December 3, 2009 7:37 AM
Advent hymns
I love hymns. I love the intelligence and the poetry. I love the way they give melody to our theology, voice to the longings of our hearts, and specific praise to Our Creator.
People often ask how our family produced so many good singers. My answer: in the formative years, we got up and began each day by singing hymns. I like to think that if any time of trouble, my children would remember and be comforted/encouraged/strengthened by the hymns they learned as children.
Click on these links to hear the hymns our family sings for Advent:
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
This is my favorite:
Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying. It's a bit different and I love the intricate German melody.
Cyberhymnal is a great site for you to bookmark, offering over 6000 hymns and gospel songs - including not only words and music, but the history of each hymn and picture of the composer.
This is a great way to begin familiarizing your children with traditional church music and to give them the stories behind the great hymns.
We also use the following book/CD resource, which introduces children to twelve carols and shares the stories behind each one, including fully orchestrated versions of the carols with children's voices:
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Comments
Thank you, Barbara!! Perfect for me to teach my kids. My dad is an organist and I grew up with these hymns too. I, unfortunately, am not a very good keyboardist, so this website will really help!! You're the best!!
Sara
Posted by: Sara | December 3, 2009 8:22 AM
As a fairly new Catholic, you may never have heard this one -- http://www.chantcd.com/lyrics/come_divine_messiah.htm. The MIDI at that site is very slow, but it's quite catchy when sung almost in waltz time.
Posted by: Salome Ellen | December 3, 2009 1:17 PM
I love these hymns too, but you have a common mistake on your list. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence is a Eucharistic hymn, not Advent.
Posted by: Courageous Grace | December 4, 2009 12:44 AM
eek, I just reread your post. You said these are hymns your family sings at Advent, not particularly Advent hymns. I retract my above comment. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence is not an Advent hymn, but that's not what you were saying. Mea culpa!
Posted by: Courageous Grace | December 4, 2009 12:46 AM
We have the book that you posted here and there are actually three others in this set, too. They are a nice addition to a Christian home.
Last year, when we were mostly house bound with a child recovering from MAJOR surgery, my children would have liked to have gone Christmas caroling. So as a substitute, they positioned the chairs around our CD player, got out this book and "caroled" to each other. If we had never done anything else with this set of books, those moments alone would have been worth the price that I paid for them.
When we buy good resources for our home/family, we just never know how important and valuable them may be.
Posted by: von | December 4, 2009 3:10 PM
