Shepherd Songs
Editor Russell Schulz-Widmar
Released June 2002
Catalog no. 125-350--Full edition (40 pages, full acc. and descants) $9.50
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125-355--Congregational edition (24 pages) $6.00
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125-359--Preview pack-1 cong., 1 full) $12.50 Save $3
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The full edition includes all accompaniments, and a number of descants and alternative harmonizations (great for choirs!). The congregational edition includes the melody for unison hymns or full four-part hymns. Both also include indexes and biographies of the composers and authors.
Authors and Composers | Description | Introduction by Schulz-Widmar
ISBN 0-9677408-5-1--Full edition
0-9677408-6-X--Congregational edition
Other products--Full edition
125-351--Full version-spiral $15.00  
125-352--Full version--10 pack $80  
125-353--Full version--50 pack $350  
125-354--Full version--100 pack $650  

--Congregation editions
125-356--Congregational edition--10 pack $50  
125-357--Congregational version--50 pack $225  
125-358--Congregational version--100 pack $400  

Description
This is a wonderful new collection of hymns and songs about Christ the Good Shepherd. Useful for all times of the year, it contains new hymns by some of the finest contemporary hymn writers, and now you have a resource to help your congregation sing about Christ as Shepherd throughout the year.

Hymns are included for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter; for children, and several for more general use all year long.

It is a great resource for choirs (it gives them 13 simpler anthems throughout the year), but your congregation will also enjoy singing more about Christ as Shepherd. The congregational edition is even small enough to insert inside your regular pew hymnal.

They're an inspiration for sermons and whole services can be planned around the hymns in this collection.

Authors and Composers in Shepherd Songs

Introduction by Russell Schulz-Widmar
This collection was commissioned by members and friends of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin, Texas. Hymn writers from around the globe were invited to participate in this project, which was part of a yearlong Focus on Hymns. Authors were each assigned a general topic and beyond that they had free rein, the only proviso being that they include the words "Good Shepherd" in their writing. Giving testimony to the current liveliness in the art of hymn-writing, they produced hymn-texts of rich variety. Their words were then handed on to composers who were encouraged to think imaginatively. They in turn produced remarkably creative and useful musical settings.

The hymns in this collection were written within a few months of the terrorism that struck the U.S. in September of 2001, and certainly the writers were in some sense responding to that. But this is not at all a gloomy collection. Faithful, hopeful, inspiring, lovely, lavish, challenging, simple, gentle, and joyful are some words that come to mind immediately when describing these hymns.

I am grateful that the composers allowed us to name their tunes. The people who commissioned these hymns hope they will go far and wide. But Austinites will have a special ownership of them because they will recognize in these titles some of their favorite places and things.

Shepherd Songs comes in two editions. This edition includes full accompaniments, descants, and other resources. The other is for use by congregations: a booklet small enough to be enclosed within another hymnal if that is desired.

I am deeply grateful to the people of Good Shepherd Church who grasped an idea and made it happen. Thanks to Patricia Blaze Clark who did most of the work on the indices. And thanks to David Schaap of Selah Publishing Co., for being supportive throughout the evolution of Shepherd Songs.

With affection Shepherd Songs is offered to people everywhere who count themselves part of the flock.
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