eBay
 SEE IMAGES. COVER SHOWS WEAR. BINDING IS SPLIT AT THE FRONT AND THE BACK. ALL PAGES ATTACHED. 411 PAGES. PRIOR OWNERS NAME WRITTEN INSIDE FRONT COVER AND ON COVER PAGE.

HYMNAL HISTORY FROM THE INTERNET VIA JORGENSEN MUSIC:

Frydetoner (Joyful Songs) is a collection of choral music that first appeared in Ungdommens Ven in the early 1890's.

There were numerous contributors who enriched the choir literature with single compositions or larger groups, now and then with a collection of hymns or songs. The Holter Publishing Company did a very worthy service by publishing singable music as a regular department of Ungdommens ven, later the Friend. All this material was collected and issued in several volumes under the name Frydetoner (Songs of Joy). The bulk of the work done up to 1900 was in the Norwegian language. Now and then a small contribution was made in English.

The Norwegian Americans, like Lutherans everywhere, set a high value on the function of music in the life of the church. Sunday morning worship in the nineteenth century consisted, apart from the sermon, mainly of congregational singing. Musical emphasis, consequently, was almost exclusively on hymns, and pastors deplored the quality of the singing and exhorted the people to do better. From time to time, articles appeared in the church press on the subject of kirkesangen (singing in the church) and how it might be improved. The number of church hymnals in regular use was about as great as the number of Lutheran synods.

 

Worship services were conducted in Norwegian, and the standard hymnals were Landstad’s Salmebog, which had been authorized for general use in the United Church and in Hauge’s Synod, and the hymnal published expressly for the Norwegian Synod, which was commonly known as Synodens salmebog. In addition, a few congregations still used Guldberg’s Salmebog.  These books, although generally satisfying to the older people, failed to meet the needs of the young, who thought the Lutheran hymns stodgy and uninteresting and who, furthermore, were becoming bilingual and wanted to sing hymns in English as well as in Norwegian.

 

From 1878 until 1914 a proliferation of books appeared containing songs designed to express Christian beliefs and aspirations in a less formal way than did the congregational hymnal. Many were issued specifically for young people. Most of the older Lutheran hymns dealt with doctrines fundamental to the faith. These the people were accustomed to singing in church, and many were dear to them. But toward the end of the nineteenth century there was an insistent demand for a new type of expression. It sprang from religious revivals, which emphasized individual experience as essential to Christian faith.

 

These songbooks, though widely used, met with serious opposition. In a typically forthright statement, the Norwegian Synod passed a resolution in 1896 which read, "Books such as Harpen, by Hoyme and Lund, and Frydetoner, by B. B. Haugan, ought not to be distributed by the Lutheran Publishing House in Decorah." In 1901 the United Church also passed a resolution, but mentioned no names. It read, "The assembled delegates deplore the fact that there are congregations in our synod that prefer ‘gospel hymns’ to our Lutheran church music, because most of the so-called ‘gospel hymns’ are not suited either musically or textually for use in Lutheran services or Sunday schools. The delegates see it as the duty of the Sunday schools to teach the children to sing the congregational hymns and to take part in the service. Therefore, they hold that the contents of congregational and Sunday school hymnas should be of a similar nature."