Free Public Domain Christian Music – 2 Big Sites

Thousands of beloved pieces of Christian music are free, largely because they are now in the public domain, which in the United States means they were written before 1923 (elsewhere, a safe rule of thumb is to make sure the author is dead. for a hundred years). years, or since 1908). Two websites, ChoralWiki and The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal, contain thousands of pieces in the public domain that are free to download immediately.

The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal contains more than 7,000 hymns and Christmas carols. Most of them are in English, but there are original or translated hymns in languages ​​from Afrikaans to Zulu. If you’re planning to do Christian service in another country, this is your place to pick up “Amazing Grace” sheet music and equally well-known hymns in a variety of languages.

The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal can be searched by title, by hymn tune, or by letter of the alphabet. If you want to search for “Santo, Santo, Santo”, you can do it by name, in the results for the letter H or by the name of the melody (“Nicaea”). When you get to the page, you’ll hear a MIDI of the tune, see pictures of the hymn writers, and be able to read brief information about the hymns. Some hymns have extensive biographical information about the authors, the history of the hymns, or links to alternate tunes for the hymn.

If you spend a lot of time looking at The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal, you’ll see that some tunes have been used for various hymns: “Nicaea” is indeed the tune for “Holy, Holy, Holy,” but it’s also the melody. by “Most High God, We Praise Thee,” which is a newer hymn donated into the public domain by a living composer. The opposite also is true; some hymns have had multiple melodies attached to them. The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal is a great one-stop option; you can find a hymn, learn its history and choose the tune you want to download.

The only small annoyance is this: since The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal has so many melodies and hymns or carols that are interchangeable, you don’t have the words and the music in one sheet of music. You have to copy and paste the words (at least the instant song sheets) and download the tune separately, and the tunes aren’t in the handy PDF format we all know and love. To download these tunes, you will first need to download a free piece of software known as the Noteworthy Composer Viewer, which you can link to via the Cyber ​​​​Hymnal website. It’s a small annoyance, but for 7000 hymns in the public domain, it’s not a big deal!

The second excellent site for more public domain hymns and carols, along with sacred choral works, is ChoralWiki. ChoralWiki has about 10,000 choral works; Recent searches I did turned up over 200 Christmas carols (we’re close to that time of year again) and over 200 hymns.

But ChoralWiki’s great strength is in its selection of larger choral works. You can find the complete Messiah by Handel, and various versions of the “Hallelujah” chorus. You can find Mendelssohn’s elias also. A large number of hymns, choruses, oratorio selections, and liturgical works in various languages ​​are available for immediate download.

ChoralWiki is best searched by title (if you know what you’re looking for), by composer, or by type of work. Alphabetical searching is often inefficient due to the number of ChoralWiki selections. Most of the time you’ll find your results downloadable in PDF format, with the occasional GIF included. ChoralWiki hosts most of its music on its own site; it will occasionally refer you to external collections, but this gives you the opportunity to access hundreds of pieces in addition to those found on ChoralWiki.

If you’re looking for a piece of gospel or contemporary music in the public domain, unfortunately there’s very little on ChoralWiki or The Cyber ​​Hymnal, or in the public domain, period. Most of the music we consider to be contemporary today will not enter the public domain until later this century, unless individual composers decide to place their works in the public domain. And gospel music didn’t really come into its own until the 1930s, with Thomas A. Dorsey’s “Precious Lord” often credited as the beginning of the genre. But consider how “Precious Lord” shares a remarkable melody similarity with the older hymn “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone”—think of the available hymns and choral works written before 1923 as an opportunity for you to do some arranging! Also, you can find some of the immediate precursors of gospel music; both The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal and ChoralWiki have their share of Negro Spirituals.

Free public domain Christian music is readily available on the Web: two good sites for finding thousands of public domain hymns, carols, and choral works are The Cyber ​​​​Hymnal, with about 7,000 hymns, and ChoralWiki, with about 10,000 choral pieces in total. You can find them at http://www.hymntime.com/tch and http://www.choralwiki.org Happy hunting (and fixing when necessary)!