My earliest memories of hymnody come from growing up around the Uniting Church in Australia, which used the Australian Hymn Book. I seem to recall that certain members of the Violet Town congregation were rather daring in openly possessing copies with the Catholic Supplement.
I spent much of my youth around places that used the New English Hymnal, and in a lot of ways this remains the benchmark of what a good hymnbook should be about for me. The strengths of this book are the immense wealth of seasonal material, such as office hymns, and the liturgical section at the back. It was supplemented a few years ago when the New English Praise was published. I am constantly drawn back to these books by the outstanding quality of the editing of words and music. It takes a brave editor to leave a poet's pronouns un-bowdlerized these days.
In my more ecumenical disguises, I have dealt with various Presbyterian hymn books, such as Church Hymnary and Rejoice! As organist at a church that used the latter, with its seemingly boundless supply of praise choruses, I almost lost the will to live just about every week. Similarly, the Catholic Worship Book and Gather have caused me a combination of wonderment, dismay and frustration, the latter especially at the appalling standards of layout in the full music editions. Only a singer would think well of putting the last system of a hymn tune over a page turn.
The question that keeps percolating in my mind is: what would be the ingredients of a good hymnbook?
It's no small question, so I'll give my answer in another posting.
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