Signal A Running Record of Findings from the Internet / October 23, 2026

An Organist Plays and Ranks All 606 Hymns in the New English Hymnal

Maddie Lay, an Oxford-based arts writer and part-time church organist, spent a month playing through all 606 entries in the New English Hymnal and ranked every one. Its ancestor, the English Hymnal of 1906, was compiled by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and was initially banned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, lest it dethrone the popular Hymns Ancient and Modern. The 1986 revision kept roughly two-thirds of the original numbers and added about a hundred more. Lay ranks them from the depths of hell to the heights of heaven, as a guide to which hymns deepen worship and which can be safely ignored.

Read the story By Maddie Lay · VAN Magazine
An Organist Plays and Ranks All 606 Hymns in the New English Hymnal
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