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.

Love loads of the above.
Don't forget the Christmas carols!

Cherubim and Seraphim is also in "In the bleak mid winter"

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air -
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

I don't know the Autumn Days one many of you are referring to, but many of the others I can still come up with a fair portion of the words to.

Yes, My copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern is still on my bookcase at my parents - with its covering of sticky back plastic!

It was also very interesting last December to go to the school carol sing-a-long. Mixture of traditional carols and newer stuff (Sleigh bells, Rudolph etc). When the choruses weren't visible on the projector the 3/4/5 time round, many people didn't know what to do - either stopped, or tried to sing the next verse.

Someone needs to get Come And Praise re-printed,with a CD to sing along to, for the schools with no pianist.
I remember it well. There were 72 songs and I remember the no,s of some of them.
Autumn days when the grass is jewelled.....it was no.4
Morning has broken.....no1.
Are you impressed by my memory?!

Oh I live hymns! Not religious at all but hymn practice on a Tuesday was the best assembly of the week.
Makes me sad that my dd won't sing hymns when she goes to school.

Great thread! Can anyone suggest which songbook might have been used in the early-mid eighties in a primary? I can recall loads of the songs we sang - some traditional hymns and a lot of much newer stuff which I think must have been brand new back then. It wasn't Come and Praise and Junior Praise was too late I think. We sang The Family of Man if that helps! Thanks.

We used to have the Come and Praise CDs. They were dire! The 20 assembly songs cd I linked to has some of the old favourites and the backings aren't too bad.

You can also get other hymn books with Cds. They are out there, but not the come and praise ones anymore.

www.amazon.co.uk/Everyones-Singing-Lord-Book-CD-ROM/dp/1408196964/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1412366961&sr=8-8&keywords=hymns+book+cd

www.amazon.co.uk/Someones-Singing-Lord-Children-Songbooks/dp/0713618477/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1412366994&sr=8-7&keywords=someone%27s+singing

You can buy Come and Praise off Amazon, it's an omnibus edition of 1 and 2. I think we only had edition 1 in my schools, as lots of them in the index I'd never even heard of.

"Morning has broken.....no1."

Yes! You had to go past it because it was at the front.......

I need hymns ancient and modern I guess...

Scampi doodle, in the 1980's the most popular school singing books were published by A and C Black, if you google you might recognise some of songs from their books on the website. Someone's Singing Lord was used in a lot of schools.

Thanks storynannywill have a look.

I love these and my heart lifts when we get a proper School Hymn in church. We get a lot of long dull ones and some slightly happy clappy modern stuff, dependent on the junior choir are in.

I'm an atheist, but I have a church choir singing (total agnostic) DD1. Blame a church school and a very keen choir master who gives singing lessons.

Thanks to him and DDs very musical primary school teacher, DD1 discovered a talent for singing that's been a very important part of her life and an enormous source of self confidence all through school.

She's 16 and I hope she'll always find a choir.

After this thread i listened to Premier Christian radio who play worship music between 1-2 weekdays and they may do traditional hymns on a Sunday at some point.

Ontosecondary - it depends on the church. DH and I sing in a church choir and our main hymn book is The English Hymnal so the majority of what we sing are the traditional hymns. We like introducing our trebles to the tunes and they in turn like them as well.

So if everyone likes them, why did it change?

oh yes please!

i remember

Morning has broken
lord of all hopefullness
oh jesus i have promised
think of a world wihtout any flowers
autumn days ( i remember at school this won the vote for favourite hymn)
we plough the fields and scatter

I don't remember the actual numbers of the hymns though

As I say - it depends on the church. Some churches had the mindset that younger people would want to sing more upbeat hymns and so changed, whereas others didn't (we go to a church with a thriving choir, so I think that's why we haven't). It may be that with the gradual fall in church attendance, some churches were only really getting newcomers in for weddings who would choose hymns they remember from school, and as the school curriculum has become fuller there's been less time spent on music and so school hymns have partly been limited to those with actions or with easy unison tunes, the churches get the impression that this sort of music is what young people prefer (not realising they've not necessarily had exposure to other music) and so change their music in the hope of getting people to come back.

I remember singing mostly terrible dirgish hymns at my catholic primary school (I can't believe that someone said something positive about 'Ave Maria' further down the thread, but perhaps there are different tunes for it). I'm not sure why becasue we had a fantastic choir master.

At my secondary which was vaguely Christian we sang all the traditional hymns. My real favourites were from church, we had a folky soft of thing there with guitars (we also had a real fire and brimstone priest) and did stuff like Sing Hosannah, Lord of the Dance, When I needed a brother etc. My big sister then joined an evangelical church and the hymns there were awful, really happy clappy stuff. Shortly after I became an atheist!

My children go to school in Canada where the state system is totally secular, which is great but they don't even do carols which is sad.

some of the new music is great

from the throne of God above - bit river dancey

blessed be the name of the lord

i will give you all my worship

bit older

from the rising of the son

great is thy faithfulness

I honestly think that, with the exception of Ave Maria, the Protestants have better hymns.

When I read the title I clicked with 'There Is A Green Hill Far Away' playing in my head. Then I saw that was the one you wouldn't 'foist on the innocent', yet that is main one I remember from my childhood.

Anything from the blue Come and Praise book.
What was the Orange book with yellow circle on, plastic cover, early 1980's?
There are some lovely newer ones. Father I place into your hands and Be Strong, Be brave or is it Be Brave,Be Strong.
There was a terrible cd in late 1990's with non- Christian songs. Fine as an idea but actually terrible. I remember one about food... " Egg burger, cheese burger, barbecue bean burger". Terrible!!

be bold, be strong for the lord our God is with us?

there were about 4 volumes of praise songs

songs for worship

I like "Thine be the Glory", but I feel the lyrics might be offensive to non christians.

I also love

is a green hill far away hymn There is a green hill far away

The problem is that thes are powerful rousing hymns and understandably non christian parents would go balistic. I don't know how you keep these hymns alive as they are part of British hertiage.

Prehaps if you had older children you could introduce to some of the wonderful anthems like (mostly european and not British)

Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring
Panis Angelicus
Ave Maria. (V catholic)

Maybe rather than teaching children hymns we should build in music appreciation into the school curriculum. There is a total lack of challenge/ ambition at times in school music at times. When I was at primary we used to be played great classical music from a tape when we went into assemby. (Ie. Beethoven, Bach, Handel , Vivaldi, Mozart, Schubert)

I sang all the come and praise ones when I was at school and then all the Methodist ones at girls brigade. I then became organist (by accident) at a c of e boarding school and had to play in chapel 5 times a week so learnt all those old fashioned boys ones(I vow to thee my country and jerusalemfeatured heavily)
I now work I a catholic prep school and we sing hymns all the time, and have singing practice once a week!

I honestly think that, with the exception of Ave Maria, the Protestants have better hymns.

Catholics and Protestants have a lot of the same hymns OP. In my Catholic parish we use this hymn book which is the same one used in MIL's CofE parish.

Reallytired it's actually not hard to find goid hymns that aren't offensive to members of other faiths. You just have to stick to Old Testament stuff away from trinitarian dictats, Jesus or Mary type things.

Prophets are a common thread so all the story hymns like Jacobs ladder are in. General praising God and celebration of creation is great too as well as all the modern ones about interpersonal relationships.