What happened to the missing hymns?

[neophyte]

There are a number of places in our hymnal where the hymn numbers skip digits, for example, 310 on one page is followed by 320 on the next. What gives? Does each hymn have a standard enumeration? If so, what’s the history?

 

[CatholicZ09]

Do you have an OCP [Oregon Catholic Press] hymnal?

Because mine goes from like #218 and skips to #301.

 

[PacoG]

The dingo ate them.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

Do you have an OCP [Oregon Catholic Press] hymnal?

Because mine goes from like #218 and skips to #301.

They seem to allocate the numbers up to 299 to Seasonal Music, even if not all are used, and general Music for Worship numbers 300 up. This is all together in the year long Breaking of the Bread, which we are using this year.

Til now we had been using the seasonal missalettes, which involve three or four separate books for the seasons and a separate music issue. In those the seasonal music was with the liturgies and the general music was in a separate music issue.

I think the break in numbering probably facilitates using the same pages for both sets. It saves a lot of type setting.

 

[Cavaille-Coll]

The only way to solve the case of missing hymnal numbers is to buy new hymnals that have all the numbers. I recommend either The St. Michael Hymnal or the Adoremus Hymnal. Not only do they have all the numbers, but they have all the words too (like “He,” “His,” “mankind,” “Father,” etc.).

 

[rowlands]

Missing? They probably haven’t been added yet. It often happens in collections of numbered items that blocks of consecutive numbers are allocated to different sections or groups then, when new material is added to any particular section, it is not necessary to renumber everything in the updated edition. Simples!