February 15, 2015

Each week, you may find information here about the music 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:

Brethren, We Have Met to Worship – Don Hustad

The author of this hymn has not been positively identified. It has been traditionally attributed to George Atkins, but no further information has been found about him or the text. The five stanzas of this text first appeared in print in 1825. The fourth stanza (“Is there here a trembling jailer”) is often omitted. The final two lines of each stanza are based on these lines: “pray, and holy manna will be showered all around,” which may be a reference to the story of God providing manna to feed the Israelites in the wilderness. The opening stanza of this call to worship calls on Christians to pray for the Holy Spirit's presence as the service begins, while the final stanza calls for believers to live in the love of God in anticipation of the full redemption of creation when Christ returns.

In many of yesterday’s churches, certain leaders would gather while the pastor was preaching to pray for power and clarity in his words, and for responsive listeners and souls changed for eternity. Even a spiritually mature preacher can accomplish nothing of lasting worth without empowerment of the Holy Spirit: “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost” (1 Thessalonians 1:5).  As God’s Word is preached in purity and with spiritual power, we can expect His blessings. The hymn writer used manna, the miraculous provision of food for the Israelites in the wilderness, to symbolize God’s answer to the church’s prayers.

Brethren, we have met to worship
And adore the Lord our God;
Will you pray with all your power,
While we try to preach the Word?
All is vain unless the Spirit
Of the Holy One comes down;
Brethren, pray, and holy manna
Will be showered all around.

Let us love our God supremely,
Let us love each other, too;
Let us love and pray for sinners,
Till our God makes all things new.
Then He'll call us home to heaven,
At His table we'll sit down;
Christ will gird Himself, and serve us
With sweet manna all around.

Don Hustad (1918-2013) was one of the giants of Christian music of the 20th century. Hustad had a distinguished ministry and a life-long profession as a recording artist, composer, arranger, teacher, conductor, hymnal editor, and author.  He began work as staff musician of Chicago's WMBI in the early 1940s, worked with soloist George Beverly Shea on a weekly broadcast called "Club Time," and served for some 20 years as organist for a popular radio broadcast "Songs in the Night." He taught at Olivet Nazarene College in Kankakee, Illinois from 1946 to 1950, at which time Hustad was appointed director of the Sacred Music Department at Moody Bible Institute—a position he held until 1961.  During his 11-year tenure at Moody he developed the Moody Chorale into a superior choral ensemble that achieved fame nationally and internationally.   In 1961 he became Crusade organist for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and directed the Crusader Men Choir in the "Hour of Decision" broadcasts.  His publications include over 100 articles and five books.  Throughout his career, Hustad devoted considerable energy to music arranging and hymnal editing, serving as editorial consultant and musical advisor to Hope Publishing Company. Among his editorial contributions are fourteen hymnals and songbooks, as well as dozens of collections.  In 1989, Hustad was awarded Fellow of the Hymn Society for his outstanding contribution to American hymnody.  In 2008, he was honored by the American Choral Director's Association Southern Division Conference for his contributions to church music. He earned diplomas as an Associate of the American Guild of Organists (AAGO) and a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), London, UK.

Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – Sigfrid Karg-Elert

Essentially a prayer asking for illumination by the Holy Spirit as the Christian community gathers around the Lord's Word, "Blessed Jesus" is a pre-sermon hymn by Tobias Clausnitzer (1619-1684). It was first published in the Altdorffisches Gesang-Buchlein (1663) and first attributed to Clausnitzer in the Nüremberg, Germany, Gesangbuch (1676). Catherine Winkworth translated the text and published it in English in her Lyra Germanica (2nd series, 1858).

Clausnitzer graduated from the University of Leipzig and became a chaplain in the Swedish army. He preached two sermons at memorable occasions: when Queen Christina ascended the Swedish throne in 1645 and when the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War, was celebrated in 1648. Clausnitzer became a pastor in Weiden in 1648, where he remained until his death.

Blessed Jesus, at Your Word we are gathered all to hear You.
Let our hearts and souls be stirred now to seek and love and fear You.
By your gospel pure and holy, teach us, Lord, to love You solely.

All our knowledge, sense, and sight lie in deepest darkness shrouded,
till Your Spirit breaks our night with Your beams of truth unclouded.
You alone to God can win us; You must work all good within us.

Glorious Lord, yourself impart; Light of Light, from God proceeding,
open lips and ears and heart; help us by Your Spirit's leading.

Hear the cry Your church now raises; Lord, accept our prayers and praises.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert (November 21, 1877 – April 9, 1933) was a German composer of considerable fame in the early twentieth century.  The cultural climate in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was very hostile to the internationally oriented, French-influenced Karg-Elert; and although his works were admired outside Germany, especially in the U.K. (the Organ Music Society of London held a ten-day festival in his honour in 1930) and in the U.S.A., in his home country his music was almost completely neglected.  Karg-Elert regarded himself as an outsider. Notable influences in his work include composers Johann Sebastian Bach (he often used the B.A.C.H. motif in Bach's honour), Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Aleksandr Scriabin, and early Arnold Schoenberg. In general terms, his musical style can be characterised as being late-romantic with impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies. His profound knowledge of music theory allowed him to stretch the limits of traditional harmony without losing tonal coherence.

Tollite Hostias - Camille Saint-Saens

The Oratorio de Noël, Opus 12, by Camille Saint-Saëns, also known as Christmas Oratorio, is a cantata-like work scored for soloists, chorus, strings and harp. While an organist at Madeleine, Saint-Saëns wrote the oratorio in less than a fortnight, completing it ten days before its premiere on Christmas 1858. Saint-Saëns chose verses from the Latin Vulgate Bible for the text of the work.  The final chorus has the text, "Tollite hostias, et adorate Dominum in atrio sancto ejus. Laetentur coeli, et exultet terra a facie Domini, quoniam venit. Alleluia."  (Psalm 95 (96):9-13), and is appropriate at any season.

Bring offerings and worship the Lord in his holy habitation.

Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult in the presence of the Lord, for he comes.

Alleluia.

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835- 1921), also known by his nom de plume, Sannois, was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist of the Romantic era. Saint-Saëns' large body of music achieved a degree of commercial success as well as critical acclaim, so that he became one of the most popular composers in France during his lifetime. He started out as a child prodigy performer on both organ and piano, and soon began composing. Saint-Saëns earned the Legion d'honneur in 1868 for his work.  In performance, Saint-Saëns is said to have been "unequalled on the organ", and rivaled by only a few on the piano. However, Saint-Saëns's concert style was restrained, subtle, and cool; he sat unmoving at the piano. His playing was marked by extraordinarily even scales and passagework, great speed, and aristocratic refinement. 

About the Choral Music:

Ascribe to the Lord – Rosephanye Powell

Dr. Rosephanye Dunn Powell has been hailed as one of America’s premier women composers of choral music. Dr. Powell’s compositions include sacred and secular works for mixed chorus, women’s chorus, men’s chorus, and children’s voices. She serves as Professor of Voice at Auburn University.  An accomplished singer and voice professor, Dr. Powell’s research has focused on the art of the African-American spiritual, the art songs of William Grant Still (dean of African-American composers), and voice care concerns for voice professionals (specifically, music educators, choral directors, and choral singers). She travels the country and internationally presenting lectures, song demonstrations, and serving as a workshop clinician, conductor, and adjudicator for solo vocal competitions/auditions, honor choirs, choral workshops and festivals. In 2009, Dr. Powell received the “Living Legend Award” presented by California State University African Diaspora Sacred Music Festival in Los Angeles. 

Although Rosephanye Powell often selects sacred texts for her music, it is the uniqueness of her writing style that enables it to serve both in worship and concert. Ascribe to the Lord, one of her most popular compositions, brings a fresh wind to Psalm 29:1-4.

            Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones,

            Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

            Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name,

            In the splendor of His holiness, worship Him!

            The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders.

              The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is majestic!

Who Will Be A Witness – Donald Moore

“Who will be a Witness” is a Negro spiritual, sung by slaves in the antebellum south. It's a very simple spiritual that basically says, "My soul is a witness for the Lord."  The original spiritual is a story song, referencing/teaching a number of Bible stories.  As the successive stanzas and verses of the song, beginning with "My soul is a witness for the Lord" recount different people from the Biblical stories. It begins with Methuselah and says "Methuselah was a witness for my Lord" and then it goes on and tells the story Deborah the Prophet, Queen Esther, Daniel, Mother Mary, Martha, etc.  And then, after going through the Biblical story, the singer comes to the last verse and says "Now who will be a witness for my Lord?" Moving from the Biblical past to a new Biblical present--who will be a witness for my Lord? When you went to church with them, there was action on Sunday morning. And when the preacher would preach, he might say, "Now can I get a witness?"  And, "Can I get a witness?" was a rhetorical device that was to suggest a critical moment in the service. But more than that, it was a spiritual device intended to project the hearer from where they were in church out into the world, where their discipleship was to be exercised. When they said "Can I get a witness?" they weren't talking about in church, they were talking about out there.

Donald Moore (b. 1946) is Organist-Choirmaster at Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He is a prolific composer, arranger, lyricist and author with over 500 compositions in print including sacred, secular educational and pop choral works, music collections, organ and piano works and eight educational books. He is a seventeen time winner of the ASCAP Composers Standard Award.

            Who will be a witness, O my Lord?

           

            I’m goin’ to heaven, want to do it right.

            I’m goin’ to heaven, I’ll be dressed in white.

            Don’t want to stumble, don’t want to fall.

            I’m goin’ to heaven when the roll is called.

          A witness, a witness, O my Lord.

Who’ll be there to meet me?  Who’ll be there to greet me?

Who’ll be there beside me? Who’ll be there to guide me?

            Who will be a witness, O my Lord?

About the Hymns:

Ye Servants of God

Charles Wesley, the son of Samuel Wesley, was born at Epworth, Dec. 18, 1707. He was educated at Westminster School and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. In 1735, he took Orders and immediately proceeded with his brother John to Georgia, both being employed as missionaries of the S.P.G. He returned to England in 1736. For many years he engaged with his brother in preaching the Gospel. He died March 29, 1788. To Charles Wesley has been justly assigned the appellation of the "Bard of Methodism." His prominence in hymn writing may be judged from the fact that in the "Wesleyan Hymn Book," 623 of the 770 hymns were written by him; and he published more than thirty poetical works, written either by himself alone, or in conjunction with his brother. The number of his separate hymns is at least five thousand.

The year 1744 was a time of great opposition to, and persecution of, the Methodists in England. The country was at war with France. An invasion for the purpose of dethroning George II, and crowning the exiled representative of the House of Stuart was expected. The Methodists were represented as Papists in disguise, working for the Pretender. Their meetings were broken up by mobs, and many of their preachers were impressed into the army. Even the Wesleys were brought before the magistrates for examination. To strengthen and reassure his Methodist followers, Charles Wesley published Hymns for Times of Trouble and Persecution (1744) anonymously. This text, in seventeen stanzas, was the first of the "Hymns to be Sung in a Tumult," which the small but heroic Methodist groups sang in the face of violent opposition.  It is a hymn of thankful praise to Christ for his victorious reign and for providing salvation for his people. It reveals the cosmic scope of Christ's kingdom and helps us to join our voices with the great doxology to Christ, the Lamb, as foretold in Revelation 5:9-14. In the first stanza "servants" refers to all Christians, not just clergy, to those made "to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God" (Rev. 5:10).

Open My Eyes, that I May See

Clara H. Scott (1841-1897) provides us with a hymn of consecration that has been sung for over 100 years.  In 1856, Scott attended the first Music Institute held by C.M. Cady in Chicago, Ill. By 1859, she was teaching music at the Ladies' Seminary, Lyons, Iowa. She married Henry Clay Scott in 1861, and published in 1882 the Royal Anthem Book, the first volume of choir anthems published by a woman.  Horatio R. Palmer, an influential church musician in Chicago and later New York City, was a source of encouragement for Scott, and helped her publish many of her songs. Three collections were issued before her untimely death, when a runaway horse caused a buggy accident in Dubuque, Iowa.

The text of "Open My Eyes" was written in 1895 shortly before Scott's death. Each stanza reveals an increasing receptiveness to the "Spirit divine." Open eyes lead to "glimpses of truth." Open ears lead to "voices of truth." An open mouth leads to sharing the "warm truth everywhere." An open heart leads to sharing "love to thy children."

The image of open eyes is common in the Bible. In some cases, this is a sign of Christ's healing power, as when Jesus gave sight to the blind man at the pool of Siloam in John 9. Closed eyes, on the other hand, could be a metaphor for avoiding the truth as in the case of John 12:40, a passage following the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem and beginning his journey to the cross: "He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them."

The image of open ears is also significant in the biblical witness. Matthew often reprises the theme "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." Closed ears become a metaphor for a lack of understanding: "For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them" (Matthew 13:15).

While the eyes and the ears are receptive organs, the mouth has the capacity to project. The mouth may project "cursing and deceit and fraud" (Psalm 10:7), or it may be an organ that projects praise, as Psalm 51:15 exhorts us: "O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise."

The heart is the only organ included in this hymn that is not visible. It may harbor deceit. Jesus asks in Matthew 9:4, "Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" But Jesus also realized that the heart has the capacity for purity: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8).

Scott has given us not only the pathways through which we may receive and project truth and love, but also provides the method in her refrain:

         Silently now I wait for thee, ready my God, thy will to see.
         Open my eyes, ears, and heart, illumine me, Spirit divine! 

The gentle 6/8 meter of Scott's music provides a subtle sense of dancing in tune with the Spirit as we learn to see, hear and speak the truth from our hearts. 

Take My Life and Let it Be Consecrated

Frances R. Havergal (1836-1879) originally composed her text in eleven couplets as a hymn of "self-consecration to Christ" on February 4, 1874. She told the following story about writing this hymn:

I went for a little visit of five days [to Areley House, Worcestershire, in December 1873]. There were ten persons in the house, some unconverted and long prayed for, some converted but not rejoicing Christians. [God] gave me the prayer, "Lord, give me all this house." And He just did! Before I left the house, everyone had got a blessing. The last night of my visit. . . I was too happy to sleep and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my own consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves and chimed in my heart, one after another, till they finished with "Ever, only, all, for Thee."

The text is a "catalog" hymn that lists aspects of our lives and offers them in Christ's service.  "Take My Life and Let It Be" was first published in the 1874 appendix to Charles B. Snepp's Songs of Grace and Glory (1872). A twelfth couplet was added at some later point, producing the six stanzas published in the Psalter Hymnal.

Although her formal education was sporadic because of poor health, Havergal learned six foreign languages, including Greek and Hebrew, and was well read in many subjects. She began writing poetry at an early age and was also an accomplished singer and pianist. The daughter of a clergyman, she had a conversion experience at the age of fourteen and was confirmed in the Church of England in 1853. Taking seriously her own words "take my silver and my gold," she sent all her jewelry to the Church Mission Society to be sold. She also supported other charitable organizations. Her more than one hundred hymns were originally published in leaflets and later gathered into seven collections: Ministry of Song (1869), Twelve Sacred Songs for Little Singers (1870), Under the Surface (1874), Loyal Responses (1878), Life Mosaic (1879), Life Chords (1880), and Life Echoes (1883), as well as in one large volume, Poetical Works (1884).