Here’s a new eight-handbell arrangement of the famous hymn Sweet Hour of Prayer. The hymn tune was composed by William Bradbury (who gave us many other wonderful tunes as well – can you name one or two?). This arrangement can easily be transposed to work with choir as a thoughtful, meditative piece for your service.
Tag: hymn
Hymns are the musical substance of the traditional church. They typically have high doctrinal content with classical/choral music. Many of the older (up to the 20th century) were written with four choral parts for choirs to sing.
Modern hymnals go beyond this definition, however, because continuing history provides more and more choices of music for worship. New hymnals include more international and contemporary songs as well. This is in keeping with the definition "hymn: a religious song or poem of praise to God".
Mar 14
Faith of Our Fathers – New Eight-Bell Music!
As spring rapidly approaches, we’re back to recording more eight-bell music. Our latest release is Faith of Our Fathers, one of the famous hymns of the nineteenth century. This arrangement is easy enough that you should be able to prepare it for Father’s Day!
Jan 25
Sing Praise to God (Who Reigns Above)
Sometimes we end up writing a “standard” and a “surprisingly easy”™ version of a particular piece. The reason for this, of course, is that sometimes the standard versions can be quite challenging. So we don’t want to prevent anyone from being able to enjoy playing a tune because they’re still on the learning curve. In …
Jan 20
One Day!
Well, that’s not a really-I’ll-eventually-get-to-it promise… it’s the title of our just-released eight-handbell hymn arrangement. One Day is one of the hymns that tells of what Jesus Christ did with no uncertainty – He’s our Example, and Redeemer, and Hope. Our arrangement shares the excitement of knowing that! We hope you’ll take a look, and …
Jan 03
O Worship the King!
There are many hymns whose words are sung with multiple hymn tunes (just take a look at your metrical index!). Some time ago we put out an arrangement of the LYONS hymn tune which is commonly used for O Worship the King… and today we’ve added an eight-bell score for HANOVER, one of the other …
Nov 26
We Gather Together
It’s Thanksgiving Day, possibly one of the highest-caloric-content dates on the American calendar. There’ll be turkey, potatoes/rice, candied yams, stuffing, cranberry sauce, ham, mulled cider, and pies, pies, and pies for many of us today (perhaps to carbo-fat-protein-load for Black Friday?). Anyway, we’ve just added our eight-bell arrangement of We Gather Together (hymn tune KREMSER) …
Nov 11
Veteran’s Day
(Larry writing…) It’s incredible to think about the sacrifices “The Greatest Generation” made on our behalf. In the desperate times of World War II, they saw the need and committed themselves to solving the problems created by the Axis powers. It was no different twenty-five years before, when a different – but still huge – …
Sep 23
O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go
Now and then we’ll be in church, and ask ourselves, “Would the song we just sang work with just eight bells?” Then we check the hymnal, count the number of melody notes, and start wondering… until we get home and try writing an arrangement. That’s what happened with O Love That Wilt Not Let Me …
Aug 16
Praise Him! Praise Him!
We’re in Harbor Springs, Michigan for a few days. It turns out that we’ve arrived on the hottest weekend of the whole year – it’s about 90º F. outside, so we’re thankful for air conditioning! We have a day to kick back before rehearsals start tomorrow, and plan to have a nice time, probably in …
Aug 10
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Today, we’re releasing our new eight-handbell arrangement of Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It’s a great piece with which to start the new season, especially if you’d like to give your full-size bell choir a bit of additional time to prepare their first piece for service. Do take a look, and pick up the …