Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος (hymnos), which means "a song of praise". The singing of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment.

Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christian churches, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent. Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts.

Origins

Ancient hymns include the Egyptian Great Hymn to the Aten, composed by Pharaoh Akhenaten; the Vedas, a collection of hymns in the tradition of Hinduism; and the Psalms, a collection of songs from Judaism. The Western tradition of hymnody begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, the oldest of which were written in the 7th century BC, praising deities of the ancient Greek religions. Surviving from the 3rd century BC is a collection of six literary hymns (Ὕμνοι) by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus.

Hymn (software)

Hymn (stylized as hymn), which stands for Hear Your Music aNywhere is a piece of computer software, and the successor to the PlayFair program. The purpose of Hymn, according to its author (who is currently anonymous for fear of legal proceedings), is to allow people to exercise their fair use rights under United States copyright law.

The program allows the user to remove the FairPlay DRM restrictions of music bought from the iTunes Store.

Most DRM removal programs rely on re-compressing the media that is captured after it is output by iTunes. This causes some loss in quality. However, Hymn can remove DRM with no reduction in sound quality, since it captures the raw AAC stream generated by iTunes as it opens each song, and saves this data using a compression structure identical to that of the original file, preserving both the quality and the small file size. The resultant files can then be played outside of the iTunes environment, including operating systems not supported by iTunes. It works (with a plugged-in iPod) on Mac OS X, on many Unix variants, and also on Windows (with or without an iPod).

Hymn (Moby song)

"Hymn" is a song by American electronica musician Moby, released as the first single from his 1995 album Everything Is Wrong. The single, which was radically remixed from the album original, peaked at number 31 on the UK Singles Chart. A 33-minute ambient remix was released as "Hymn.Alt.Quiet.Version".

The song is also featured on Songs to Make You Feel Good Max-Strength, the second volume of Songs to Make You Feel Good.

Track listing

Charts

References

External links