Traditional Christian Music

Lyrics & Sheet Music

A Collection of Hymns, Gospel, Sacred & Inspirational, and Praise & Worship Songs taken from the book
"Sacred Songs & Solos, New Hymns & Solos and The Christian Choir"
compiled by Ira D Sankey. Plus Other Christian Items.

This is an major on-going project, which will eventually make the whole collection of more than 1100 pieces available on-line. It will be a while before you see everything, as it involves scanning and OCRing an c1880 English copy of Sankey's book. The printing quality of the book I am using is not the best, so it's slow going, and like most OCR don't be surprised to see a few errors.
Unfortunately, due to technical problems I have had to abandon this project for a time, but I have instead provided another hymn collection see below.
Rod March 2007

I am not attempting to OCR the music scores themselves, they will be presented as BW graphics - the graphics used are 200dpi non-dithered. They don't look that great on-screen but you should find they look better as print outs. This collection contains many fine old hymns that are still familiar to us today as they were to Christians in America, England & the English colonies a century ago. Bluegrass enthusiasts may be interested to see the source for some of their favourites and see them in their original form. Below, I have included some samples so you can see what will be coming, plus a list of titles & first lines of the pieces. Note that where titles begin with "The" or "A" will mostly have this left out for more sensible indexing.

For Other Christain Music on this site see:

Christmas Music large collection of favourites with lyrice, sheet music & midis
The Northern Harp Part 1 & Part 2 - a large collection of Christian Inspirational and Sacred songs.
Church Hymns & Tunes 600+ traditional pieces with sheet music.
The Book Of Praise From The Best English Hymn Writers 450 Christian Songs and Hymns.
Faber's Hymns - 88 Most Popular & Representative Christian Hymns From Frederick William Faber
Christmas Carols, Ancient And Modern - 15th to 19th century with extensive historical information
Temperance Hymn Book And Minstrels A Collection Of 105 Christian Hymns, Songs & Odes 1841
There are also many other Christian pieces on this site which are included with other collections, for example the Childrens Songs section contains quite a few..

About Ira D Sankey

Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908) was an American Gospel singer and composer associated with evangelist Dwight L. Moody. Ira David Sankey, son of David Sankey, known as the father of Lawrence County, and Mary Leeper Sankey, was born August 28, 1840, in Edinburgh, Pennsylvania. At age 16 he was converted at a revival meeting at the King's Chapel Church, about three miles from his home. As a young man, Sankey served in the Civil War as a soldier for the Union. After the war, he joined the IRS, and also worked with the YMCA. He became well known as a Gospel singer, and eventually came to the attention of evangelist Dwight L. Moody. The two men met at a YMCA convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, in June, 1870. Some months later, Sankey attended his first evangelistic meeting with Moody, and resigned from government service shortly thereafter. In October 1871, Sankey and Moody were in the middle of a revival meeting when the Great Chicago Fire broke out. The two men barely escaped the conflagration with their lives. Sankey ended up watching the city burn from a rowboat far out on Lake Michigan. Sankey composed about 1,200 songs in his lifetime. From 1895 to 1908, he was president of the Biglow and Main publishing company. He was blind from glaucoma the last five years of his life, and no doubt found a kindred spirit in his friend and music making partner, blind hymnist Fanny Crosby. Sankey married Fanny V. Edwards, one of his choir members, in September, 1863. They had three sons. Ira D. Sankey died Aug.13, 1908 in Brooklyn. In 1979-80, the Gospel Music Association recognized Sankey's prodigious contributions to gospel music by listing him in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_D._Sankey"