New text authority format--comments?

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hplantin's picture

We're working on a new format for the text authority pages. See, for example,

http://www.hymnary.org/text/all_hail_the_power_of_jesus_name_let

What do you think? Any suggestions or feedback?


Comments

It seems to me that there ought to be some way to get to the fullest available, and/or the original, text from the text authority, even if denominational loyalties require you to regard the 1987 Psalter Hymnal as the canon by which "Full Text" is to be measured. Your "Full Text" only has four stanzas. It seems to me I should find Hymnary.org more useful than The Cyber Hymnal for this sort of research, given the amazing depth of the database, but the fact is that I find the latter more helpful. I know that it is well to have a really current version available at one's fingertips when using the Hymnary, and I know there are search methods that can bring me closer to what I'm looking for, but they're complicated and often require prior knowledge of the text's history that I (and other students of hymns) may not yet have, and I think a glancing exposure to the truth is salutary even for those not actively seeking certain details.

FULL TEXT

All hail the power of Jesus’ name! Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all.
Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all.

Let highborn seraphs tune the lyre, and as they tune it, fall
Before His face who tunes their choir, and crown Him Lord of all.
Before His face who tunes their choir, and crown Him Lord of all.

Crown Him, ye morning stars of light, who fixed this floating ball;
Now hail the strength of Israel’s might, and crown Him Lord of all.
Now hail the strength of Israel’s might, and crown Him Lord of all.

Crown Him, ye martyrs of your God, who from His altar call;
Extol the Stem of Jesse’s Rod, and crown Him Lord of all.
Extol the Stem of Jesse’s Rod, and crown Him Lord of all.

Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race, ye ransomed from the fall,
Hail Him who saves you by His grace, and crown Him Lord of all.
Hail Him who saves you by His grace, and crown Him Lord of all.

Hail Him, ye heirs of David’s line, whom David Lord did call,
The God incarnate, Man divine, and crown Him Lord of all,
The God incarnate, Man divine, and crown Him Lord of all.

Sinners, whose love can ne’er forget the wormwood and the gall,
Go spread your trophies at His feet, and crown Him Lord of all.
Go spread your trophies at His feet, and crown Him Lord of all.

Let every tribe and every tongue before Him prostrate fall
And shout in universal song the crownèd Lord of all.
And shout in universal song the crownèd Lord of all.

That, or something even closer to Peronnet if found, should be the baseline. In my outlierly opinion.

You have several options for the text you see on the authority page, including oldest, newest, and "editor's choice", -- which is intended to be a "popular version" but is in fact a historical accident in many cases (i.e. the first version we added to Hymnary.org).

At least, that is the way it's supposed to work. I checked and and didn't see the setting option on the new text authority page -- we just went live with new text and tune authority pages a few days ago. If the option isn't there at the moment, we'll add it back.

I don't recall ever noticing the oldest/newest/editor's choice option, so when you go live with this again, could it be more obvious? "Editor's choice" is not a great option, so maybe we can come up with something less subjective. I suppose for the oldest option to work the way that a history-minded user would expect (Haruo and myself included), with the oldest being the original or a definitive, 'complete' text, that particular instance would have to be added to the database, right? I generally agree with Haruo that the default should be the oldest, since modern edited versions of most hymns are readily available in new hymnals and plastered elsewhere across the internet. Just my two cents, but that's coming from a historian/librarian.

It seems to me we need something vaguely akin to a Wikipedia disambiguation page, where near relatives and significantly different versions could be offered to the concerned user. Any choice (even of "oldest" version, let alone of "consensus" version) is fraught with potential for abuse or confusion. ("Editor's choice" at least has the advantage of being explicitly subjective and non-neutral.)

Consider "Hark! the herald angels sing" vs. the older "Hark how all the welkin rings", and consider that there might be similar cases where the change is not visible in the first line, yet perhaps more extensive than this case in subsequent lines (Whitefield's revision becomes less different in the next line, and there is no change in the rest of the stanza); compare theis case to Wesley's revision of Cennick's "Lo! he cometh, countless trumpets blow before his bloody sign!" to read "Lo! he comes with clouds descending, once for [favored?/guilty?/countless?/???] sinners slain". Modern versions almost always credit Wesley with both hymns, and I think this is reasonable, but where would the line be drawn on the other side of which "Lo! he comes with clouds descending" would be credited to Cennick and Wesley given only Whitefield's degree of credit for the result? In any case, having the oldest available text readily locatable in the hymnary would be a good thing.

There are other problems where translations are concerned. Consider, for example, "Stille Nacht! heilige Nacht!", where the German text is fairly well defined, but (especially in older hymnals) there's quite a bit of variety in the English renderings. (Same with "Adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes" except that in that case the Latin text, too, varies drastically in all stanzas but the first. (My old Esperanto online hymnal has a Latin copy with two drastically different four-stanza versions, here, and a little information on the history of the song's Latin and English versions, with links to four Esperanto versions, here.)

. . . generally I like the new authority interface. Rich with information. Thank you for your work on this.

I think Haruo and I need to recognize that having the original forms and significant variants of classic English hymns is a special project that ultimately involves adding certain hymnals by Wesley, Watts, and others into the Hymnary. The Hymnary is geared heavily toward the research of American hymnals, so perhaps requiring special cases of English hymns is more than what this database can currently bear. The ideal situation discussed here would be like having an open version of the Panorama of Christian Hymnody. These original/complete texts are important, but so is filling the gaps in the DNAH records, adding tune data to DNAH hymnals, etc. I certainly do not have time to be the one to add all those old English hymnals to the Hymnary.

One thing that we could do: in cases where the original or special instances are available on the Hymnary, we could add links to those instances in the descriptive/informative area of the hymn authority, with a brief explanation of why certain instances are important. This would help alleviate some of the search anxiety that Haruo has expressed.

We've restored the preference option for seeing the oldest available text on the authority pages.

In the interest of simplification for most users, we've moved it off the authority page and made it into a user preference. To set it, log in and click "Edit" on your account page. There's a preference you can check or uncheck.

Harry Plantinga

nfmsg