SCUNA history » The SCUNA & UNCS Songbook » Appendix: SUMS Songbook
The SUMS songbook was around when I joined SCUNA in 1968. Looking at the copy I have, SUMS songbook '70: cantiones sacrae et profanae, I note that it's the second edition; the first edition was produced in 1967.
The 1970 SUMS songbook contains motets, anthems, carols, chorales, madrigals, movements from larger works, rounds, and one Lennon‑McCartney arrangement. The SCUNA songbook shares its emphasis on pieces that choristers liked to sing at parties and on informal occasions. Many of these pieces were originally prepared for concerts: some works go straight into the collective unconscious of a choir.
Of the 38 songs in my SUMS Songbook, I can only see half a dozen that were rarely sung. The book contains unquestionably the most sung of songbook songs, Dr Tye's Laudate nomen Domini (Laudate for short) which (with air-punching) has become the de facto anthem of the Intervarsity Choral Movement in Australia.
The physical quality of the book improved in later editions. My red‑covered 1970 copy is on different types of paper, duplicated from stencils in several different hands, and tied together with string. I also own a lime‑green‑covered 1973 reprint which, two revisions on, is a neat and suave booklet. As with the SCUNA Songbook, all the work of making it was voluntary.
Peter Seymour, conductor of SUMS during Hartley's membership, used to hold occasional songbook rehearsals. Hartley thought this was a good idea; it was another reason he perpetrated the SCUNA & UNCS Songbook.