New Treasures Still

(slight exaggeration perhaps - but where's the quote from? - without using Google!)

I've added a few new links over on the right which you may or may not have noticed. The Sibley Music Library, located at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY bills itself as "the largest academic music library in North America." But the most interesting thing about them is that they are making vast amounts of their public domain (pre-1922 for the most part) music available online. I've been prowling around the choral music, but there's lots of instrumental pieces, songs, organ pieces, etc. From the main page, follow the links from "Music Resources" to " Sibley Resources" and then to "Sibley Digitized Material." where you can search by composer.

You will also see a link to "Request Public Domain Scores" where you can request particular PD items from their library to be put online. There's a limit to how many you can ask for at once, so if you don't know what to request I have A LOT of suggestions (just kidding).

Farther down on the right I have added two links to "Inclusive & Expansive Language Resources." The first one, Ohio Conference Guidelines (UCC) I've discussed here before (see February 8 for that background if you haven't been reading here that long). The second link is actually to a book review written fifteen years ago by Ruth Duck, but I think there's plenty of food for thought even without the context of the book being discussed. Ruth Duck, now professor of worship at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL is one of the pioneers of inclusive language beginning more than thirty years ago as part of the Ecumenical Women's Center of Chicago, a group that published the inclusive language resource Because We Are One People in 1974. Duck's website, linked above, may also give you a lot to explore and think about.

One of her earliest hymns, Lead on, O cloud of Presence, while under copyright, can be found in a book titled Bearing Fruit in Due Season by Elizabeth J. Smith, (thanks fo Google Books -- if the link doesn't take you directly there, go to midway down page 196). The book quotes the first line as Lead on, O cloud of Yahweh, an earlier version that has since been revised by Duck - no text is set in stone. Tying in with our earlier discussion of Onward, Christian soldiers, this text was written to take the place of the older Lead on, O King eternal. It's no mere revision, but a new text altogether (though generally sung to the same tune, LANCASHIRE) -- and one of my favorite twentieth century hymns.