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.
2016 is our church's Year of Jubilee! Join us in our 3-week celebration as we burn our mortgage. Our church is now debt free. Week One: Time to ReNew
Les
Cloches - Nicolas Lebègue
Nicolas Lebègue (c.1631-1702) was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was
born in Laon and settled in Paris in the 1650s,
quickly establishing himself as one of the best organists of the country. He
lived and worked in Paris until his death, but frequently made trips to other
cities to consult on organ building and maintenance matters. The first
reference to Lebègue is found in a 1661 document, in which the composer is
already described as "the famous Parisian organist". He made important contributions to the
development of the French organ
school by devising pieces with independent pedal parts and developing the Tierce
en taille genre. His music also includes the earliest
published unmeasured preludes, as well as some of the earliest known noëls. Lebègue started publishing his music in 1676,
and was selected to become one of the organistes du Roi ("organist
to the King"),
Organ clocks or flute clocks are precision
mechanical clocks combined with a small organ. The mechanical clock movement is
linked to the musical mechanism and the tunes are generated by a barrel,
usually of wood. The result is melodious and tunes were composed especially for
organ clocks by such famous composers as Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart. The organ clocks were built for affluent,
culturally sophisticated people, with an appreciation of art and music. They
possibly originated in the late seventeenth century, but their heyday was in
the “Age of Reason” in the eighteenth century. The finest specimens were built
primarily in Berlin around 1770. But many were made in Vienna a decade later,
and in England, the Netherlands and France.
The greatest advances in organ clock making were made by the Viennese.
They made the clockwork in such a high standard that the motion of the wheels
and pinions and the rotation of the fly did not drown the melodious sounds of
the organ itself. The tonal quality of the pipes was perfected and remains
unsurpassed to this day. Finally they doubled the musical playing time to 5 to
8 minutes, without the necessity of rewinding the clockwork to drive the
mechanism.
Many composers of the Baroque and Classical
periods in England, France, and Germany wrote music for mechanical clocks,
including Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Toccata, from Heures
Intimes - Flor Peeters
Flor Peeters (1903-1986) was an
important Belgian composer, organist and teacher.
When sixteen years old, he began his studies at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen (since moved to Leuven), which was named after the nineteenth-century
organist Jacques-Nicolas
Lemmens. In 1923 he became an organ teacher at the Institute; simultaneously he acquired the
position of chief organist at the St.
Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, which he held for most of the rest of his
life; As an organist and pedagogue,
Peeters enjoyed great renown, giving concerts and liturgical masterclasses all over the world.
He also made recordings of sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
organ music; some of these have been reissued in recent years on compact disc. Most of his own pieces
(he wrote well over 100) were for organ, for choir, or for both. Peeters was
created a baron by King Baudouin
of Belgium in 1971.
Heures
Intimes (Intimate Hours) is a
collection of 25 pieces for organ or harmonium. The
harmonium is a type of pump organ that generates sound with air passing through
sets of reeds from a bellows that is supplied by pumping a pair of
pedals. More portable than pipe organs, reed organs were widely used in smaller churches and in private homes in the 19th century,
but their volume and tonal range are limited, and they
generally had one or sometimes two manuals, with pedal-boards being
rare. Harmoniums reached the height of their popularity in the West in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. They were especially popular in small churches and chapels where a pipe organ would
be too large or too expensive. Harmoniums generally weigh less than similar
sized pianos and are not as easily damaged in
transport, thus they were also popular throughout the colonies of the European
powers in this period not only because it was easier to ship the instrument out
to where it was needed, but it was also easier to transport overland in areas
where good-quality roads and railways may have been non-existent. An added attraction
of the harmonium in tropical regions was that the instrument held its tune
regardless of heat and humidity, unlike the piano. At the peak of the
instruments' Western popularity around 1900, a wide variety of styles of
harmoniums were being produced. These ranged from simple models with plain
cases and only four or five stops (if any at all), up to large
instruments with ornate cases, up to a dozen stops and other mechanisms such as
couplers. Expensive harmoniums were often built to resemble pipe organs, with
ranks of fake pipes attached to the top of the instrument.
About the Handbell Music:
Jubilation – Fred Gramann
Jubilation
Ringers
About the Choral Music:
Come
Build a Church – Ken Medema
Ken Medema (b. 1943) is a composer-singer-songwriter who has been performing
in the United States, Canada, and Europe for more than thirty
years. Some of his best known songs began as live improvisations. Medema was born almost blind; his eyes let
him tell light from shadow and see outlines of major objects. He began playing
the piano when he was five years
old, and three years later began taking lessons in classical music through braille music, playing by
ear and improvising in different styles. In
1969, he majored in music therapy at Michigan
State University in Lansing, studying both piano
and voice. Afterwards he worked as a music therapist in Fort
Wayne, Indiana, and later at Essex County Hospital in New Jersey. In 1973, he began performing and recording
his own songs while at Essex County Hospital. "I had a bunch of teenagers
who were really hurting," he says, "and I started writing songs about
their lives. Then I thought, 'Why don't you start writing songs about your
Christian life?' So I started doing that, and people really responded."
Come build a church with soul and spirit, come build a
church of flesh and bone.
We need no tower rising skyward; no house of wood, or
glass, or stone.
Come build a church with human frailty. Come build a church of flesh and blood.
Jesus shall be its sure foundation; it shall be built by
the hand of God.
Guide our feet in peaceful pathways. Teach us peace of heart and mind;
Peace with God and all Cod’s children; till we leave our
wars behind.
Surely joy will come and find us like a breeze that cools
the night;
Like the rain upon the desert; like a candle’s gentle
light.
About the Hymns:
For the
Beauty of the Earth
Folliott Piermont (1835-1917) was born in
Bath, England and was a lay member of the Anglican Church. Following his
graduation from Queen's College, Cambridge, he taught the classics for a time
at Somerset College, later becoming a freelance writer. During his 82 years of
life, Pierpoint published seven volumes of poems and hymn texts, many of them
showing his love for nature. He is most remembered for this beautiful hymn, For
the Beauty of the Earth.
Piermont was about 29 years old when he wrote
the text for this joyful hymn. It was a lovely day in late spring.
While enjoying the surrounding area of his native city of Bath, in
England, he was inspired by the beautiful countryside with its winding cool and
peaceful river, Avon, in the distance. The tuneful songbirds, the wind
whispering over a vibrantly colored hillside, all seemed to be praising the
Creator with their unrestrained gladness and peace. Overwhelmed with
emotion, he expressed his feelings of gratitude in the penning of this sacred
song. The text was inspired by Hebrews
13:15: "By him therefore let us
offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit
of our lips giving thanks to his name." It first appeared in 1864 in a book of
Eucharistic hymns and poems entitled Lyra
Eucharistica, Hymns and Verses on The Holy Communion, Ancient and Modern, with
other Poems with the title "The Sacrifice of Praise".
‘Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus
From her childhood, the
call to missionary service was the guiding motivation for Louisa M. R. Stead
(c. 1850-1917). Born in Dover, England, and converted at the age of nine, Stead
came to the United States in 1871, living in Cincinnati. She attended a camp
meeting in Urbana, Ohio, where she dedicated her life to missionary service.
Ill health prevented her from serving initially. She married in 1875, and the
couple had a daughter, Lily. Hymnologist Kenneth Osbeck describes a major
turning point in the family’s life:
“When the child was four
years of age, the family decided one day to enjoy the sunny beach at Long
Island Sound, New York. While eating their picnic lunch, they suddenly heard
cries of help and spotted a drowning boy in the sea. Mr. Stead charged into the
water. As often happens, however, the struggling boy pulled his rescuer under
water with him, and both drowned before the terrified eyes of wife and
daughter. Out of her ‘why?’ struggle with God during the ensuing days glowed
these meaningful words from the soul of Louisa Stead.”
The hymn, “’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus” was
inspired by this personal tragedy.
Soon after, Lousia and Lily left for the Cape
Colony, South Africa, where Louisa worked as a missionary for fifteen years.
She married Robert Wodehouse, a native of South Africa. Because of her health,
the family found it necessary to return to the United States in 1895. Wodehouse
pastored a Methodist congregation during these years until, in 1900, they
returned to the mission field, this time to the Methodist mission station at
Umtali, Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe). Kenneth Osbeck records a
message sent back to the United States shortly after her arrival in Southern
Rhodesia:
“In connection with the
whole mission there are glorious possibilities, but one cannot, in the face of
the peculiar difficulties, help but say, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’
But with simple confidence and trust we may and do say, ‘Our sufficiency is of
God.’”
While the exact date of the composition is not known,
Lousia Stead’s hymn was first published in Songs of Triumph (1882). The hymn might be described as a mantra on
the name of Jesus. Indeed, “Jesus” is sung twenty-five times if one sings all
four stanzas and the refrain.
This is a Day of New
Beginnings
Brian Arthur Wren (b.
1936) is Emeritus Professor of
Worship, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He is a writer,
preacher, worship and workshop leader, and internationally published hymn-poet,
with entries in most recent denominational hymnals in North America, Britain
and Australia. Some of his hymn-poems have been translated into Finnish,
French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish and Korean. Brian holds undergraduate and
doctoral degrees from Oxford University. He is a Minister of the United
Reformed Church (UK). Wren provides an account of the
composition of this text in notes provided in one of the collection of his
texts, Faith Looking Forward (1983). The
hymn was “written for a New Year’s Day service [1978] at Holy Family Church,
Blackbird Leys, Oxford. In itself, the new year is an arbitrary convention, its
newness a mere mark on the calendar. The recurrent awakening of life in nature
is not a strong enough foundation for hope of real change. Yet by faith in the really new events of the Christian story, a day, or a month, or an hour
can become charged with promise, and be a springboard to a changed life.”
As one of the leading hymnwriters of our time,
Dr. Wren has contributed more hymns to the UM Hymnal (1989) than any other
hymnwriter currently living. This text is supported by a melody composed by Dr.
Young (b. 1926), one of the leading tune writers of this day.
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