Chris wrote -- "... which hymns I need to make sure to incorporate in the future. If I don't know which ones they are I just might get used to living without them."
Christopher's comment piqued my interest. I knew it would be a much smaller job to look at Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary than to look at The Lutheran Hymnal. So I buzzed through ELH tonight while the rest of the family was watching Simpsons. :-)
These are the hymns that I think really really oughtn't be missed from ELH:
#484 Christ Alone Is Our Salvation
#272 O Sinner, Come, Thy Sin to Mourn
also high-priority (but not as completely absolutely necessary)
#129 I Stand Beside Thy Manger Here
#150 In This Our Happy Christmastide
#70 I See Thee Standing, Lamb of God.
Some stanzas that are missing in TLH and LSB that are available in ELH:
#43 Holy God, We Praise Thy Name
#182 One Thing's Needful (especially stanza 8 in ELH!!)
#226 By Grace I'm Saved (particularly the last stanza in ELH)
#227 Salvation Unto Us Is Come
#505 Thou Who the Night in Prayer Didst Spend
#539 Jerusalem, My Happy Home.
And some hymns in ELH that I really ought to take the time to learn, but I don't know when I'll get to it, given that we never sing them in church or use them for family or church devotions:
#95 (an Advent hymn)
#79 (a take-off on Luther's morning prayer)
also #62, 208, 220, 229, 312, 405, 430, 437, and 498.
This is, of course, my opinion only. I am not very familiar with ELH nor with the Scandinavian poets and hymnists. So I may very well be missing things that Rolf Preus would shudder over.
I'll get to looking through the MUST-KEEP LIST from TLH that didn't make it into LSB. I don't know when. But I will get to it "soon." (Taking into account, of course, that being a mommy, I consider a 3- or 4-hour project to be an all-day commitment!) If I remember correctly from when the hymnody committee was taking comments from the public, everything on the MUST-KEEP LIST from LW actually was on the keeper-list! Hooray for that!
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A little helpful information on some ELH hymns:
ReplyDelete1. We close our children's Christmas service every year with "I Stand Beside Thy Manger Here" -- kids sing v. 1, cong. the rest of the vv. as the kids recess out behind the crucifer. It's just beautiful. It's also thanks to my predecessor here, that this is our tradition. One I happily continue.
2. # 95 -- Lindemann didn't write many good hymns, but this one is fantastic. Esp. if you use the historic gospel as your main focus. We start Advent with this as the processional with crucifer.
3. # 430 -- First time Spengler's verses all get translated, v. 5-9 especially. I really think it's an essential Lutheran chorale for people to sing and KNOW. It's the only Lutheran chorale quoted in the BoC. The melody is strong, and not very hard.
I could tell you a lot more, but those are my initial thoughts.
As you can tell, I'm very happy with ELH. I hope you can be as happy with your new hymnal too.
Also: Are you kidding? Is Paul Eber's "I Fall Asleep in Jesus' Wounds" really not in LSB? In both parishes I've served, I've had 90-plus year old women who had the last 4 lines of stanza 1 (Yea, Jesus' blood and righteousness/My beauty are ..") memorized in German! It would be a great loss, for such people to lose it. I hope your pastors still find a way to use it at funerals or in some other way.
Thank you for your work on this. It's very interesting to read.
Pastor Jerry Gernander
Bethany Lutheran Church (ELS)
Princeton, Minnesota
Oh, thanks, Pr Gernander! I do like those hymns you mentioned!
ReplyDeleteAnd it's true that "I Fall Asleep in Jesus' Wounds" isn't in LSB. My husband was not happy about that. We often sing "Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness" at funerals anyway, so maybe the committee thought they'd save the Zinzendorf hymn that borrowed Eber's words.