Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Monthly column on hymns and songs

The HymnQuest 2000 CD-ROM being launched at the Christian Resources Exhibition

Every Christian should go once in a lifetime.

No, not Oberammergau or Spring Harvest; I mean the Christian Resources Exhibition from which I returned in May, staggering off the Waterloo train with armfuls of evangelical paper and plastic. I had heard of it, but never been; truly, the half was not told me.

It happens at the Sandown Park racecourse. I had not realised that the virus of betting on horses could spawn such a magnificent complex of absurd buildings and such spectacular views of Surrey suburbia - as if the Christians at Corinth had taken over the hilltop temple for their annual convention.

This column deals with hymns. There were plenty. A fine text by Caryl Micklem crept into the 160-page Exhibition handbook. Down every aisle you could find hymns in books, hymns on tape, hymns on screen; instruments to play them on; microphones to sing them into; live singing, too, if you knew where to go. The London Emmanuel Choir and Garth Hewitt were there on the day I was, all sounding exactly as I remember them a century ago.

Although I harvested valuable material from all kinds of stalls, not least the Christian education display, it was hymns which drew me there. I was invited to the launch of a product which for once deserves the adjective 'unique'. It is called HymnQuest 2000; a CD-ROM from the Pratt Green Trust which had a double inauguration this year from two hymnwriting Anglicans, Timothy Dudley-Smith and Alan Luff.

In one point at least I resonate with the former. Bishop Timothy confessed publicly to what his friends already knew; he is not computer-literate. He writes with a fountain pen and uses blotting-paper. But even we can see the extra-ordinary usefulness of the little shiny silver disks which were on free offer afterwards. Insert one into your machine, press the right knobs, or mice, or whatever, and you have nearly 25,000 first lines on your screen (not simultaneously), for half of which the full text and its opening melody are available, the latter for ears as well as eyes.

HymnQuest also tells you who wrote the words and music; which books publish them; which Bible texts they allude to; what themes they cover, and much more. Or the other way round: which hymns illustrate Genesis 3 or Romans 5, or uses 8787 metre, or are by C.H. Spurgeon - biographical details provided. But you can't remember the first line? Never mind - tap in 'earthquake, wind and fire' and up come 'Dear Lord and father of mankind' and several more. Or you can't recall a single word, but the tune goes te tum te tum te tum? Play half a dozen notes with one virtual finger on the keyboard display, and here are the five hymns starting with that musical phrase. Yours comes second.

But who needs 25,000 hymns anyway? Here's the point. By judicious use of the right button, you and the CD-ROM together can settle on the one you specially need in almost no time at all. By some further cunning, the free sample (available while stocks last) contains the whole works, but self-destructs after 30 days. Or you buy it first. I cannot guarantee that keying in 'I love you, Lord' will not bring the whole civilised world to a standstill, including racing from Sandown Park, but they are working on that.

Meanwhile, thanks to 96 year-old Fred Pratt Green whose worldwide royalties made it all possible, and to Stainer and Bell of London N3 for pioneering it. There is more to come!

Christopher Idle