Talk:Metre (hymn)

Proposed merger
For the purposes of centralized discussion, please see Talk:Meter (music). Thank you. John Carter (talk) 20:21, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Hymn metre refers to "the poetic metre of a hymn" not "a concept similar but different from poetic metre"
These are not different concepts, although note that some articles suggest implicitly or explicitly that they are different and conversely some suggest they are the same, none of it is sourced with references.

But based on my understanding from the various articles, I think when in the context of hymns things like 8686 are written, this is just a shorthand for referring to the particular poetic metre of the hymn, not to the particular hymn metre of the hymn.

The fact that 8686 only refers to the number of syllables and not to other aspects of poetic metre, is only related to the fact that it is a short hand, which is possible in the context of hymns due to stylistic conventions in hymns allow this to be clear enough for the majority of hymns.

Also note that the examples in the article Metre (hymn) point to certain "regular" poetic metres which happen to be often used in hymns.

I think the involved articles (on both the hymn side and the poetic metre side) should be more clear on this. That would probably include the merge of Metre (hymn) into other article(s). For example into:
 * Metre (poetry).
 * Hymns and hymn tunes. or Hymn tune (which already have a merger proposal themselves since 2010)
 * Hymn. LazyStarryNights (talk) 00:06, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that Meter (hymn) is a subtopic of Meter (poetry). The other page is a bit long, so there might be some merit to retaining the hymn-specific page, but there should be better linking between the two. Ibadibam (talk) 20:39, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Universal, mainstream metre names (CM, LM, SM) etc. vs. localised unusual names
There as been a little to-and-fro concerning some metre names (in particular PM and HM) that are unknown in the UK but which have some traction in recent (late twentieth century?) USA hymnals.

The main article is currently quite short, so it ought to concentrate on mainstream details, and avoid too much diversion into relatively niche detail. (If the article were longer and deeper, matters would be different.)  Nevertheless it seems appropriate to mention the existence of such regional variations, but taking care not to overload the brief article with localised detail. So I have included the existence of this regional information, but kept the details (including a new, worked example from the series of LCMS hymnals) within footnotes.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Hymn meter
I thought 8.6.8.6 would mean line of 8 syllables; then line of six syllables, etc. the paragraph says "eight, then 4, then eight, then 4" I'm not sure on that. But could you check that out? 2600:1700:1ADD:2400:9C3C:6562:8E98:AC8F (talk) 20:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)