Damn the plain text formatting that ruined my ever-so-thoughtful reply!
I'm reposting it with the extra spaces that are (sometimes, but not
always) necessary for my posts to look like I want them. (When I get a
minute I'll explore the options in Thunderbird.)
Personal opinion: Any song with 10 verses shows lack of craft on the
part of the poet, quite typical of amateurs, and needs to be either
shortened or "arranged" so that you aren't repeating the same music
over and over and over and over and ...
I forget the type of song which began this thread. In the case of
hymns, large numbers of verses can be appropriate in certain instances.
For congregational singing, variety of musical treatment is not
_necessarily_ necessary, and not all printed stanzas are sung on every
occasion.
I regularly use the _The United Methodist Hymnal_ (1989) which was set
with Finale. It's editors made a real effort to restore many of the
"lost" stanzas of hymns that had been omitted over the years in past
editions - never intending that all these "new" stanzas are to be sung
at all occasions. I think it's typesetters did an excellent job of
placing them on the page, and I recommend it's perusal.
For the signature Methodist hymn, Charles Wesley's "O For a Thousand
Tongues to Sing" the editors restored it to SEVENTEEN stanzas! They do
this by putting seven stanzas under the regular hymn title, then put the
whole seventeen on the next page as text alone (actually presenting it
as poetry under a different title). All of those stanzas can still be
sung, but I doubt that TOO many congregations sing, for example, stanza 16:
------
Murderers and all ye hellish crew,
ye sons of lust and pride,
believe the Savior died for you;
for me the Savior died.
-------
But who knows?
Raymond Horton
Minister of Music
Edwardsville (IN) United Methodist Church
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