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Welcome! This web site is the home of the Open Hymnal Project to create a freely distributable, downloadable database of Christian hymns, spiritual songs, and prelude/postlude music. I am doing my best to create a final product that is "Hymnal-quality", and could feasibly be used as the basis for a printed church hymnal. This music is to be distributed as complete scores (words and music), using all accompaniment parts, in formats that are easily accessible on most computer OS's and which can be freely modified by anyone.

"Freely you received, so freely give." - Matthew 10:8 (WEB)

16 Apr 2012 Small fix to the lyrics of 'O For a Thousand Tongues'. We love bug reports!

06 Mar 2012 Added two new hymns. The first is a nearly-lost gem, The Galilean Fishers Toil. Thanks to the folks at Finest Of The Wheat for digging up this one! The other is a classic and uses two tunes: Blest Be The Tie That Binds (Boylston) and Blest Be The Tie That Binds (Dennis).

05 Mar 2012 Added two new hymns, I Need Thee Every Hour and No, Not One!, both contributed by Samuel Cantrell - thanks!

19 Feb 2012 Added three new hymns, Where He Leads Me and More Love to Thee and Whiter Than Snow, which were contributed by Samuel Cantrell - thanks!

11 Feb 2012 Added two new hymns, Not Worthy, Lord, to Gather Up the Crumbs and The Comforter Has Come, which was contributed by Samuel Cantrell - thanks!

30 Dec 2011 Added a new hymn, His Gifts.

21 Dec 2011 Added two Christmas hymns, In The Bleak MidWinter and Sing, O Sing, This Blessèd Morn.

04 Dec 2011 Added two hymns, Hark the Glad Sound and O Lord, I Am Not Worthy.

28 Nov 2011 Added a modern hymn, Christ My King On High by Jay Wingard. Thanks!

08 Nov 2011 Updated the Visitation Edition for 2011.

07 Nov 2011 Updated the Lent/Easter Edition for 2011.

06 Nov 2011 Updated the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Edition for 2011.

14 Oct 2011 Added the hymn The Strife Is O'er, The Battle Done

05 Oct 2011 Added two hymns, Christ Returneth and O That The Lord Would Guide My Ways. I've also updated the large PDF hymnal, making version 2011.10.

03 Oct 2011 Added another modern hymn, My Neighbor with words by John Fleischmann. Thanks!

25 Aug 2011 Added the hymn I Place My Trust In God, a new hymn with words by Dorothy Amstutz and music by Loren Kropf. Thanks!

23 Aug 2011 Added the hymn Fear Not, O Little Flock. Also, the general index Scripture references now include each Scripture text on mouse hover-over.

13 Aug 2011 Added two hymns O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High and Souls of Men! Why Will Ye Scatter.

05 Aug 2011 Added two hymns If God Himself Be For Me and Thou, Who at Thy First Eucharist.

25 Jul 2011 Added two hymns Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior and Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow.

18 Jul 2011 Added two hymns Songs of Thankfulness and Praise and When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.

12 Jul 2011 Updated the SWORD module.

24 Jun 2011 Updated the big PDF hymnal. You'll note that the structure has changed dramatically. The hymnal is now organized into (hopefully) logical sections, many more indices are found, and pdf bookmarks assist navigation.

13 Jun 2011 Added the hymn Alleluia, Alleluia! Hearts to Heaven and Voices Raise.

24 May 2011 Added two hymns Hallelujah, What a Savior! and My Hope Is Built.

15 May 2011 Added the hymn Savior, Who Thy Flock Art Feeding.

10 May 2011 Added a new tune for the hymn Christ The Lord Is Risen Today (Lyra).

04 May 2011 Added the hymn Have Mercy On Me, O My God by Brian Penney from Heart and Voice.

27 Apr 2011 Added two hymns Awake, My Heart, With Gladness and Lord, Who at Cana's Wedding Feast.

24 Apr 2011 He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

19 Apr 2011 Added the hymn Lo, God To Heav'n Ascendeth.

14 Apr 2011 Added two hymns I'm But A Stranger Here and Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing.

12 Apr 2011 Added two hymns Baptized Into Thy Name Most Holy and Tis Good, Lord, To Be Here.

10 Apr 2011 Added two hymns All Who Believe and Are Baptized and See, The Lord Ascends In Triumph.

09 Apr 2011 You're now seeing the new server!

09 Apr 2011 The Open Hymnal is being switched to new servers. This will involve some DNS server changes. When you see the next update, we should be on our new server. It might take a few days to percolate out throughout the net.

03 Apr 2011 Added two hymns 'Tis Midnight and On Olive's Brow and 'Twas On That Dark, That Doleful Night.

28 Mar 2011 Added two hymns Go To Dark Gethsemane and Over Kidron Jesus Treadeth.

22 Mar 2011 Added two hymns O Wondrous Type, O Vision Fair and Under His Wings.

18 Mar 2011 Added a new translation of Paul Gerhardt's Baptism Hymn You People Who Are Now Baptized.

I also noticed that before the last upload I had forgotten to tag the MP3s. Fixed now.

17 Mar 2011 I've uploaded new individual hymn files, which result from two changes: 1) additional research done into translation and setting origins, and 2) A number of bug reports sent in by Max (mpronnei) last June. I may not be fast at getting to all requests, but I don't ignore them! Thanks, Max!

15 Mar 2011 I've uploaded new MP3s and MIDI files. The new process creates much better sounding audio. The MP3s are made using the soundfonts found at: zenvoid.org/audio.html.

01 Mar 2011 Added a index of tunes to the regular web site (this already existed in the mobile site under browse->By Tune Name).

24 Feb 2011 I've updated the arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon as a part of writing a choral piece that I'm slowly working on. I had never really been a fan of the old arrangement anyway. The new one is also set for piano.

21 Feb 2011 Automated generation of the general index is done and uploaded. Uploaded an online "people" index: authors, translators, composers, arrangers

18 Feb 2011 Added the hymn Jesus Shall Reign. This is another donated hymn from Samuel Cantrell. Thanks!

A significant cleanup effort has been ongoing. A number of errors have been fixed, documentation of sources is much better, and the process of automation is nearing completion. I've already uploaded the newer abc files (individually, not as a zip), so you can see the documentation inside.

31 Jan 2011 An index of Scripture references is added to the online edition. In doing so, the Scripture references had to be normalized. This is reflected in the individual abc and pdf files.

28 Jan 2011 Many of the recent updates fix errors in the Open Hymnal. They also have made it much easier to issue a new revision of the hymnal. As a result, I've decided to issue a new overall PDF, Revision 2011.01. You'll notice that the hymnal now has hymn numbers, a feature that becomes more important as the hymnal grows larger. Of course, the online version really doesn't need hymn numbers and won't use them.

Unlike the old system, the new auto-generation system happens by carefully merging all of the individual abc files into a single big abc file. For this reason, it seems that I might as well distribute the agglomerated abc file.

27 Jan 2011 Added the hymn The Day is Surely Drawing Near.

26 Jan 2011 Behind-the-scenes scripting and cleanup continues. Now about 95% of the lyrics web pages are auto-generated from the abc file. This brings with it a whole boatload of bug fixes. It also means that those pages now have the entries in the topical index as keywords for Google indexing.

25 Jan 2011 Added a contributed hymn There's a Great Day Coming. This hymn was contributed by Samuel Cantrell. Thanks!

07 Jan 2011 The process of automating each release continues behind-the-scenes. Some smaller changes to the general index are now uploaded. I'm working to add hymn numbers which are auto-generated for each release of the big PDF, hopefully making it a bit easier to use but still allowing for frequent updates.

05 Jan 2011 Found and fixed a hymn that had been previously missed in the topical index altogether. Also allow online topical index to link to both tunes when the same hymn text uses two tunes. Also build the topical index for mobile version of the site.

03 Jan 2011 I've overhauled the topical indexing system. Now, topical index info will be stored directly in each abc file (new abc files to be uploaded soon). This will eventually offer many advantages. It has already made the topical index auto-buildable (see the updated online topical index, which now includes links). It will in the future allow me to use the topics as keywords for Google/Yahoo's indexing robots. In this process, a whole bunch of spelling and alphabetization errors have been fixed. These errors are significant enough such that the final PDF was revised and uploaded.

Very Old News