I think that hymns are all that keep me going to church these days (though my wife hates them: she thinks that all hymn-tunes are banal and most -words ditto). I hate the modern drivel that's usually known as "choruses", though. And I'm not keen on so-called "Iona" hymns which are often set to corrupted folk tunes: the setters seem to have been unable to resist the temptation to change the rhythm to dotted-crotchet, which has trivialised them. RVW, editor of The English Hymnal, could have taught them a thing or two!

I heard the voice of Jesus, as above, is loveliest (IMHO) when sung to Vaughan Williams' Thomas Tallis theme (though I don't think that tune was included in The English Hymnal).

My wife, frequently insomniac, often turns the radio on in the middle of the night and I, deep in the mists of sleep, am sometimes aware of hearing things she has been listening to. Several years ago, there used to be broadcast on BBC-R4 very early on Sunday mornings a programme of hymns (my wife must have been asleep by then: she wouldn't have listened to a hymn-programme by choice). The presenter of that programme must have really liked Maddy Prior singing As pants the hart, for he played it several times over a period of perhaps a year. It's from a CD of MP (and a band whose name escapes me - not Steeleye Span though) singing Charles Wesley hymns (and other hymns from that era). The whole CD is well worth a listen to; APTH is particularly fine. Isn't that tune a folk melody?

A few more of my favourites are
It is a thing most wonderful
O, love that will not let me go
When I survey the wondrous cross (achingly sweet, theologically profound)
Tell me the old, old story.