Oremus was an invaluable resource for comparing Anglican hymnals around the world, but last year they gave up because they were being hassled to death over supposed copyright concerns. (I have considerable knowledge of copyright and fair use, and they seemed to be very much on the side of being legal).
Over the last decade, Hymnary has gotten much much better, with good funding, a college and paid staff behind it. (It didn’t hurt that the federal government gave them a big grant to scan 2,000 hymnals from a college library.) It lists the hymn titles and tunes for all the American hymnals, as well as key Church of England hymnals of the past 150 years.
It has various layers of complexity: the searching by hymn, by hymnal, by tune and the ability to download CSV files of some of the data. I can't claim to be an expert on it yet, but would like to post a tutorial once I understand it better. However, I have consistently felt that (as in Oremus) when I pull up a hymn text, I have no assurance that the text I'm seeing matches the specific pew hymnal (in terms of verses and wording changes) in front of me.
During my field research for my next church music paper, I heard about some other resources that seem very useful.
The Episcopal Church’s Church Publishing Inc. has a website RiteSeries, which includes RiteBrain for liturgy and RiteSong for hymns. In many ways, CPH is emulating what Concordia Publishing House (CPH.org) does for the larger (Missouri synod) Lutheran denomination. However, RiteSeries only includes the most recent full hymnal (Hymnal 1982) and its supplements (Wonder Love & Praise), as well as the 1979 prayer book (and supplements such as Lesser Feasts and Fasts), and omits mention of liturgies that have been officially deprecated for the past 35 years. This is unlike CPH, which emphasizes its 2006 worship book (hymnal+prayer book) but still sells its 1982 and 1941 books, and even offers some resources for the older books.
Still, in this era of putting all the music (or at least lyrics) in the service booklet, both Hymnal 1940 and Book of Common Praise 2017 need resources like this. Hymnary has page images for much of Hymnal 1940, so that's a start.
Finally, my research interview yesterday with a long time choir member in Houston — who grew up with the 1928 prayer book and 1940 hymnal and never left — she pointed out SmallChurchMusic.com. It has MP3 files for Hymnal 1940, Hymnal 1982 and The English Hymnal. It also lists the 2006 LCMS hymnal and the 1990 Presbyterian hymnal, and several Methodist hymnals. For each tune, there are multiple MP3 files that list how many verses and what keys they are in. It also provides its own PDF of a score, its own standard lyrics (not specific to a hymnal), and links to pages on TheCyberHymnal and Hymnary for the hymn.
Like so many out there, I appreciate the work these individuals (or not-for-profits) are doing to make these resources available for those of us who still value hymns and hymn-singing in America.
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