Musica Cristiana Jesus Adrian Romero. Thousands of beloved pieces of Christian music are free, largely because they are now in the general public domain, which in the United States means they were written before 1923 (everywhere else, a safe rule would be to be sure the writer has been dead for just one 100 years, or since 1908). Two the web sites, ChoralWiki and The Cyber Hymnal, include tens of thousands of public domain pieces which can be free for immediate download.

The Cyber Hymnal includes significantly more than 7,000 hymns and carols. Most of them are in English, but there are hymns either original to or translated into languages from Afrikaans to Zulu. If you should be about to do Christian service in another state, this really is your area to pick up songsheets for "Amazing Grace" and likewise well-known hymns in a variety of languages.

The Cyber Hymnal can be searched by * * *le, by hymn melody, or by letter of the alphabet. If you wanted to search for "Holy, Holy, Holy," you may do so by its name, in the results for the letter H, or by the name of the melody ("Nicaea"). When you reach the page, you will hear a MIDI of the melody playing, you will see pictures of the hymn's authors, and you can read brief information about the hymns. Some hymns have quite a bit of biographical information on the writers, history of the hymns, or links to alternative tunes for the hymn.

If you spend a lot of time seeking The Cyber Hymnal, you will see that some tunes have now been used for multiple hymns -- "Nicaea" is indeed the tune for "Holy, Holy, Holy," but it really is also the tune for "God Most High, We Praise You," which is a newer hymn contributed into the public domain with a living composer. The opposite is also true; some hymns have had multiple tunes attached to them. The Cyber Hymnal makes for exceptional one - stop shopping; you can learn its history, find a hymn, and pick the tune you want to down load.

Because The Cyber Hymnal has so many tunes and hymns or carols which are interchangeable : the only tiny h* * *le is this, it generally does not have the words and music in one single little bit of sheet music. You have to copy and paste the words (prompt songsheets, at least) and download the tune singly -- and the tunes are perhaps not in the useful PDF form we all know and love. To download these tunes you will first have to download a piece of free computer software referred to as the Noteworthy Composer Viewer, which you can connect to through the Cyber Hymnal web site. It is a miniature h* * *le, but for 7,000 public domain hymns, that is not any 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 hunts I have done showed more than 200 Xmas carols (it is close to that time of the year again) and more than 200 hymns.

Musica Cristiana Jesus Adrian Romero is great! But the great strength of ChoralWiki is in its selection of larger choral works. You can find the entire Messiah by Handel, and several variants of the "Hallelujah" chorus. You can find Mendelssohn's Elijah as well. A great host of anthems, choruses, selections from oratorios and liturgical works in several languages are available for immediate download.

ChoralWiki is most beneficial searched by * * *le (if you know very well what you are looking for), by composer, or by type of work. Alphabetical search is usually ineffective because of the amount of ChoralWiki's selections. Most often you may find your results downloadable in PDF format, with the casual GIF thrown in. ChoralWiki hosts nearly all of its music on its own site; sometimes it will send you to outside collections, but this provides you a chance to get a huge selection of pieces in addition to the people at ChoralWiki itself.

If you should be looking for a bit of gospel or contemporary music in the public domain, there unfortunately is very little in ChoralWiki or The Cyber Hymnal -- or in the public domain, interval. Most music we consider modern now will not enter the public domain until quite late in this century, unless individual composers decide to put their works to the public domain. And gospel music did not actually come into its own until the 1930s, with Thomas A. Dorsey's "Precious Lord" often credited as being the start of the music genre. But consider how "Precious Lord" s* * *es a remarkable tune likeness with the older hymn "Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone," think of the available hymns and choral works written before 1923 as the opportunity for you yourself to do some arranging! Also, you will find a number of the immediate forerunners to gospel music; the Cyber Hymnal and ChoralWiki have their s* * *e of Negro Spirituals.

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