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Part 1: Children's Hymns

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19th-Century Children's Hymns:
An Overview

In today’s society, hymns--when they are still sung at all--are primarily sung in church, or church-related activities (camps, etc.), and they are usually sung as the entire congregation, of all ages.  Pop music dominates what children sing on their own, even what might be sung in schools and at home as community activities.  In the nineteenth century, in both England and America, folk songs and popular music existed but what children—of all classes—would sing on a daily basis were hymns: they sang them at home, they sang them at the church-sponsored schools, they sang them at the public (boarding) schools, later they sang them at the national schools. Yet this culture of children’s hymn-singing has not been studied thoroughly.  My study stems both from my personal love of hymn-singing, as a youth and now as an adult, and from my two areas of scholarship--Victorian aesthetics and children’s literature—as they converge into a study of Victorian children’s hymnody.  It focuses primarily on the situation in England and spans the entire nineteenth century.  It is based on three research trips to England, as I delved into archives and libraries for extant hymn books for children of the era, and amassed an incredibly large bibliography of over 200 hymn books.  Placing their indices into an Excel database, I began to determine the most commonly appearing hymns in these hymn books. 

From this research of nine years, I consider children’s hymns from many different disciplinary angles, from children’s literature to 19th century hymnody.  The results are a book published by Ashgate Publishers (now Routledge) in 2016: British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900: Re-Tuning the History of Childhood, which lists the chapters and topics.  Below, I show a chart of highest appearing hymns in 100 hymnbooks (19th century British) of my study. At the end of this page, you can find links to all of, alphabetically, where you can go to learn more about them and to listen to children singing them.

In my analysis of these various hymn venues I make the following claims:
1) hymns challenge and empower children, placing deep theology and rich poetry within the grasp of children;  
2) the music is just as powerful, and perhaps even more inspirational at times, as the text, making hymns for adults with engaging tunes very popular in children’s hymn books;  and
3) hymns offered children a way to impact the world around them, in missionary work, temperance work, and even animal welfare (temperance leagues for children were called Bands of Hope and animal-welfare organizations were called Bands of Mercy). 
 

Our 2015 Hymn-Camp Singers

My daughter, Annetta Itnyre, grew up learning quite a few of these hymns; you will hear her singing a few, also with friends.* In June 2015, my colleague Dr. Jessica Raposo, director of music at Indiana University East, and I auditioned for and created a “Hymn Camp” for 18 children grades 4th through 8th grade, including Annetta, to learn some of the top hymns. After that week, we recorded at the end of the week.  It was inspiring to see children of today become as excited about hymns as I imagined many nineteenth-century children might be! 

See pictures of them at Hymn Camp, below (all children’s voices and images used with parental permission; use the arrows for the slide-show):

 

Singers: Heather Metzger, age 8; Grace Stewart, age 9; Mary Jetmore, age 9; Kristen Urich, age 10; Eden Judd, age 10; Malory Bolser, age 10; Ben Schweitzer, age 10; Graham Milligan, age 11; Madeline Stults, age 12; Luke Schweitzer, age 12; Heidi Metzger, age 13; Grace Blakely, age 13; Natalie Milligan, age 13; Annetta Itnyre, age 13; Natalie Pegg, age 13; Alexa Turner, age 15. 

Co-directors: Jessica Raposo, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre
Pianist: Caryl Bailey
Recording engineer: Chris Robinson
Location: Central United Methodist Church, Richmond 
Recordings are also archived in IU's Media Collection Online. 

*Additional hymn-singers:
(also used with parents' permission)
Annetta Itnyre, age 8 and 13; Madelyn Brunton, age 8, & Lydia Shively, age 14.
 

Alphabetical Listing of the Most Popular Hymns in 19th-Century British Children's Hymnbooks:

This page has paths:

  1. SOUNDING CHILDHOOD by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre Alisa Clapp-Itnyre

Contents of this path:

  1. "Abide with me; fast falls the eventide"
  2. "All hail the power of Jesus' name"
  3. "Around the throne of God"
  4. "Awake, my soul, and with the sun"
  5. "Christ the Lord is risen to-day"
  6. "Father, in high heaven dwelling"
  7. "From Greenland's icy mountains"
  8. "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild"
  9. "Glory to Thee, my God, this night"
  10. "Great God and wilt Thou condescend"
  11. "Hark! The herald angels sing"
  12. "Here we suffer grief and pain"
  13. "Holy, holy, holy"
  14. "Hushed was the evening hymn"
  15. "I love to tell the story"
  16. "I think, when I read that sweet story of old"
  17. "I sing the almighty power of God"
  18. "Jerusalem the golden"
  19. "Rock of ages"
  20. "Sun of my soul, my Saviour dear"
  21. "There is a happy land"
  22. "There is a happy time" (Temperance song)
  23. "There's a friend for little children"
  24. "We are but little children weak"

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