This weekend my husband told me about a Lutheran hymn contest! I’m quite excited. The short of it is that Concordia Theological Seminary is having a hymn competition in honor of its upcoming 175th anniversary. (Yay for my Alma Mater!)
Click here for full guidelines, though I’ll also summarize what you need to know.
The hymn should “correlate” with the anniversary theme, “Make Known His Deeds!” and submissions are to be text-only.
Furthermore, the guidelines list nine tunes as pairing options. That means you cannot just write whatever you want. You need to follow the syllables of one of these pieces!
These are not super familiar melodies. You’ll likely need to look them up in the back of your hymnal or on hymnary.org.
I went ahead and jotted down syllable counts and basic stress patterns on the sheet I printed out. I haven’t figured out how to type stress and unstressed in WordPress, but maybe this can help a little:
- 87 87 77 Begins with a stress
- 87 87 66 88 Begins unstressed
- 76 76 76 (To God on High be Glory) Begins unstressed
- 77 77 77 Begins stressed
- 98 98 86 Stressed
- 76 76 D (D means doubled) Unstressed
- 87 87 D Stressed
- 8888/LM Unstressed
- 87 87 887 Unstressed
Could I be wrong? Yep. Double-check for yourself. 🙂
On a personal note, I jumped to the task at the slightest suggestion. Before I even read the guidelines. Ha ha haaa, unfortunately that got me singing to an 86 86 tune in my head, which seems to be a TLH default from my childhood! It is making this whole thing a lot harder! Still at least I get to have my mind engaged with something as wonderful as confessional Lutheran hymnody!
The deadline for the hymn contest is May 1, 2020, and the winner will retain copyright and will be awarded $500.
I hope you’ll try your hand to lend to your voice!
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