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In Ages Past A new collection of favourite hymns A further 'Gift of Music' selection of timeless Victorian favourites, all taken from an early edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, one of the most popular and influential hymnals. Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Directed by David Skinner
Jamal Sutton, organ
Recorded in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, by kind permission of the Master and Fellows. Hymns Ancient and Modern is one of our earliest and greatest English language hymnals. Unusually for a successful publication, it came about as the outcome of a committee which had begun formal work in 1859. The committee gave itself the job of bringing together the music and texts of the many and diverse hymnals and other publications which had sprung up in the wake of the Oxford movement, a religious movement which had sought, amongst other things, to raise the standards of liturgical observance in the Anglican church of the mid-nineteenth century. New hymns and new translations of ancient works were brought together into a new collection which largely eradicated the need for any other hymnal: and the committee was so successful in their work that, following publication of the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861, four and a half million copies were sold within the next seven years. The hymnal was reprinted and revised many times, and indeed is still going strong today.