October 11, 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:

Prelude on Two American Folk Hymns – Charles Callahan

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, partly due to the large number of original hymns first printer there.  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.  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.  Later studies have revealed that “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.

            How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,

            Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.

            What more can He say than to you He has said,

            To you, who for refuge, to Jesus hath fled.

"Simple Gifts" is a Shaker song written and composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett (1797-1882).  Brackett, a lifelong resident of Maine, first joined the Shakers at Gorham, Maine, when his father's farm helped to form the nucleus of a new Shaker settlement.   “Turning” refers to a form of Shaker dance.  Shaker worship included a form of round dance.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free                           

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,                      

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,             

 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,                                                         

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,                                     

To turn, turn will be our delight,                                                     

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.

Charles Callahan (b. 1951) is one of America’s leading organist-composers.  A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and Catholic University of America.  In recognition of his service to the church and his commissioned compositions for Papal visits to the U.S., he was awared the Papal Honor of Knighthood in the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem in 1999.  In addition to compositions and performances, Charles Callahan is a noted educator and author whose two books on American organ-building have become standard reference works.

How Firm a Foundation – Franklin Eddings

The common tune for the hymn text “How Firm a Foundation” is the tune “Foundation”.  In this postlude, Eddings has set an alternate tune, “Fidelity”, which was written by J. Ellis in 1889.

Franklin Eddings (1933-2014), an accomplished composer and music teacher, was a fixture in Utah music circles for 60 years. Franklin Eddings brought the gift of music to thousands of piano, organ, and at one time, accordion students along the Wasatch Front. At least 35 of his top students were first place winners in statewide, BYU, and national performance competitions. He produced over 250 compositions and arrangements in his career.  A favorite student of Tabernacle organist Dr. Alexander Schreiner, Franklin Eddings' works have been performed by Mormon Tabernacle organists and shared with musicians all around the world.   Eddings has been a devoted member of the LDS Church all his life, a specialist in genealogy, and early in his career, an employee of the LDS Church Genealogy Department.

About the Handbell Music:

Amazing Grace – Kevin McChesney

          Tintinnabulators

"Amazing Grace" was written by the English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725–1807).  With the message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of sins committed and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.

Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction, but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was drafted into the Royal Navy, and after leaving the service became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel so severely that he called out to God for mercy, a moment that marked his spiritual conversion. However, he continued his slave trading career until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether and began studying Christian theology.

Ordained in the Church of England in 1764, Newton became curate of Olney, Buckinghamshire, where he began to write hymns with poet William Cowper. "Amazing Grace" was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year's Day of 1773. It was first printed in 1779 in Newton and Cowper's Olney Hymns, but settled into relative obscurity in England. In the United States however, "Amazing Grace" was used extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. It has been associated with more than 20 melodies, but in 1835 it was joined to a tune named "New Britain" to which it is most frequently sung today.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Shout, shout for glory,
Shout, shout aloud for glory;
Brother, sister, mourner,
All shout glory hallelujah.

Kevin McChesney (b. 1963) graduated with highest honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BMus in Composition and Theory. A composer and arranger of handbell music, Kevin currently has nearly 1000 titles in print and is one of the very few musicians who makes handbells a full-time vocation. He has won numerous awards for his work, including winning American Guild of English Handbell Ringers Composition Contests and Jeffers Composer of the Year.  He is Music Director of the Pikes Peak Ringers and his work with that organization for over 20 years has brought them to national prominence, including a recording with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Kevin is also Music Director of the Atlanta Concert Ringers.

About the Hymns:

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

"The Hymn of Joy" (often called "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" after the first line) is a poem written by Henry van Dyke in 1907 with the intention of musically setting it to the famous "Ode to Joy" melody of the final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's final symphony, Symphony No. 9.   Van Dyke wrote this poem in 1907 while staying at the home of Williams College president Harry Augustus Garfield. He was serving as a guest preacher at Williams at the time. He told his host that the local Berkshire Mountains had been his inspiration. The lyrics were first published in 1911 in Van Dyke's Book of Poems.

Van Dyke wrote of this hymn: “These verses are simple expressions of common Christian feelings and desires in this present time—hymns of today that may be sung together by people who know the thought of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy religion, or any revolution on earth overthrow the kingdom of heaven. Therefore this is a hymn of trust and joy and hope.”  This hymn is generally considered by hymnologists to be one of the most joyous expressions of hymn lyrics in the English language.

Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) chaired the committee that wrote the first Presbyterian printed liturgy, The Book of Common Worship of 1906. In 1908–09 Dr. van Dyke was an American lecturer at the University of Paris. By appointment of President Wilson, a friend and former classmate of van Dyke, he became Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors.  Among his popular writings are the two Christmas stories, The Other Wise Man (1896) and The First Christmas Tree (1897). Various religious themes of his work are also expressed in his poetry, hymns and the essays collected in Little Rivers (1895) and Fisherman’s Luck (1899).

Spirit of the Living God

This is one of the most long-lasting and widely used choruses in Christian worship. Every aspect of the song embodies a simple sincerity.  The melody encompasses only five notes, and three of the four lines repeat the same nine words. Yet for many, the straightforward petitions of this song draw the singer into an attitude of prayer.

During January and February of 1926, the George T. Stephans Evangelistic Party conducted a citywide revival in the tabernacle in Orlando, Fla.  Daniel Iverson, a Presbyterian minister from Lumberton, N.C., spent several days in Orlando visiting with the Stephans team. The day he arrived, he was greatly impressed by a message on the Holy Spirit given by Dr. Barron, a physician from Columbia, S.C.  Later that day Iverson went to the First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, sat down at the piano, and wrote this song.  Miss Birdie Loes, the pianist for the Stephans team, wrote it out on manuscript paper.  E. Powell Lee, the team song leader, was immediately impressed and taught it to the people that evening in the tabernacle, and used it throughout the campaign.

While the inspiration for the hymn is not known for certain, it is likely that Iverson knew a hymn by Adelaide Pollard (1862-1934), “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” based on Jeremiah 18:6: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel” (KJV).  The first stanza of Pollard’s hymn uses similar language (“Mold me and make me”). The final stanza also contains a petition to the Spirit (“Fill with thy Spirit”).  Pollard’s hymn was written about 25 years before Iverson’s 1926 composition.

The authorship of “Spirit of the Living God” was lost for a time because the song could so easily be taught without music or even printed words. It first appeared in Revival Songs (1929) in a slightly revised version.  Southern Baptist gospel song composer B.B. McKinney made slight alterations and published it again in his Songs of Victory (1937).   E. Powell Lee, the song leader for the Stephans evangelistic team, brought Iverson’s name to light and his name was restored to the song in later printings of the Baptist Hymnal in the 1960s.

Take My Life, and Let It Be

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).