When I was 19 years old,  I was perusing the library shelves of Dallas Theological Seminary, and discovered a small hymnbook.   They let me borrow it, its title was Hymns for the Little Flock, if your church follows the common lectionary, you'll find that term on the lips of Jesus in this coming Gospel Reading (Luke 12-32-40).  He speaks to the “Little Flock’ and gives his disciples, a warning to be in preparation to flee from Jerusalem.   Interestingly enough, some 37 years later, I have some serious differences regarding the end time doctrine that has been represented by Dallas Theological Seminary, but I do thank them for introducing me to historic hymnody.   Ever since I held that book, I have been a collector of old hymn books, most of them leather bound with no musical notation.  In the early American church, they had various tunes that could be sung to a number of hymns.   Finding some great old hymn books at one time was fairly easy and fairly inexpensive.  Not so today, but I still am on the lookout whenever I get to a used bookstore.   These old hymn books make wonderful devotional material in worshiping God.   Comparatively, we have wandered pretty far from the God Centered, theologically deep and meaningful congregational singing in our day.   Thankfully, we have had some revival of songs from Scripture, and powerful worship, that exults in our God; Father, Son  and Holy Spirit.  I have to credit my friends at Integrity Music and a few others for helping to bring some tremendous worship music into wider distribution and use.  

If you'd like to pursue music and hymns of the older sort, I would suggest an excellent book of Christian poetry and hymns written over a period of 1200 years.  This book utilizes sources from the Protestant, Anglican, Roman, and Orthodox traditions.   The title is "A Sacrifice of Praise” edited by James H. Trott and I would highly recommend it to all.   Richard +