A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος (hymnos), which means "a song of praise". A writer of hymns is known as a hymnist. The singing or composition of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment.
A hymnal or hymnary is a collection of hymns, usually in the form of a book, called a hymnbook. Hymnals are used in congregational singing. A hymnal may contain only hymn texts ; written melodies are extra, and more recently harmony parts have also been provided.
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling is a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley with a theme of "Christian perfection." Judging by general repute, it is among Wesley's finest: "justly famous and beloved, better known than almost any other hymn of Charles Wesley." Judging by its distribution, it is also among his most successful: by the end of the 19th century, it is found in 15 of the 17 hymn books consulted by the authors of Lyric Studies. On a larger scale, it is found almost universally in general collections of the past century, including not only Methodist and Anglican hymn books and commercial and ecumenical collections, but also hymnals published by Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, Brethren, Seventh-day Adventist, Lutheran, Congregationalist, Pentecostal, and Roman Catholic traditions, among others including the Churches of Christ. Specifically, it appears in 1,328 of the North American hymnals indexed by the online Dictionary of North American Hymnology, comparable to Newton's "Amazing Grace" (1,036), Wesley's "O for a Thousand Tongues" (1,249), and Watts' "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" (1,483), though still well short of Toplady's "Rock of Ages" (2,139) or Wesley's own "Jesu, Lover of my Soul" (2,164).
Anglican church music is music that is written for Christian worship in Anglican religious services, forming part of the liturgy. It mostly consists of pieces written to be sung by a church choir, which may sing a cappella or accompanied by an organ.
The Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) is a worship book and hymnal used by several Lutheran denominations in North America. A supplement, With One Voice (WOV), contains additional hymns and service music. The LBW is sometimes called the "green book", as opposed to With One Voice, which is bound in blue; or Service Book and Hymnal, which is bound in red; or The Lutheran Hymnal, which is also bound in red, with a simple gold cross.
Decisions concerning the conduct of public worship in the Church of Scotland are entirely at the discretion of the parish minister. As a result, a wide variety of musical resources are used. However, at various times in its history, the General Assembly has commissioned volumes of psalms and hymns for use by congregations.
The Divine Service is a title given to the Eucharistic liturgy as used in the various Lutheran churches. It has its roots in the pre-Tridentine Mass as revised by Martin Luther in his Formula missae of 1523 and his Deutsche Messe of 1526. It was further developed through the Kirchenordnungen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that followed in Luther's tradition.
The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) is one of the official hymnals of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Published in 1941 by Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis, Missouri, it was the LCMS' second official English-language hymnal, succeeding the 1912 Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-Book. Development of TLH began in 1929 as a collaborative effort of the churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America and became the common hymnal for both the LCMS and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). Containing 668 chorales, hymns, carols, and chants, plus the liturgy for the Common Service, Matins, Vespers, the propers, collects and prayers, the suffrages, canticles, psalms, and miscellaneous tables, TLH became an extremely popular and beloved worship resource in the Lutheran church in North America, and attempts to succeed it in more recent years have often met with strong resistance.
Lutheran Service Book (LSB) is the newest official hymnal of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC). It was prepared by the LCMS Commission on Worship and published by Concordia Publishing House, the official publisher of the LCMS. It is the fourth official English-language hymnal of the LCMS published since the synod began transitioning from German to English in the early 1900s. LSB is intended to succeed both The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) and Lutheran Worship (LW) as the common hymnal of the LCMS. Supplemental and companion editions to the hymnal were released throughout the end of 2006 and into 2007. The hymnal was officially approved by the LCMS at the 2004 LCMS National Convention in St. Louis. It was officially released on September 1, 2006, but many customers who pre-ordered the hymnal received their copies several weeks earlier.
Contemporary Catholic liturgical music encompasses a comprehensive variety of styles of music for Catholic liturgy that grew both before and after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The dominant style in English-speaking Canada and the United States began as Gregorian chant and folk hymns, superseded after the 1970s by a folk-based musical genre, generally acoustic and often slow in tempo, but that has evolved into a broad contemporary range of styles reflective of certain aspects of age, culture, and language. There is a marked difference between this style and those that were both common and valued in Catholic churches before Vatican II.
Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) is the current primary liturgical and worship guidebook and hymnal for use in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, replacing its predecessor, the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) of 1978, and its supplements, Hymnal Supplement 1991 and With One Voice (WOV).
The hymn of the day is a congregational hymn that is centered on the theme of the lectionary texts for a given Sunday divine service.
The Service Book and Hymnal (SBH) was used by most of the Lutheran church bodies in the United States that today compose the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) prior to the publishing of the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) of 1978. In ELCA circles, historically, the Service Book and Hymnal has been called the "red book" while the Lutheran Book of Worship has been called the "green book." The newest ELCA hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) is also red in color, and has apparently been dubbed "the cranberry book".
The Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary (ELH) is a hymnal created by the Evangelical Lutheran Synod in 1996.
The Lutheran Hymnal with Supplement is the second official hymnal of the Lutheran Church of Australia, first published in its present form in 1989.
Lutheran Worship (LW) is one of the official hymnals of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Published in 1982 by Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis, Missouri, it is the LCMS's third English-language hymnal and was intended to replace The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) (1941). However, dissatisfaction with various revisions has led numerous congregations to continue using the previous hymnal, and according to a 1999 LCMS Commission on Worship survey, The Lutheran Hymnal is still used by 36% of churches in the Synod as their primary hymnal. The publication of another new hymnal, Lutheran Service Book in 2006, has restored many of the former hymnal's features in the hope that more widespread use can be achieved.
Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal (CW) is the newest official hymnal of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). It was prepared by the WELS Commission on Worship and published by Northwestern Publishing House, the official publisher of the WELS. Christian Worship was intended to succeed The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) as the common hymnal of the WELS. In 2008, the Christian Worship Supplement (CWS) was released, containing several new orders of service, psalms, and hymns.
Church music during the Reformation developed during the Protestant Reformation in two schools of thought, the regulative and normative principles of worship, based on reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther. They derived their concepts in response to the Catholic church music, which they found distracting and too ornate. Both principles also pursued use of the native tongue, either alongside or in place of liturgical Latin.
The Common Service Book (CSB) is a worship book and hymnal originally issued jointly by the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of America, the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America, and the United Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the South in 1917, and, after the merger of those bodies into the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA) in 1918, by that body.
