If you look at the Singing the Living Tradition page at the über-useful Hymnody.org site, you’d think it has two hymns in it.
I think the hymn-interested Unitarian Universalist community should fix that. So first, does any one have a clean spreadsheet or list of all the first lines? If not, can we build one?
But ideally it would include most (or all) of the following:
- Hymn Number
- Title
- First Line
- Publication Date
- Refrain First Line
- Original Language
- Original Language Title
- Notes
- Text Person Name
- Text Person Relationship
- Text Year
- Text Language
- Text Copyright Statement
- Text Source
- Meter
- Tune Name
- Key
- Tune Person Name
- Tune Person Relationship
- Tune Year
- Tune Copyright Statement
- Tune Source
Work to help the common good, if a niche common good. Anyone interested? I’d be glad to take the lead.
Hmmm. Yet another e-ministry our denomination could staff and publicize.
I have been looking for a way to start contributing to the Hymnary site in a manageable way and helping with this might be a way in. Not affiliated with the UU here, but I do have four of the major UU 20th century hymnals as well as several older ones as PDF files. All of them have a fair amount of information to be added to the site.
Oh, and Hosmer and Samuel Longfellow happen to be among my favorite hymnwriters.
Fortunately there is at least a basic level of data (all?) for the earlier hymnals; it’s just the last UUA hymnal that’s missing almont completely missing. That and another current hymnal that I’ll be writing about soon. With one success, perhaps the older ones can be enriched.