This is the companion to the recording of Hymns and Songs for Living. It presents historical back stories to events around the time each hymn or song on the companion recording was written that influenced their writing. It's goal is to provide the reader with the context of the times that influenced writing of the hymns and songs. In addition, the book includes appendicies that provide an overview of historical highpoints from the past 2 millenia that impacted Christian congregational hymn singing from the death of Christ in the 1st to 20th century.
Various persons contributed inputs that shaped this book:
Since opinions can be strong regarding religious subject matter, this book provides numerous footnotes throughout enabling readers with questions or reservations regarding throughness and/or reliability of information presented, to explore supporting source materials.
Because many scholarly reference books are only accessible via libraries, this book chose to dominantly cite reference materials accessible via the internet to facilitate readers in accessing them. The goal is to facilitate readers being able to easily follow up on topics of interest to them.
In addition to providing readers with a feel for the history back stories surrounding creation of each individual hymn and song thus shaping them, an expansive summary appendix of historical highpoints from the past 2 millenia is included of selected christian religious histories that seem relevant to development of congregational hymn singing. It begins from Christ's death to the 20th century. The history overview appendix provides additional insights into how historical contexts contributed to the development of the current religious landscape.
Note. While popular internet sources are invaluable for easily accessed resources, they can have scholarly limitations.
Projected availability. It is planned to provide details on these webpages about how to access this book when it becomes available. The intention is to at minimum make information available on TortoiseClimbing.com about how to obtain this book.
NOTE. This TortoiseClimbing.net website will be migrated to the .com website in the future, with automatic referal.
Draft finals of two selections from the front material of the book are accessible on this website via the dropdown local submenu above for:
As technical options are developed for making this book electronically available, additional of the materials from the book may be made available via this website, perhaps in pdf format.
Comments from readers on inaccuracies and sources for missing materials, etc., are incouraged for improving this book. Like all other comments, they can be submitted via the comment page on this website which can be accessed by clicking on the comment button at the bottom of this page, or by clicking the option in the Top menu for Contact/Comment.
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