| 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.
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