North Texas musician has a hunger for hymnals
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___LEWISVILLE--You might think 1,164 different hymnals would be enough. But Rob Veal is still on a quest for more.
___Veal said his interest began when he was minister of music at First Baptist Church in Sweetwater in the mid-1980s.
___"In Sweetwater, we had a senior adult choir, and these little ladies would come up to me and say, 'I want to sing this song,' and many times I would have to go and find a hymnal with that song in it. That's probably where the interest began," he explained.
___Veal now is minister of music at Northview Baptist Church in Lewisville for the third time, the first time beginning when he was only 16 years old.
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RICK VEAL with the stacks of hymnals he has accumulated so far.
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___His passion for hymnals was ignited through a $4 hymnbook he found in a used bookstore in Fort Worth. It was a Stamps-Baxter songbook autographed by Virgil Stamps.
___"It's not like it's worth a lot. Probably I paid too much for it at $4," he said. "But I remember being so excited, and that's where the passion began."
___The collection became a project two years ago, however, when Veal sent out an e-mail to fellow music ministers.
___"I know as a minister of music how many old song- and hymnbooks lie around at church and in piano benches. I have just not found the best way to corral them all," his e-mail read. "So, here is one shot. ... I would be glad to pay the shipping for any and all single copy song- and hymnbooks you could add to my collection."
___Veal is still making that offer, and his collection is growing on a consistent basis.
___The collection is wide and varied. Some of the most interesting hymnbooks are about 3 1/2 inches tall and 2 1/2 inches wide, but almost an inch thick. They contain no notes, only lyrics. A title page of one of the tiny hymnbooks makes Veal laugh.
___"If you look real closely here, it says 'revised and enlarged,'" he chuckled. "It makes you want to see the smaller version."
___He also has Civil War-erahymnbooks, military hymnbooks, an Australian Army hymnbook, and Chinese and Spanish hymnbooks. His oldest hymnal was published in 1839, but he has some mid-1800 hymnbooks that are reprintings of hymnals from the 1700s, including John Wesley's "First Hymn Book," that had its first printing in 1737.
___He hopes someday to have experts from the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary evaluate his collection. "Not to put a value on it or anything like that, but just to tell me what I have and what's missing. I'm not an expert in hymnody, but I have learned some things," he said.
___His being a collector of hymnals could give some people the wrong opinion about him and his church, he said.
___"Some people might think with me collecting hymnbooks, that I would be at a musically conservative church, but nothing could be further from the truth," he said.
___A typical service at Northview would include a mixture of hymns and choruses and maybe some hymns with a different than traditional arrangement, he said. Also, a choreography team he directed recently did a dance interpretation of a song for the Sunday morning service.
___And if more proof is needed that he is not firmly entrenched in traditional church music, consider this: Northview's choir will perform the big-band Christmas musical "Let Heaven and Nature Swing" Dec. 9.
___Veal puts as much value on some of the notes and letters that accompany the hymnals he receives as he does on the books themselves.
___"The neatest thing is for a lady to say to me: 'My husband recently passed away, and I wondered what I was to do with his music library. Now I know they will be well cared for,'" he said.
___Veal may be contacted at BRobertVeal@aol.com or at (972) 436-3394.
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