Things that may trip users up

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Haruo's picture

I just added the tune (TALLIS' CANON) to EHT1880 #16, and when I clicked on the First Line link I noticed two things about the text authority that I think need to be thought about.

1. Although the first line of the instance is "All praise to Thee, my God, this night", the text authority shows "Glory to thee, my God, this night". Now being the well-versed classical hymnnut that I am, I know that these are the same hymn, though I can't off the top of my head recall with certainty which is the way Ken wrote it, let alone who introduced the drastic incipit alteration. It seems to me that it would be very helpful, especially to casual users, the worship leader who is not a hymn nut, for example, to put some sort of indication near the top of the text authority page to let them know of frequent, drastic variations in the text (especially in the first line). For that matter, as the hymn nut and constant hymnary.org user I am, I'm not sure how to go about searching for an answer to the question "what percentage of the nearly 900 instances of http://www.hymnary.org/text/all_praise_to_thee_my_god_this_night have the first line beginning «Glory» vs. the First Line beginning «All praise»?" If "First Line" were an addible field in the search boxes to the left, I could maybe do it, but it's not.

2. The text authority page appears to credit Carl Daw with the following stanza:

4 O may my soul on Thee repose,
And may sweet Sleep mine Eye-Lids close;
Sleep that shall me more vig'rous make,
To serve my God when I awake.

Now, I'm not sure what stanza Dr. Daw wrote for this hymn, but I'm 99% sure that the foregoing is not what he wrote. There should be some way to lead people for a citation of someone's authorship of a particular stanza to a full text, or failing that an instance citation where that particular stanza actually occurs.


Comments

Dr. Daw's stanza appears to be

Praise God who gives all blessings birth;
praise God all creatures on the earth;
Praise God, who makes, sustains, sets free:
one holy God in persons three.

at least as it appeared in the NCH. Of course, the NCH is so prone to drastic rewordings that I'm not 100% trusting of it even in this case, but I think it's likely that Dr. Daw wrote it this way. But what are the chances of a casual, uninstructed user's finding that?

The Text Name box on the left will search First line, Title, and Refrain first line, so a user can search for either first line and find the hymn. "Glory to thee, my God, this night" is the first line from the oldest hymnal we have a full text to, that is why it is on the authority first line page. Carl Daw should not appear on this authority page, since he wrote one stanza that appears in one hymnal. I took him out.

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