Comments on: Looking at the New Living Parish Hymn Book

By: Chris Wroblewski

Chris Wroblewski — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:41:23 +0000

I fully agree with your comments about the arrangements. I’m particularly impressed that a lot of the chant hymns have arrangements that work well on piano; not a strength of CWB2! It’s also bound a lot better than CWB2 and lies flat! The whole project was very accessible with the paperback hymnals being quite cheap – if I remember correctly, you could purchase the books with or without a protective plastic over-cover. I was introduced to this in a small country parish back in the 80s, but I can’t recall it being widely used elsewhere.

By: Peightan Whiterock

Peightan Whiterock — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:58:46 +0000

Lke a lot

By: Gio

Gio — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:54:41 +0000

In reply to maddg.

I managed to snag a copy of the people’s book. It’s falling apart cos they were all paperback.
There’s a parish I know that was really lucky to get a small horde of them, which was far more appropriate than the red Adoremus Hymnal from America.
I’ve seen Kevin Mayhew’s Hymns Old And New (1979) appear more often, and then the fancier parishes would have had CWB, and then Glory & Praise for the folksier peoples. Seeing that As One Voice was so widespread when it came out, I feel people would have been more used to that type of music.

The sequel is never as popular as the first.

By: maddg

maddg — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:48:17 +0000

In reply to Gio.

Gio

Do you think there are many copies of it floating around these days?

Geoff

By: Gio

Gio — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:38:54 +0000

Be mindful that many of the hymns in this book have variations, owing to some of the source material, including Faber Music’s New Catholic Hymnal (wah) and the OG Living Parish Hymnal (yay).

What I really like are the fact that the good old Latin hymns and chants are in there, together with singable translations. They aren’t the *best* , but it is really helpful to have.

The People’s book is a words only version, alphabetically ordered, with the title with the number. Having the first line as a title is one of the things I’d say come from a hymn tradition, but it does annoy me to have it repeated so much. OG living Parish did it much better by going straight to the verse, unless there was a title, where it was suggested in italic text.

This is one of the best hymnals around in my opinion, and it has so many things going for it.