Bringing back the old hymns?

[ontosecondary]

I'm part of a music team in a large state primary. We do Singup which is good but does feature a fair number of songs about apostrophes and sentiments such as "it's you, it's me, it's us that makes community".

We are not church school and I'm an atheist.

I feel that, in this day and age, we ought to be able to re-introduce some of the old hymns on the grounds that they are (i) great music and (ii) have lyrics that hint at life not always being rosy

I'm thinking of suggesting it to my colleagues. Ironically they are Christians and so it would need to come from me so as not to seem like a church-school-by-the-back-door thing.

Hymns I remember and miss include:
He who would valliant be
When a Knight won his spurs
All Things Bright and Beautiful
Give me joy in my heart keep me singing (etc)

Hymns I remember and would not foist on the innocent include:
There is a Green Hill Far Away
and anything else that's massively into the whole crucifixion details....

anyway, I wondered what people thought, and if you could nominate some hymns you wish you still heard. It's odd that we keep the Christmas Carols but not the rest of the year hymns.

cheers.

If you're light on competent pianists, you need to found a recorder band

Or add tambourines and no one will even hear the odd duff note.

I love the old hymns. In fact ds was treated to a rendition of "When a Knight won his Spurs" followed by "Onwaed Christian Soldiers" last week.

they dont sing many hymns his school at all - old or new. Maybe just an odd christmas one. Last harvest festival was song-less. I know they have never plough(ed) the fields and scatter(ed) but eben cauliflowers are fluffy was missing!

"Many are really incomprehensible without the concept of being sinners."

Precisely Errol, precisely.

The less comprehensible the better. Apart from When I needed a neighbour which is ok.

YY to this. DCs go to a very churchy school and they still don't sing the old favourites. I would love them to know:

To be a pilgrim
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Immortal invisible god only wise
Jerusalem

And some of the apparently younger ones:
At the name of Jesus (this was practically like a pop song for us at school as it seemed much jazzier than the others)
Lord of the Dance
Glad that I live am I
Morning has broken (a total favourite of mine, especially when our groovy teacher played the Cat Stevens version on the record player )

Great thread btw. Am going to be warbling all afternoon

"and it's from the old I travel to the new, keep me travelling along with you..." repeat to fade.

I love the hymns, i sometimes watch songs of praise and sing along (even though I'm Jewish!).
My DC don't know any of the hymns they don't go to a faith school, I wish they did do hymns that I remember from school.

yes definitely Quangle see my earlier posts.

Thanks for the Cat Stevens mention. Anything that has been covered/reinterpreted gives me a "way in" via my classroom music lessons.

I'm glad no-one else is like my DH - the hymn he apparently remembers best from school is Luther's 'A safe stronghold our God is still' ... which might have passed the incomprehensibility test but for it being explained to them that the 'ancient prince of hell' referred to the Pope.

Wow!

But how historically fascinating......

A thought. If we are children of the 70s, that means if we don't reintroduce this music soon it will be lost because it will become grandparent music :(

On different tunes -- it used to be a point of pride with us at (very polite well-behaved girls') school to sing more than one tune at once whenever there were multiple options.

God we knew how to enjoy a spot of teenage rebellion in those days.

I always remember the one about Gabriel and his silver trumpet. I'd bellow that one out! So many fabulous songs alas all forgotten in the majority of primary schools. Our school sings all these new fangled songs about 'The Tongue' and suchlike. I think they would really benefit from the 9 million verses of Dear lord and father of mankind.

I also remember the 'val der reee, val der RAAAAH - knapsack on my back' one and 'appuski duski, apuss ki doooooo' about sardines

Happy days.

Great thread.

My kids' old primary stopped singing old hymns when the new headmistress came. She was a great head but she had execrable taste in songs - for the Mother's Day service they sang a vile, vile song called 'My home-baked mum'.

Ironically they taught them all kinds of gory details about the crucifixion in RE so a bit of 'There is a green hill' at Easter wouldn't have made it any worse.

Has anyone mentioned 'Our father, by whose servants....' for secondary school commemoration day? Perhaps it just had an extra resonance because it was a girls' school so you were aware of all the history and battles around women's education, but it always brought a tear to my eye.

I couldn't believe it when they stopped ploughing the fields and scattering at Harvest Festival. It was a rural school, too - a good many of the kids' parents were farmers.

My own primary school was in a town with a fishing industry and we sang 'When lamps are lighted in the town', which is very moving when you realise how many men died fishing in the past.

oh can it be

or

oh for a 1000 tongues

great belters but not necessarily for secondary secular ed

This has been my beef for years. Once you expunge hymns from one generation, they will be gone forever unless there is a concerted effort to re-introduce them.

Our C 0f E school sang songs such as 'BIG...RED...Combineharvester'..! Appalling.

Some of the old hyms were such a joy to belt out, excellent music.
I Love my 'Hymn Album' (Huddersfield Choral Society) next to nothing for wonderful, swelling harmonies.

'Tell out My Soul' one of my favourites

Just listened to tell out my soul. Beautiful.

I found my ear worm today was "and the creed and the colour and the name don't matter, we're you there?"

And I liked it when hymns marked the seasons; 'Hark a thrilling voice is sounding' (with tambourines) was the advent carol sung every year at my primary at the start of December, just before the full carol season. Takes me straight back whenever I hear it.

yes i agree about the hymns dying out. some of them have history e.g Charles Wesley? who was imprisoned for his methodist faith and Amazing Grace has connections with William Wilberforce and christan faith I think. writing this off the top of my head

I love tell out my soul.

I wonder why and how it happened. Seems it happened in churches too.

Turnip - we lived by the sea too, 'when lamps are lighted' is so poignant. We used to have a tape recording of DB2 singing it in clear treble, along with 'Hushed was the evening hymn'.

Bugger. I'm welling up now.

I don't think Amazing Grace will ever die out (heck, it's immortalised by Scotty playing it on the bagpipes for Spock's burial in space)

Am I the only one who still has their school hymn book? "Hymns Ancient and Modern"

This appeared on my Facebook newsfeed today. Now THAT is a hymn in assembly