hymns
Over at Welborn's blog, she linked to a NPM (National Pastoral Musicians) survey asking about favorite hymn and why. Of course, the conservative masses have rushed to rain invective and their favorite latin hymn on the comment boxes of the NPM survey.
I'm not interested in the survey, but it made me think what my favorite hymns are. I think these would be among my favorites:
O God Our Help in Ages Past
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
Just As I Am Without One Plea
I Surrender All
Who is on the Lord Side
Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus
Onward Christian Soldiers
Rejoice, The Lord is King
All Hail the Power of Jesus Name
That's what I can remember. I think they tend to fall into two categories: 1. power, 2. Surrender and service
Also, they are all Protestant hymns. Catholic hymn writing is still relatively young and we'll get very good ones with time. I just don't like the current ones too much. Also, my spirituality is more Protestant so those ol' time Wesley and Isaac Watts hymns do it for me.
Howeva, on the Catholic side, I do like "I am the bread of life," but then again, that is not a "Catholic" hymn, is it? I like "O come, O Come, Emmanuel" but it's not fair to throw Christmas hymns in there. They are simply in a class of their own. In Welborn's comment boxes, I say people throw in things like Ave Verum Corpus. I don't think I am wrong in saying that that's not a hymn. A latin hymn that I absolutely love is Ave Maria, O Maiden, O Mother. You can donate $20 to EWTN and ask for their Ecce Mater Dei CD and there's a bunch of kick-butt Marian hymns on there.
posted by Ono at 4:10 PM
4 Comments:
My husband and I had an argument on whether or not Morning Has Broken was a good Church hymn. I told him I like the Cat Stevens recording, but in a church in just sounds like drivel. He didn't agree, but he said he LIKED being reminded of Cat Stevens.
I am ashamed to admit I actually amsurprised sometimes by some Schutte hymns and responsorials. I'll like one, and be like, whoa, Schutte?
AndAmy's post a few months back about Guilty Pleasures of Church Songs was much much better, though it still predicitably devolved into what you would expect.
Morning Has Broken is a "nice" hymn. I'll give it a C. If it disappeared into the night never to return, I'm not sure that I'd miss it.:)
Really helpful data, lots of thanks for your post.
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