Unitarian hymns of note
The eponymous Jess (Jess’s Journal) makes me happy because she knows how to make an S-ending name possessive correctly, a tiny matter that has long bristled me. Still flu-ish, I guess I bristle easily.
The same Jess has also pointed out the difference between simple and simplistic music in worship. The low estate of Unitarian Universalist hymnody has bother me dearly for many years, and, despite my great misgivings about Unitarianism, its faithful once produced some of the greatest hymns known in English. A Catholic organist I once knew noted the Unitarians wrote hymns that dealt seriously with time and place, especially the cycles of time and the quality of natural spaces. I’ve never studied the observation formally because that rings true. (And I’ve said before the Universalists were middling hymn writers at best. Usually too busy making a theological point to get the poetry out.)
Talk about, say, the Hosmer and “two Sams” hymns has dried up since the 1993 grey hymnal came out. I don’t recall if any of these are in it. What, if any, classic Unitarian hymns are still in wide use?
1 August 2006 at 6:02 pm
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, the only Unitarian penned Christmas carol still in the current hymnal.
1 August 2006 at 8:20 pm
Apostrophes are one of my hot buttons. Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a book that makes me extremely happy, except that I know the people who NEED to read it won’t.
;-)
1 August 2006 at 8:22 pm
Link didn’t post. http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/
1 August 2006 at 10:09 pm
I may have been guilty of this crime.
My excuse is I am currently studying on an intensive English Language teaching prof. development course which - through sleep deprivation - is ironically causing me to spell everything incorrectly, miss basic punctuation etc.
Anyway, tonight I found time to change a Scott Wells’ to a Scott Wells’s on my blog entry - you’ll all be relieved to know that I’m sure…
http://renewed-hope.blogspot.com/2006/07/wikipedia-unitarian-christian-groups.html
1 August 2006 at 10:12 pm
I’m deeply relieved!
5 August 2006 at 11:19 am
Hi
UU music at its best is wonderful and inspiring - I really like it.
(I am not cool enough to appreciate that new paper-back music book we are now starting to use.)
Dudley
ps your font is very small