Hymn

A hymn is a song of worship addressed to a deity, and as a recorded genre the term covers the congregational hymnody of Christian churches together with its performance by choirs, soloists and popular singers. Hymns are strophic, metrically regular settings of devotional verse, designed for communal singing and usually harmonised in four parts for organ, piano or a cappella voices. The recorded hymn tradition runs from revival-meeting gospel hymns and shape-note singing to cathedral choirs and bestselling hymn albums by country and gospel stars, making the hymn one of the most widely recorded forms in Western music.