Hymnody Challenge!
  • Anna_BendiksenAnna_Bendiksen
    Posts: 244
    Grace and peace, everyone!

    Here's a game---part Hymnody, part Amusements?---to keep composers and text-writers in production mode. I call it Hymnody Challenge. It goes like this.

    1. Post a tune OR a text---just one of the two!---that is in the public domain. Perhaps you have in mind something that is underused, commonly mismatched, sung with shopworn texts or tunes, et cetera. Posted texts may be in any language(s). If you are posting a tune, you may specify a theme or liturgical event for the text that you believe should go with it. For example, you could say something like, "I call Hymnody Challenge for the tune FINLANDIA on the theme of Christ the King." However, you do not have to specify a theme.

    2. The rest of us may then complete the hymn, either by posting an original text for your posted tune or an original tune for your posted text. Composers of tunes must include four-part harmonization. Original texts may be in any language(s).

    3. It's OK to have more than one Challenge running at the same time.

    Make sense? Here goes...

    I call Hymnody Challenge for a new text to the tune TRURO on the theme of Priestly Ordination,

    AND

    I call Hymnody Challenge for a new tune to the Christmas text "Angels From the Realms of Glory."
    Thanked by 2Chrism ServiamScores
  • Anna_BendiksenAnna_Bendiksen
    Posts: 244
    No takers, eh?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    I thought about it, but I couldn't figure out a good reason why to participate.
  • Anna_BendiksenAnna_Bendiksen
    Posts: 244
    Oh, well---different strokes! (I am aping the mini-exercises that a teacher of mine assigns.)
    Thanked by 1Kathy
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    Sure, but then she critiques them, or the class does. They go somewhere. It could be like that here, but that hasn't been my experience. Lots of feedback, I mean.

    Anyways, it's a nice idea community-wise, but that's why I'm not playing.
  • TCJ
    Posts: 986
    There was quite a bit of participation when I did a reharmonization challenge, but I suspect that is because it is less work and probably also much more familiar to many people on this forum. Since it is something I (and probably many others) already do on a regular basis, it's a fun challenge to think about reworking an existing composition, but it isn't something which is going to take an enormous amount of time. I suspect the number of people to write lyrics on this forum are considerably fewer in number than the organists, so your pool of potential participants is proportionately pared down.

    Thanked by 1Anna_Bendiksen
  • LauraKaz
    Posts: 77
    I thought about contributing something, but then I got swamped with work preparations and the time just slipped by. I also agree with the previously expressed sentiments about the ratio of effort put in vs. feedback received.
  • Chrism
    Posts: 872
    No takers, eh?


    You expect a hymn in eight days?
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    OK I can provide texts, Daniel Joseph Donahoe, 1853-1930 was a lawyer and Judge in Connecticut. He produced two volumes of translations of the ancient Latin hymns. These are beautiful rhyming texts and deserve to be set to music...

    Early Christian hymns vol 1

    Early Christian hymns vol 2
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen Kathy Anna_Bendiksen
  • Anna_BendiksenAnna_Bendiksen
    Posts: 244
    I've removed the time constraint. Hope this is of encouragement.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    No offense but that only makes it less a bargain. If someone can write 2 hymns in an hour, for example, then writing one is not a huge sacrifice of time. But if it takes days or weeks, without much gained...
  • Anna_BendiksenAnna_Bendiksen
    Posts: 244
    OK I can provide texts, Daniel Joseph Donahoe, 1853-1930 was a lawyer and Judge in Connecticut. He produced two volumes of translations of the ancient Latin hymns. These are beautiful rhyming texts and deserve to be set to music...

    Early Christian hymns vol 1

    Early Christian hymns vol 2


    These are great---thanks, tomjaw!
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • francis
    Posts: 10,822
    I’m looking through the texts to provide music
    Thanked by 2tomjaw Anna_Bendiksen
  • trowland87
    Posts: 15
    Okay, so here's a hymn tune that IMHO is criminally unknown/underrated. As far as I can tell, it doesn't have a name and it originated with Mozart in his "2 Kirchenlieder", K. 343, with a German text, "Als aus Ägypten". https://imslp.org/wiki/2_Kirchenlieder,_K.343/336c_(Mozart,_Wolfgang_Amadeus)

    I've only ever seen it produced in a hymnal as an Easter hymn in the 1915 publication, "A Treasury of Catholic Song": https://hymnary.org/hymn/ToCS1915/61

    Anyone want to take a crack at writing a hymn either for Communion or for general use with this tune?
    Thanked by 2Anna_Bendiksen CHGiffen
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Note that the metre of the above hymn/tune is 87.88.88.77.
    Thanked by 3tomjaw Anna_Bendiksen trowland87
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