Monday, July 21, 2008

The (first) end in view!

Oh there will be many, many more hours at this. But today I came to the first end of a significant text review for the College Church hymnal. Some 400 hymns, proof-read and wrangled through editorial consistency. These texts were some time ago put in hymnal sequence (thank, Jonathan A.!) and that is the order I have been dealing with them in this text review, beginning at Calvin College back in June.

This afternoon - bless God for quiet summer afternoons in the church office! - I reached the end of the initial compilation. Now I am at work on the "final batch" of 2 dozen texts, which need to be placed in sequence, proof-read, and edited. This won't be fast. It won't be fast, and they won't be the last. Because I have seen where there are still holes that (now I see them again) I left last fall, "to be filled in later." Only 1 Ascension hymn? Only 1 Pentecost hymn? After all my ranting about these Evangelical Feasts?

Well, it just serves to remind me that the project is after all farther from being complete than I want to admit. But today it is easy to see that the end is truly in view. I'll finish plowing through this batch in a couple of days, then move the whole collection on to be hyphenated, from there to be dropped into the beautiful pages of music that are prepared and waiting for their completion.

It is truly the first end in view. If it's only a corner, at least there is light in it.

1 comment:

jaigner said...

Thank you for the kind parenthetical reference. Of the few regrets I have about leaving Wheaton, I think the greatest is not being able to continue my involvement in this project. I would, however, like to preorder a copy.