Seven Methods of Classification in a Hymnbook
March 24th, 2011 | Posted in Uncategorized 32 Comments »
After I wrote my post exploring alternative classification schemes, I was flipping through a hymnbook and noticed there are seven different methods of classification for the hymns:
- Authors and Composers
- Titles, Tunes, and Meters
- Tune Names
- Meters
- Scriptures
- Topics
- First Lines and Titles
-
- By authors and composers
-
- By first lines and titles
-
- By meter
-
- By scripture
-
- By titles, tunes, and meters
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- By topic
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- By tune name
How cool is that. Some of those classifications are obviously geared towards organists. And these classifications are tucked away in the back of the book rather than the front (as if added as an afterthought). Personally, I think they could have even divided them into other, more playful groups — such as the following:
- Hymns by Popularity (always sung, sometimes sung, rarely sung, obscure)
- Hymns by Emotional State (weepy, dirges, solemn, thoughtful, energetic, hopeful, upbeat, rockin’)
- Hymns Published by Date (ancient, dark ages, pre-industrial, modern, post-modern)
- Hymns Common in Other Faiths (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim)
- Hymns by Special Occasion (for funerals, holidays, sacrament, baptisms, weddings, conferences, birthdays)
- Hymns by Famous Favorites (favorites of Gordon Hinckley, Joseph Smith, King David, Jimmer Fredette)
- Hymns by Event Types (sung at temple dedications, firesides, prophetic successions, transfigurations, martrydoms)
All of these organizations are more appealing to me than a topic-based organization of hymns. When choosing hymns, one doesn’t necessarily think, I’d like to sing a hymn on the topic of X. Just as in a help file, one doesn’t always say, I’d like to see all help files on the topic of X. Of course it all depends on the “product,” but if you look creatively enough, you can find myriad ways to dissect and organize it.
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Tags: classification schemes, hymnbook, Information Architecture, organization patterns
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You’ve sold me, Tom. Right now I’m going to start indexing my help topics by emotional state. Gotta steer my readers away from the weepy ones and toward the ones that are rockin’.
More seriously, I think the hymnbook is a good model for semantic tagging. Each hymn is given its own set of metadata, so that the hymns can be sorted in different ways for different user tasks.
Thanks Larry. I think it’s interesting how so many other products around us, from hymnbooks to shoe stores to television guides, break free of the topic-based organization system. As technical writers we get stuck in this topic mode, and while I recommend still including a topic-based TOC, I think it’s limiting if that’s our only method of organizing content.
By the way. are you familiar with the organization features in DITA 1.2? Is that released yet?
Yes, DITA 1.2 is fully approved. The new “key” feature lets you do some pretty cool things with index entries when you reuse the same topic in different contexts.
Great to know about this new “key” feature in DITA.
Larry, when you come across a sample implementation of DITA 1.2, showing the new features, please let me know. I’m interested to see it.
The point that different people categorize things in different ways is crucial. The questions is, should we be trying to anticipate and provide all the categorizations that people require, or should be we leaving it up to them to categorize things for themselves.
The most obvious categorization of hymns is missing from the list: My Favorite Hymns. Its missing because the author of the hymnal cannot provide it. Only the user can. But, as David Weinberger points out in his book “Everything is Miscellaneous”, the power to organize information has passed from the creator to the consumer.
Perhaps the time has passed for the creators of information to concern themselves principally with the organization of content. Perhaps it is time for them to focus on enabling the reader to organize it for themselves.
Mark, excellent point! That’s an angle on the topic that I haven’t even considered — user-driven organization. I know that some HATs have a favorites type of feature, where you can save a topic to a list of favorites, but it’s an obscure feature that rarely gets used. If users could more easily store and select their favorite content, that might be helpful.
As I recall, NYtimes.com had a “My Times” button at one time. I thought it was where users could personalize the information. Then one day it disappeared. I’m not sure why.
Also, I need to read the Weinberger book. Do you recommend it?
Could change “reader” to “readers” here — as in the Delicious (or Google Bookmarks) model. I love being able to tag my bookmarks to classify them in various ways… and also see the way others have classified theirs.
Leveraging social input on classification is one of those strategies that I would like to see more. Other than through Delicious, though, I’m not sure how users really do it.
When I saw this heading, I wondered if you had hymns by meter and lo! you do.
The standard Unitarian hymnal does, as I recall, have a section of hymns common in other faiths but only because the Unitarians are such a lateral slice of spirituality. I *think* I recall an index of hymns or readings for special occasions, but memory’s dim this early in the morning.
As always, very interesting stuff! Thanks!
How cool that the Unitarian hymnal lists songs common in other faiths. For me, I can get so siloed that I forget I’m singing the same hymns as many other Protestant churches. That’s why this classificaition would be particularly useful — it would help encourage more of an inter-faith tolerance and understanding, perhaps.
Well, admittedly, Unitarians are weird. (I was brought up as one; I oughta know.
) You can be a Unitarian and just about anything else simultaneously, really. The Unitarian church in Eugene has in various numbers Protestants of varying stripes, Roman Catholics, Witches, two or three kinds of pagans, at least one Muslim I’m aware of, Jews, Buddhists, and a lot of “pure” Unitarians. I don’t know that there are any Mormons in this congregation, but no reason there couldn’t be. Unitarian churches are like that.
You know, don’t you, that the meters for Gilligan’s Island and Amazing Grace are interchangable?
In addition, perhaps #8–in many of the hymnbooks in my collection, the hymns are in liturgical / church calendar order, which is a bit different than “topic,” exactly.
The lyrics for Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” can be sung to the tune of the Christmas carol “Joy to the World.” Just thought you all would like to know.
Wasn’t aware of that one, Larry; thanks!
Jack Chalker, the SF author, used to say that you really only needed two tunes to sing most lyrics to: “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and… aw, heck, I’ve forgotten the other at the moment. Along those lines, though, I did want to share a totally irrelevant blog post about how you can sing Robert Frost to “Hernando’s Hideaway.”
http://hedtke.blogspot.com/2011/01/robert-frost-and-hernandos-hideaway.html
(BTW, this is likely to become an earworm for you; be warned!)
John, thanks for the insight on various tunes and hymns. I’ll be on the lookout for some of these.
Hymns are interesting in that way. Many old Irish tunes have been repurposed for LDS Church use — the lyrics are just swapped out. Actually, the LDS hymnal perhaps contains more repurposed tunes than other hymnals. If I remember correctly, Joseph Smith’s wife Emma was tasked to come up with the hymns. Since one cannot merely create compelling hymns from scratch, repurposing existing tunes with new lyrics seems most practical. It is fascinating to hear the same tune in other churches and contexts.
It must’ve been close to… 45 years since I might’ve attended an LDS service as part of the extensive Unitarian LRY program to introduce us to as many different religious practices as we could and I cannot recall what the service would’ve sounded like if we did. IMO, it’s hard to go wrong with a bunch of Irish tunes, so I’d say “Well done, Emma!”
I had no idea on the Gilligan’s Island and Amazing Grace meter interchangeability. I’ll have to check that one out. Of course, after I do, I may never be able to sing Amazing Grace without seeing images of Gilligan’s Island.
Speaking of Gilligan’s Island (I realize this is ~SO~ completely OT, but I promise I’ll tie it into tech writing), I want to relate something that happened when I was off in Honolulu in 2000 at the Region 7/Region 8 Pan-Pacific Conference. (Toldja!
)
The conference was at the Royal Ilikai (which is now closed, alas). I was hanging out in Mark Hanigan’s room chatting at one point and we were talking about the Royal Ilikai being famous as the hotel in the opening credits of “Hawaii Five-O” that there’s that fast telephoto zoom in on Jack Lord’s face, who was standing on the, uh, South Tower’s penthouse balcony. That one I knew about already. Then Mark said “Come look at something” and we went out to the balcony. (He was on the 14th floor.) He pointed down at a small, rectangular marina almost directly below us.
“Do you recognize that?” Mark asked.
You know, I thought I did, but I couldn’t say why or where.
“That’s the marina that the S.S. Minnow set out on a 3-hour tour from,” he said.
OMG! Yes, it was!! If you recall the first few seconds of film on the opening credits of Gilligan’s Island, you saw a ship (supposedly the Minnow) pulling out of a small, rectangular marina. And that was it.
There. All tied together with tech writing and still TOTALLY irrelevant. Darn, I’m good.
Okay, back to a more serious discussion, y’all. Do carry on!
Personally, I’d like to see some additional categories, such as:
* Hymns that are impossible to sing because of:
— difficult meter (5/4 ? What??!)
— difficult words
— difficult melody/rhythm
— too high
— too low
* Bad 70s hymns
* Terrible 60s hymns
* Songs We Should Have Left in Back in the 1700s
* Hymns based on Cool Classical Music
* Children’s Hymns
Hmmm. (Or was that Hymn…)
It’s funny how the most interesting classifications never seem to make it the official texts. I too would appreciate some of those classificaitions. I’m sure every church has a list of hymns that most people would like to see discarded.
Isn’t everything by Andrew Lloyd Webber in an impossible meter? You certainly can’t dance to it.
Karen, you can add “Stairway to Heaven” to that list. I’ve a recording by Little Roger & the Goosebumps singing Gilligan’s Island to Stairway to Heaven. (“Aaaaaand they’re heee-eee-eeere on Gilligaa-aan’s…. Iiii-uh-land!”)
Actually, I’ve used just about all of these topics in the hymnal I use. And as someone who has helped pick hymns for services, I’ve gotta say, having a list by topic is essential!
I meant I’ve used just about all of these “categories” in my hymnal. Sorry!
Tammy, thanks for your comment. Yes, I think if I had to pick hymns for services, I would definitely use these classifications more.
Hi Tom, You hit upon one of the oldest form of user classification for the “common people.” It’s hard to think of any other document for wide public consumption as common as a hymnal. And accessibility has been the driving force behind all these categorizations. I tend to remember the first line, so having a listing of first lines helps me, but other people may recall (and even know the name of) the tune/melody. It is a great example of information architecture! Know Thy User.
Thanks Glenn. You’re right — this is probably one of the oldest forms of user classification. I don’t find myself using them as much as I probably could, unfortunately. Nice to hear from you.
Gilligan’s Island? Not classy enough. Try this one on for size.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rAcQCbchDg
In the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1982, there is also indices for seasons, appropriate for children, and paraphrases of scriptural and liturgical texts (not simply a reference to a text). Some of those indices, though, are in the Accompanist’s Edition of the hymnal (not the Singer’s Edition).
There is also a list of “ecumenical hymns” published by someone like the National Council of Churches. Several hymnals have an specific index that tells you were those hymns are in that hymnal.
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