NEH v Common Praise hymn books

[Richard Fairhurst]

There were half a dozen copies in Blackwells yesterday. (I didn't buy one as I have a feeling I may get one for Christmas...)

[sbarber49]

I have been looking through this book and there are lots of new hymns and new tunes. The tunes seem pretty good though I've only glanced through them. I wonder how many will catch on.

However I wonder if the book will mainly be of use to cathedrals and the more rarified churches. In my church we have a diet of fairly traditional hymns (I choose them) but even we sing many that the Revised EH doesn't include. It seems to me to be the complete opposite of Hymns Old and New: it included everything regardless of quality but this new book seems to me to have gone to the opposite extreme. Here are a few hymns it doesn't have which I think are sung by most churches;  would they want to buy a new set of books that excluded them? I realise that I'm probably in a minority of one and that organists here will applaud the insistence on musical standards, and I'm not saying that I personally like many of the following:

As the deer pants for the water
Beauty for brokenness
Brother, sister, let me serve you
From heaven you came, helpless babe
Give me joy in my heart
I, the Lord of sea and sky
In Christ alone (I know there are theological problems with this)
Make me a channel of your peace
Meekness and majesty
O Lord my God (How great thou art)
Seek ye first the kingdom
Shine, Jesus, shine
When I needed a neighbour
 

[bam]

We sing a lot of those from time to time - I don't think there will be a rush to replace the current version of A&M.

[Martin Cooke]

23 hours ago, sbarber49 said:

I have been looking through this book and there are lots of new hymns and new tunes. The tunes seem pretty good though I've only glanced through them. I wonder how many will catch on.

However I wonder if the book will mainly be of use to cathedrals and the more rarified churches. In my church we have a diet of fairly traditional hymns (I choose them) but even we sing many that the Revised EH doesn't include. It seems to me to be the complete opposite of Hymns Old and New: it included everything regardless of quality but this new book seems to me to have gone to the opposite extreme. Here are a few hymns it doesn't have which I think are sung by most churches;  would they want to buy a new set of books that excluded them? I realise that I'm probably in a minority of one and that organists here will applaud the insistence on musical standards, and I'm not saying that I personally like many of the following:

As the deer pants for the water
Beauty for brokenness
Brother, sister, let me serve you
From heaven you came, helpless babe
Give me joy in my heart
I, the Lord of sea and sky
In Christ alone (I know there are theological problems with this)
Make me a channel of your peace
Meekness and majesty
O Lord my God (How great thou art)
Seek ye first the kingdom
Shine, Jesus, shine
When I needed a neighbour
 

Mmm... like 'em or loathe 'em, those are all pretty mainstream these days, I would have thought. Having just patched up the spine of my 10 year old Common Praise for the second time, I am interested in how the REH feels as much as anything and how well it will sit on the music desk. 

[sbarber49]

It is very well produced - it looks and feels very like NEH - though thicker. so there might be problems with it staying open.

[AndrewG]

2 hours ago, sbarber49 said:

It is very well produced - it looks and feels very like NEH - though thicker. so there might be problems with it staying open.

The old version of the NEH hardly stays open (at least in my experience) - my copy has taken years of trying to get it to do so!  It has taken prolonged weighing down open with heavy books to get it vaguely usable.  Very frustrating, especially when playing hymns early or late in the book.  Not something I've had trouble with any other hymnal.

[Richard Fairhurst]

I guess there needs to be some differentiation between the "new" Ancient & Modern, which I think includes all of the above, and the Revised English Hymnal - especially now they have the same parent company.