Oremus Hymnal:Community Portal
From Oremus Hymnal
Welcome to The Oremus Hymnal Wiki!
For the "classic" site, go to http://www.oremus.org/hymnal
This is the third major revision of the Oremus Hymnal, started by Steve Benner in 1998. Work has been done off and on again for the past ten years, but because Steve is now an ordained priest in The Episcopal Church, he is giving editorial control to the public, using the MediaWiki software made popular by Wikipedia. This means that "approved editors" are invited to work on the site. To contribute, you will need to create an account, verify your email and be given permission by an administrator.
Steve started this project by indexing 52 Anglican hymnals dating back to 1861. Part of the purpose was bibliographical and also he wanted to demonstrate that "Anglican tradition" is much more changeable than most Anglicans believe. The indexing of these 52 hymnals shows that nearly seven thousand distinct texts and over eighteen thousand text/tune combinations have been used in Anglicanism in the past century and half.
At present, not all of the files are available. Part of the reason for introducing the Wiki is to encourage others to help make this project more quickly than has been possible with just one person's contributions.
This site hopes to be the comprehensive source of information about the extensive tradition of Anglican and English-language hymnody.
For the most part, texts and tunes on this site are in the public domain, which usually means (in the U.S.) written before 1923. If we have permission to reproduce a copyright text, it will be noted on the individual page. Please contact the copyright owner for permission to reproduce further. If we have inadvertently put up a file which is copyright in the United States, please let us know and we will remove it.
Please note: You may find that the text of a hymn is not exactly the one found in a given hymnal--most often, this page includes the original or an older version of a text. Hymnal editors have been editing the texts of hymns for centuries; some of these changes are included here; many are not. Please make sure you check the text thoroughly before using it in public worship. This especially applies to those using hymnals published in the last twenty years.
Accompanying the text of each hymn you will find information about the author of the text, its meter and various settings of music for each text. Also, MIDI files have been provided for many of the texts. This site is meant as a companion to the hymnals of the Anglican Communion and does not yet provide musical notation for the hymns.
The OREMUS HYMNAL is a volunteer effort and I thank you for your support and welcome your donations above. Payments are processed through Paypal's secure server. Donations are not deductible under current IRS regulations.
Contributor's Corner
A new page, Oremus_Hymnal:Community_Portal:Contributor's_Corner has been created as a place to discuss general issues related to this WIKI.
