Backwoods Presbyterian
Puritanboard Amanuensis
The retention of the hymnal in most churches would be greatly facilitated if more than 2-3% of the congregation could read choral harmonizations. It is a failure of education, based upon a failure to appreciate and pass on God's gift of music to future generations.
The retooling of the tunes of the great hymns in our PCA congregations is a travesty, in my opinion. If I hear one more mediocre setting of "Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands" I will burn every RUF songbook to cross my path.
1. You cannot top Bach's chorale setting, and you shouldn't even attempt it.
2. If you want to mess with the tunes to any of these hymns, then you should write your own words as well. 99% of the settings coming out of the pens of PCA worship leaders are not worthy of a first year composition student. It would be much better if they paired them up with their own mediocre lyrics, and thus paired like with like. Otherwise there is a tremendous imbalance and dissonance left between the quality of the original lyrics and the quality of the new musical setting, in most cases.
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