>| In fact, if someone wanted to post ABC versions of a few Anglican >| hymns, I doubt that anyone would find it off topic. There are some >| good melodies in that hymnal. And I'd bet you would stumble across a >| few "How do I write that in ABC?" questions while transcribing them.
Not a lot. I've typed a fair few hymns into BarFly (in the usual four-part arrangements). The only missing features I can think of are: - alternate phrases (usually printed in small notes) where the score says what to do when the syllable count varies - automation of the metrical indexing system - ability to handle solfa as a sort of text underlay (it would be nice to generate it automatically, but at present there isn't even any way to write it as text so the staff notation shows it correctly) - semantically correct interaction between parts and voices (when you have a verse and a refrain in a four-part hymn, the verse is one part and the refrain another, each with all its voices; not what BarFly does at present). > Quite a few of those Anglican Hymns are older folk melodies with > newer words attached. Not very many out of the total. Vaughan Williams was very pleased with himself for managing to get a few folk songs into the English-language hymn canon, and he's probably responsible for the common perception among folkies that this is the usual origin of hymn tunes. It isn't; the Church of Scotland's "Church Hymnary" (3rd ed) lists only 36 tunes as "English Traditional" and *one* as "Scottish traditional" out of 695. Most of the tunes in that book (as with other hymnbooks) were written by known, classically-trained, church organists. Including traditional secular tunes from other countries as well, the total of folk origin is still not much over 10%. Some influential hymn composers (like R.A. Smith) said explicitly that adapting folk tunes was a bad idea because their secular associations were too distracting. : Now... back to those posting from outside the U.S.A..... and bashing : the U.S.A... why don't you stick a sock in it? You honestly have : the arrogance to post and post and post, knowingly hurting people's : feelings, while expecting them to feel some sort of collective guilt : and not object to your diatribe. Some of us feel sorry for people still stuck in that insane society and feel they need all the moral support from outside they can get. No way in hell would I want to set foot in the place again, it was bad enough thirty years ago. (Up until that post, I'd assumed the name "Cepel" meant Christian was French, and if I'd thought about it I'd have guessed he wasn't having much fun living in such a jingoistic madhouse at the moment). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro". ------> off-list mail to "j-c" rather than "abc" at this site, please <------ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
