Jan. 5, 2014

Each week, you may find further information here about the organ music and hymns in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas.  Some of this information is original; much of it is "borrowed" from other sources such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org.  It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.  

About the Organ Music:

There is a Balm in Gilead – Johannes Matthias Michel

This is a well-known traditional African-American spiritual. The “balm in Gilead” is a reference from the Old Testament, but the lyrics of this spiritual refer to the New Testament concept of salvation through Jesus Christ. The Balm of Gilead is interpreted as a spiritual medicine that is able to heal Israel (and sinners in general). In the Old Testament, the balm of Gilead is taken most directly from Jeremiah chapter 8 v. 22: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wounds of my [God's] people?" (Another allusion can also be found in Jeremiah chapter 46, v. 2 and 11: “This is the message (of the Lord) against the army of Pharaoh Neco … Go up to Gilead and get balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt, but you multiply remedies in vain; here is no healing for you” - see also Jeremiah chapter 22, v. 6.)

The first appearance of the spiritual in something close to its current form is uncertain. A version of the refrain can be found in Washington Glass's 1854 hymn "The Sinner's Cure”.  Glass attributed this hymn to himself, but like several of the hymns so attributed, it is substantially the work of another.   The 1925 7-shape Primitive Baptist songbook Harp of Ages has an unattributed song "Balm in Gilead" with a similar chorus, but verses drawn from a Charles Wesley hymn, "Father I Stretch My Hands to Thee."

The second verse  ("If you can't...") is also found in some versions of another well-known spiritual "(Walk That) Lonesome Valley." "Wandering verses," as they are often called, are quite common in the camp meeting and revival context, and were already found  in the African-American community, as shown by Richard Allen's 1801 "A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs Selected from Various Authors."

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole;

There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

Some times I feel discouraged, And think my work’s in vain,

But then the Holy Spirit Revives my soul again.

If you cannot sing like angels, If you can’t preach like Paul,

You can tell the love of Jesus, And say He died for all.

This clever blues setting is by Johannes Matthias Michel (b. 1962), a German conductor and organist who gained first musical experience with his father, the composer and church musician Josef Michel.    He is director of church music at the Christuskirche Mannheim, regional cantor of Mannheim and state cantor of Nordbaden, where he leads the Bachchor Mannheim and the Kammerchor Mannheim.  Johannes-Matthias Michel teaches organ  at the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik in Heidelberg, as well as the Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik in Mannheim. Apart from extensive concert activity, he has participated in numerous broadcast and TV and CD recordings.

Communion – Richard Purvis

This ethereal expression of the mystery of the Eucharist uses chant-like motives with airy accompaniment.  Richard Purvis (1913-1994) was an American organist and composer. After early studies in the piano and the organ he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1934, studying the organ with Alexander McCurdy and conducting with Fritz Reiner. Further studies were with Josef Levine in New York, Dr. Edward Cuthbert Bairstow in England, Marcel Dupré in France and, after his graduation from Curtis in 1940, with Charles Courboin and Charles Heinroth.

During World War II, while serving as a bandmaster with the 28^th Infantry Division, Richard Purvis was captured and held as a prisoner of war for six months. After the war an appointment to St Mark's Lutheran Church took him back to his native city, San Francisco, and in 1947 he was appointed to Grace Cathedral, where he helped to form a cathedral school for boys, thus continuing the all-male choir tradition. Purvis's long and distinguished career was marked by elegant service playing, conducting and composition. After his retirement in 1971 he continued to perform and compose.

Christ is Made the Sure Foundation – Robert Hobby

This hymn was written by John Mason Neale, who was born in London in 1818, studied at Cambridge, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1842. He was offered a parish, but chronic ill health, which was to continue throughout his life, prevented him from taking it. In 1846 he was made warden of Sackville College, a position he held until his death in 1866.. Sackville College was not an educational institution, but an almshouse, a charitable residence for the poor.

In 1854 Neale co-founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, an order of women in the Anglican Church dedicated to nursing the sick. Many Anglicans in his day, however, were very suspicious of anything suggestive of Roman Catholicism. Only nine years earlier, John H. Newman had encouraged Roman practices in the Anglican Church. This encouraged the suspicion that anyone like Neale was an agent of the Vatican, assigned to destroy the Anglican Church by subverting it from within. Once Neale was attacked and mauled at a funeral of one of the Sisters. From time to time unruly crowds threatened to stone him or to burn his house. He received no honor or recognition in England, and his doctorate was bestowed by Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut). However, his basic goodness eventually won the confidence of many who had fiercely opposed him, and the Sisterhood of St. Margaret survived and prospered.

Neale translated the Eastern liturgies into English, and wrote a mystical and devotional commentary on the Psalms. However, he is best known as a hymn writer and translator, having enriched English hymnody with many ancient and mediaeval hymns translated from Latin and Greek and many original hymn texts. 

Regarding the importance of translating and preserving the ancient texts, he wrote:

    Among the most pressing of the inconveniences consequent on the adoption of the vernacular language in the office-books of the Reformation, must be reckoned the immediate disuse of all the hymns of the Western Church. That treasury, into which the saints of every age and country had poured their contributions, delighting, each in his generation, to express their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, in language which whould be the heritage of their Holy Mother until the end of time--those noble hymns, which had solaced anghorets on their mountains, monks in their cells, priests in bearing up against the burden and heat of the day, missionaries in girding themslves for martyrdom--henceforth became as a sealed book and as a dead letter. The prayers and collects, the versicles and responses, of the earlier Church might, without any great loss of beauty, be preserved; but the hymns, whether of the sevenfold daily office, of the weekly commemoration of creation and redemption, of the yearly revolution of the Church's seasons, or of the birthdays to glory of martyrs and confessors--those hymns by which day unto day had uttered speech, and night unto night had taught knowledge--could not, by the hands then employed in ecclesiastical matters….The Church of England had, then, to wait. She had, as it has well been said, to begin over again. There might arise saints within herself, who, one by one, should enrich her with hymns in her own language; there might arise poets, who should be capable of supplying her office-books with versions of the hymns of earlier times. In the meantime the psalms were her own; and grievous as was the loss she had sustained, she might be content to suffice herself with those, and expect in patience the rest.

Text: 7th cent. Latin; trans. by John Mason Neale

Christ is made the sure foundation,  Christ the head and cornerstone;

chosen of the Lord and precious, binding all the church in one;

holy Zion's help forever, and her confidence alone.

To this temple, where we call thee, come, O Lord of Hosts, today!

With thy faithful loving-kindness hear thy people as they pray,

and thy fullest benediction shed within its walls alway.

Here vouchsafe to all thy servants what they ask of thee to gain;

what they gain from thee forever with the blessed to retain,

and hereafter in thy glory evermore with thee to reign.

Laud and honor to the Father, laud and honor to the Son,

laud and honor to the Spirit, ever three and ever one;

one in might and one in glory, while unending ages run.

Robert A. Hobby (b. 1962) currently serves as Director of Music for Trinity English Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his responsibilities include playing for many of the worship services, overseeing the graded choral program, and managing the concerts the church offers. Numerous activities during his tenure include Trinity Church establishing a choral series with seventeen composers commissioned thus far, hosting a regional convention of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, producing four recordings, and expanding the opportunities for music ministry.

 

About the Hymns:

How Firm a Foundation

In 1787, Dr. John Rippon published A Selection of Hymns from the Best Authors as a supplement to Isaac Watts’ classic Psalms and Hymns. The book was an immense success. “The remarkable feature of the book,” writes Louis Benson, “is the great number of original hymns secured by him and there first printed.” Among these original hymns was the title “How Firm a Foundation.”  Rippon attributed the authorship simply to “K——.” He says in the preface that such attributions meant either that the author was unknown or that the hymn had undergone significant revisions for publication.  Later studies have revealed that the “K——” almost certainly referred to R. Keene, who was at one time a song leader in Dr. Rippon’s church and is also known to have authored the hymn’s melody. Apart from this, we have no further information about its writing.

The anonymous tune “Foundation” first appeared in Joseph Funk's A Compilation of Genuine Church Music (1832) as a setting for this text. The tune was also published  in Southern Harmony and Sacred Harp.

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Irish born Joseph M. Scriven (1819-1896) was 25 years old, in love and to be married. The day before his wedding his fiance died in a tragic drowning accident. Heartbroken, Joseph sailed from his homeland to start a new life in Canada. While in Canada working as a teacher, Joseph received word from Ireland that his mother was ill. He could not go to be with her, so he wrote a letter of comfort and enclosed one of his poems entitled “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”.
Many years later a friend was sitting with Joseph, as he was very ill. During this visit, the friend was very impressed when he ran across his poems, including “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”. As a result of this visit, almost 30 years after his letter of comfort to his mother, Joseph's poems were published in a book called Hymns and Other Verses. Soon thereafter, noted musician Charles C. Converse (1834-1918) put music to  “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”. Well-known musician and revivalist Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908) was a great admirer of Joseph Scriven. In 1875, Sankey came upon the music and words for “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and included it as the last entry in  Sankey's Gospel Hymns Number 1.

The hymn also has many versions with different lyrics in multiple languages, such as the Japanese version "Itsukushimi Fukaki" (lit. "Deep Affection"), or a version sung during World War I with the line "When this bloody war is over" in place of the original title.  The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal notes, "In spite of the fact that this hymn, with its tune, has been criticized as being too much on the order of the sentimental gospel type, its popularity remains strong, and the hymn retains a place in modern hymnals."

He Leadeth Me

Although Joseph Gilmore (1834-1918) became a distinguished university and seminary professor, an author of several textbooks in Hebrew and English literature, and a respected Baptist minister, he is best remembered today for this one hymn, hurriedly written when he was just twenty-eight. Gilmore scribbled down these lines in 1862, while visiting with friends after preaching about the truths of the 23^rd Psalm at the Wednesday evening service of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He left this account:

At the close of the service we adjourned to Deacon Watson’s pleasant home, where we were being entertained. During our conversation the blessedness of God’s leading so grew upon me that I took out my pencil, wrote the text just as it stands today, handed it to my wife, and thought no more of it.

Without telling her husband, Mrs. Gilmore sent the verses to the “Watchman and Reflector Magazine”, where it first appeared the following year. Three years later Joseph Gilmore went to Rochester, New York, as a candidate to become the pastor of Second Baptist Church. He recalls:

Upon entering the chapel I took up a hymnal, thinking—I wonder what they sing here. To my amazement the book opened up at “He Leadeth Me,” and that was the first time I knew that my hurriedly written lines had found a place among the songs of the church.

William Bradbury, an important American contributor to early gospel hymnody, added two additional lines to the chorus: “His faithful foll’wer I would be, for by His hand He leadeth me.”