Sound

Music is one of the chief ways we communicate theology, set the tone for worship, praise God, and connect with one another. While our church has a rich store of familiar hymns and worship songs, maybe it's time to widen the frame, listening to ecumenical neighbors and other voices in our own tradition. These resources should help to get you moving.

Have you written music for worship that you'd like to share? Is there an artist or music resource you think others ought to know about? Has your community created its own collection of hymns and worship songs? Click here to submit.

What's New: Musical Resources

My Heart Sings Out is an outstanding resource for congregations; its hymns are selected for singing in intergenerational congregations and groups, and they're all-ages friendly without being in the least cloying.

Emerging church pastor Jonny Baker offers a number of musical resources among his "worship tricks"; his collection of music-related posts is well worth checking out for alternative worship liturgies, and he has a free track for download that's especially appropriate for Pentecost; it's a reading of Acts 2 over ambient music. He's also written a helpful book that comes complete with a CD of music: Alternative Worship: Resources From and For the Emerging Church.

Proost is an innovative alternative worship community in England who make many of their musical and multimedia resources available for purchase and use in other congregations. You can find their online store here, and it's an excellent source for worship music of the 'ambient' genre.

John Bell is the most prolific composer of liturgical music from Scotland's Iona Community; his songs are noted equally for their solid theology, their concern for justice, and their ease for congregational singing. His work is distributed in the U.S. by GIA Publications; you can find a complete list of what they carry of his work here.

Isaac Everett is a composer in New York who does truly innovative contemporary worship music; you can find his website (which includes free tracks for downloading) here.

And don't miss this very helpful and brief essay on music for alternative worship from alternativeworship.org in the U.K.

Fresh Musical Resources

Visions Multimedia Worship in York, England, offers free downloadable songs for worship from their Utopia and Hymns for Visions albums, as well as video downloads and some PowerPoint and Keynote slides here. The song "Eternal Flame" from Utopia would be particularly appropriate for Pentecost worship; the genre of the music might best be described as "trance" beats and synthesizers with melodies of a contemporary plainsong feel.

The "alt.worship" community of Proost in the UK offers this free downloadable sampler of materials from CDs they sell. The track Eucharistic Prayer — which is Eucharist Prayer C from the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer sung and said by celebrant and congregation with backing rhythmic musical tracks throughout — is an excellent example of how liturgy can use traditional language in creative ways.

Church of the Apostles, an innovative church plant inspired by ancient monastic tradition and jointly sponsored by the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, has released Ordo, a CD (available via mail order or download) of music they use for worship, with an included PDF file with leadsheets for all songs.

The rock band U2 is among the biggest in the world, known for their spiritually and socially attuned lyrics which often explicitly refer to Christian and biblical texts and themes, and have increasingly been used in Christian worship services, with "eU2charists," begun in 2004 by Sarah Dylan Breuer and the Without Walls ministry network of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, is now receiving international press. The Rev. Paige Blair of the Diocese of Maine makes use of U2's music regularly in worship services for all ages, and has made available her slides for a "U2charist" service of Baptism in PowerPoint and PDF format.

Episcopal Hymnals, Songbooks, and More

Don't miss this collection of Episcopal Church resources for materials from the cultural breadth of the church!

Online Music Resources

ArtsReformation.com is "an exploration of arts, music, and the Christian worldview." There are lots of timely articles primarily on music, but also on film, literature, and architecture. The site also provides links to relevant organizations and resources.

Sermons and Sermon-Lectionary Resources is far more than text. It's an exhaustive collection of liturgical resources of all sorts — music, images, skits, etc. — geared to the Revised Common Lectionary.

The Oremus Hymnal is an index to the 52 Anglican hymnals published in the last 140 years. The public domain texts of six of the most popular hymnals — The English Hymnal, 1906 and The New English Hymnal, 1985 (England); Book of Common Praise, 1938 (Canada); The Hymnal, 1940 and 1982 (USA); Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1950 — are completely uploaded. You may also download or listen to music from several more recent hymnals representing churches throughout the Anglican Communion.

The Hymn Site is just what it says: a site that offers a hymn index, search functions, and even a hymn jukebox, and includes an extensive sound-file library and downloadable sheet music and lyrics for songs that are public domain. Special focus on Methodist resources.

The Cyber Hymnal features nearly 5,000 songs from a variety of traditions. You can search by title, scriptural reference, tune, or composer. You'll find not only lyrics, scores, and sound files, but also pictures, history and more information about church music and composers. Note: To use the site effectively, you'll need speakers, a sound card, and a browser that supports JavaScript and XHTML, and can play MIDI files.

Resetting tunes in Finale or doing the old cut-and-paste can be a time-consuming drag. If you use music published by GIA on a regular basis and need to print music inserts for your bulletins, HymnPrint.net is a lifesaver. For a modest annual fee, you can download image files (TIFF, JPG, and GIF) and PDFs of the congregational version of any song or mass setting from their hymn collections as well as many octavos. Sound clips are also available.

St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco has made its popular Music for Liturgy book available for listening and downloading. The congregation's music is known for its unique blend of cultural voices — Eastern Orthodox, Taize, African-American, Greek, European folk, Shaker, and more.

The fruits of the St. Gregory's Hymn Writing Symposium are also available for listening and downloading, with commentary from the composers

Other Hymnals and Songbooks

Oregon Catholic Press offers One Faith, Una Voz, the first bilingual Catholic hymnal ever. Designed especially for culturally diverse parishes, One Faith, Una Voz offers a carefully prepared repertoire of more than 800 English, Spanish, and bilingual hymns and songs. Features include: the most-used traditional and contemporary songs for the seasons, solemnities, and feasts of the entire liturgical year; a text-only Order of Mass, with English and Spanish in double columns on the same page; 14 Mass settings (5 English, 4 Spanish, 4 bilingual, and 1 Latin); newly composed bilingual songs for the Easter Triduum and for morning and evening prayer; songs with Latin text; and an extensive psalter with English, Spanish, and bilingual common and seasonal psalms. The contents fill a 23-CD recording library, and keyboard and guitar accompaniments are now also available.

Want to introduce hymns from around the world? The United Methodist Church offers Global Praise, an excellent series of songbooks. Three volumes have been released so far, and many songs are printed both in the original language and in English translation.

Flor y Canto — This popular Spanish-language hymnal offers more than 700 hymns and songs in a variety of styles, representing music from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Spain.

Spirit & Song: A Seeker's Guide for Liturgy and Prayer — Designed especially for youth and young adults, with liturgical texts and songs in English and Spanish, this contemporary Catholic songbook is bound to have even broader appeal for worship, retreats, and other gatherings.

This Far by Faith: An African-American Resource for Worship — This rich Lutheran resource features liturgies and music in the African-American tradition.

Halle, Halle: We Sing the World 'Round — Arranged and edited by Michael Hawn, this multicultural, youth-friendly songbook contains 36 selections from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, over half of which have never been published before in America. It also offers musical performance tips, background on writers and countries, liturgical contexts, and ideas for use in worship.

The Institute of Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University aims to renew the church's worship by nurturing and forming those who lead liturgy and song. Rooted in the Lutheran tradition but embracing the wider evangelical catholic tradition, the institute gathers pastors, church musicians, liturgical artists, and lay worship leaders, together with scholars of worship and liturgy, for study and reflection on the renewal of the church's worship. Browse their website for general resources.

Renewing Worship is the Lutheran Church's effort to develop new music and liturgies for use throughout the church. They have posted a large number of musical resources online for public use in worship, and welcome use by Episcopalian friends. Below, you'll find links to the Renewing Worship website, where you may listen to and download songs, including music formatted for service bulletins.

The United Methodist Church's Worship website has collected song lists, song files, sheet music, resource lists, and articles about all kinds of worship music, whatever the style, culture, or occasion. In particular, the site features a great resource list for music from various cultures.

And for those of a more 'contemporary' guitars-and-drums bent, Worship Together is a leading source of materials including songbooks, CDs, training materials, and articles from and about well-known worship leaders.