engraving sheet music fonts into word file

So it’s not difficult to see why projection quickly has become so common. No church sang from a hymnal that perfectly matched what they sang as a congregation. The remaining 80% ranged from obscure to awkward, which basically made “request nights” into an opportunity for high hilarity. The result for a local congregation was a hymnal filled with some 500 or more songs, perhaps 20% of which its people actually sang. They were always the product of a denomination or of a publishing company. Hymnals were produced and printed for large markets, and thus sought to moderately satisfy a diverse swath of churches. It was simply that the canon of corporate worship in a local church was always dictated by the hymnal it had, for good or ill. It wasn’t always an indictment of the hymnal itself, although sometimes that was the case. They could also extend beyond the Sunday service, into homes and smaller gatherings.īut the second observation was that all of the hymnals I used or perused were profoundly inadequate.

The benefits of projection were obvious, but hymnals could provide a greater sense of permanence, settling the truths of songs into the congregation’s hearts in a way that projection could not. The first was that hymnals were a profoundly valuable tool in the spiritual formation of the Lord’s people. Through graduate school and local church ministry, two realizations slowly grew in my thinking.

Thus was formed in my mind the genealogy of praise: congregational singing (vehicle), to hymnology (codification), and ultimately to hymnals (dissemination).

The great pursuit he daily set before us was the edification of the Lord’s people and the exaltation of Christ through corporate praise. My love of hymnals was really first stirred in graduate school by Fred Coleman, one of my professors and a music minister. There’s a particular enjoyment from specialization in any discipline-not only for its own sake, but for the results it brings. The more obvious result is the joy that comes from finding a niche and exploring it as far as you can. One of the likely consequences of tackling an extended project is that your feelings toward it alternate between loving and loathing, depending on the day. Here I share a little history of my growing interest in hymnals, examine modern hymnal engraving conventions, and discuss best practices.

Engraving sheet music fonts into word file