For all of you out there who, like me, can spend hours with a hymnbook (or any songbook, really), here's:

The Cyber Hymnal

You know all those old hymns you've heard just the first line of and can't remember any more, and that one line gets in your head and drives you crazy since you CAN'T FIND THE REST OF THE SONG???? You can probably find it here. They have hundreds, if not thousand of hymns here, lyrics, scores and accompaniment. Mostly Protenstant-ish hymns, but also quite few I reognize from the newer Catholic Hymnals (I'll let you decide if that's a good thing. . .).

But why are many of these traditional hymns so freakin' hard to sing? I was looking at old songs I hadn't sung in years and not only are they written for high sopranos, but they often have huge, awkward jumps, then they throw in all sorts of random chromaticism, just for the fun of it. Did they want the congregations to sound bad, or were people just better singers back then?

Oh yes, and they have translations of certain hymns into very unexpected languages indeed!