Christian Life Hymnal, 2006
This is a hymnal edited by Eric Wyse, a Tennessee church musician employed by an Anglican church, and published by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. in 2006. It is not denominational in focus.
It contains 641 numbered items, of which the first 607 are hymns or songs and the remainder are service music. The collection features fewer recent hymns and fewer one-stanza “Praise songs” than recent hymnals from “competing” non-denominational hymnal publishers like Word Music, Inc. and Hope Publishing Company. Such material is not completely lacking, but is much less predominant here.
The selection includes many late-nineteenth century gospel hymns that have been pushed out of competing hymnals by the very newer hymns that are here omitted. Examples might include “O Boundless Salvation” by the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth; “Beulah Land” by Edgar Page Stites; “Master, the Tempest Is Raging” by Mary Ann Baker; and “Only Believe” by Paul Rader.
Notable too is the tendency to include more stanzas of many hymns than are included in other recent non-denominational and evangelical hymnals, for example, comparing selected hymns in the Christian Life Hymnal (CLH) with Word’s Hymnal for Worship & Celebration (HWC), we find that the former has six stanzas of “All Creatures of Our God and King” to HWC’s four; “Crown Him with Many Crowns” is seven versus four; etc., with CLH having more stanzas almost five times more often than HWC does. The publisher’s claim that they have “all the verses” is however an exaggeration; for example, while their five verses of “How Firm a Foundation” outnumber HWC’s four, CLH is still missing two (the second and sixth) of the complete seven found in the 1985 LDS Hymnal. [Note: I have asked the publisher to clarify - our intent was not to mislead - we are not trying to fool people that all 18 stanzas of "O for a Thousand Tongues" are included (they are not, but we did include 7 with the tune AZMON); simply, we tried to include more of the stanza's commonly used in hymnals and let the music director in a church decide which ones to use that day. Thus '"For All the Saints" had 8 stanzas; "Lo, How a Rose E'er Bloming", 4; "Our Great Savior," 5: etc. Perhaps better wording in the advertising copy would be: " Contains many more stanzas to longer hymns than most recently published hymnals. - Eric]
Another interesting feature is that more hymns than usual are set to two or even three tunes. For example, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” is set to Beecher, Hyfrydol and Blaenwern, where most hymnals give only one tune; “Amazing Grace” is set not only to the ubiquitous New Britain but also to Land of Rest.
This hymnal has a larger Christmas section than most, with “Advent”, “Birth” and “Epiphany” encompassing 73 songs. The indexes, too, are more copious than in many hymnals, with a Scriptural Allusion Index, a Hymn Tune Index, a Metrical Tune Index, an index of Authors Composers, and Sources, a Church Year Index, a Topical Index, and an index of Hymn Titles and First Lines with Key.
All in all, The Christian Life Hymnal is one of the most noteworthy hymnals to appear in the new millennium.
-HymnWiki.org
