Providence University College in Otterburne is now home to one of the largest collections of hymnals in the country. The collection, donated by Don Thiessen, who ran the college’s music department in the mid-1980s, includes approximately 2,300 hymnals of varying age and rarity.
“The earliest books go back to the early 1800s,” says Dr. David Sawatzky, Associate Professor of Music at Providence. “A lot of them are turn-of-the-century hymnals and these are all from various denominations. Some of them are from the U.S. We have Presbyterian hymnals, a number of Methodist books, Catholic, Mennonite, Baptist… oh goodness, we have all kinds.”
Sawatzky says that Thiessen approached the school in the fall of 2017 and began the conversation about gifting the books, which he had been collecting since his tenure at Providence.
“In his office one day, probably around 1980, he noticed that he had about 20 hymnals on his shelf that he used for a variety of things,” Sawatzky says. “And slowly it became 50, and he realized he had a collection. So he just kept going. For the next 40 years, he would visit antique booksellers, yard sales, used bookstores, and if he found a hymnal that he knew he didn’t have, he would purchase it.”
On one occasion, Thiessen attended a big used book sale in Pennsylvania and ended up returning home with 60 hymnals at once. When pressed by his wife about he intended to do with them, he just said, “Well, I’m going to collect them!”
“So this built up over time, and then in the last number of years he had shelves [installed] in his garage—the books took up an entire wall—and he felt it was time to do something with them. It was time to donate them somewhere,” says Sawatzky. “He looked around, contacted several academic libraries in the country, and there was little interest expressed. Then he came to Prov and asked us. I looked at [the collection] and I said, ‘Well, sure!’ Providence considers itself part of the evangelical tradition, it’s a Christian school, and from my point of view nothing could enhance our music program better than something like this. I have students that will have never opened a hymnal before in their life. Now they have this collection at hand. It’s a great window into the past.”
According to the Sawatzky, if you want to know the theology of the church, you should look at what it sings—because theology and music are so intertwined. Indeed, he points out that the earliest hymnals weren’t owned by churches. They were owned by families and individuals. When a person came to church, they carried their Bible in one hand and their hymnal in the other.
“I think [these hymnals] are a great value,” he says. “I mean, it’s no secret that hymnals are kind of disappearing from our churches. I find that to be really unfortunate. The collection is a really great window into Protestant Christianity between the 1800s and 1900s and 2000s and how they thought of their churches. What was important to them? What kind of things did they think? There’s one hymnal, The Sacred Harp, from the Appalachians from years ago, and when you look at that, the first 50 pages of it are like a theory textbook on how to read music. The churches felt that it was important for their congregations to be able to read music. They thought music literacy and hymn-singing was an important endeavour for the church. And I feel that right now we’re sort of losing that.”
Members of the public who would like to view the collection are welcome to drop by the college anytime during office hours.
“We have the collection in our choir library,” says Sawatzky. “If they come during office hours, sometime during the day to Providence, we could show them up there and they could browse at their will. We would gladly show them around and let them look. And if they want to take something out, then we could arrange that.”
He notes that the books aren’t yet catalogued, which is a process that will definitely take some time. After all, the collection came with an extensive bibliography that runs 128 pages long.
