The Hymn Mass

In a recent email, Miguel Felipe reminded me that this Sunday will be his first hymn mass. For as long as I’ve been at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu (or, at least as long as I can remember!) I have played the organ on the fourth and fifth Sundays of the month at the 8 am service. (For the first three Sundays, we have used piano and guitar settings by Marty Haugen and now The Braeded Chord.) Since 1998 the setting of the Ordinary has been set to familiar hymn tunes, sung to metrical texts. Over the years these texts have been set to various chorale tunes (melodies) and I have organ editions of the liturgies dated 1998, 2003, 2005 and 2010. Read More

A number of these metrical settings of the Ordinary form the tenth setting of the service of Holy Communion in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006). They are useful worship resource for small congregations that use a digital hymnal, or electronic hymn player, since they can be sung to hymn tunes found in most hymnals.