October 30, 2016

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:

My Lord, What a Morning – Johannes Michel

The 1790 U.S. census reported over 700,000 African-American slaves. The majority embraced Christianity with its promise of a life beyond suffering and hate. As a result, they created and performed songs, particularly the spiritual, combining European chromatic-scale melody lines with African rhythms and harmonies.  Thus, the spiritual is among the most important, vibrant, and enduring elements of American culture andis our first wholly American musical form. 

Slaves held informal, possibly secret, prayer meetings. Recalled former slave Wash Wilson: “Sometimes us sing and pray all night.” The spirituals sung in these meetings drew from hymns, the Bible, sermons, and African styles of singing. Most slaves could not read, so the spirituals helped to teach them the Bible. 

The spiritual “My Lord, What a Morning!”  proclaims that Jesus will return, just as he left, in his physical bodily form, on a cloud, and “wake the nations underground”—the dead—in supreme victory over the bitter cruelty of the grave (Acts 1:1-11) and was essentially derived from the hymn “Behold the Awful Trumpet Sounds.”  The original hymn, first published in Richard Allen’s 1801 hymnal, show where the slave composer received his inspiration:

Behold the awful trumpet sounds,
The sleeping dead to raise,
And calls the nations underground:
O how the saints will praise! …
The falling stars their orbits leave,
The sun in darkness hide:
The elements asunder cleave,
The moon turn’d into blood! …

Although the original hymn lies forgotten, the spiritual has maintained its popularity, with its uplifting view of a new world to come.

My Lord, what a morning! My Lord, what a morning!
O my Lord, what a morning! When the stars begin to fall.

You will hear the trumpet sound, To wake the nations underground,
Looking to my God’s right hand, When the stars begin to fall.

You will hear the sinner cry, To wake the nations underground,
Looking to my God’s right hand, When the stars begin to fall.

You will hear the Christian shout, To wake the nations underground,
Looking to my God’s right hand, When the stars begin to fall.

Give Me Jesus – Richard Billingham

Give Me Jesus originated as an African-American spiritual written during the time of slavery in the United States.  The lyrics of Give Me Jesus are simple, but poignant. Whether we are in tragedy or triumph, whether we are weathering storms or counting treasures, our hearts’ desire should simply be Jesus.  That Give Me Jesus was written by people stripped of all dignity and every human possession says so much about what Jesus is, what He can give and His very nature!

In the morning, when I rise Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world, Just give me Jesus.

When I am alone, Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world, Just give me Jesus.

I heard my mother say Give me Jesus
You can have all this world Just give me Jesus

Dark midnight was my cry Give me Jesus
You can have all this world Just give me Jesus

And when I come to die, Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world, Just give me Jesus.

Richard Billingham (b. 1934) is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois and organist at First Methodist Church of Chicago and the Chicago Temple.

In Thee is Gladness – Dale Wood

The tune, “In dir ist Freude”, is one of many balletti (dance-like songs) written by Giovanni G. Gastoldi (1554-1609), a priest and composer from Mantua, Italy.  It was originally published in his Balleti a cinque voce (1591), where it was set to "Alieta vi.a, Amor ciinuita", which like so many balletti had a "fa-la-la" refrain.  Cantor Johann Lindemann (1549-1631) wrote this text to fit the tune.  It was published in Lindemann's Amarum Filii Dei Decades Duae (1598).  Catherine Winkworth prepared the English translation for the second series of her Lyra Germanica (1858).  The text confesses with joy the Christian's security of walking intimately with God through the ups and downs of daily life. 

In Thee is gladness admid all sadness,  Jesus, Sunshine of my heart!                      

By Thee are given the gifts of heaven, Thou the true Redeemer art!                     

Our souls Thou wakest, our bonds Thou breakest.                                        

Who trusts Thee surely hath built securely and stands forever: Allelujah!
Our hearts are longing to see thy dawning. Living or dying, in thee abiding,
Naught can us sever: Allelujah!

Jesus is ours! We fear no powers, not of earth or sin or death.
He sees and blesses in worst distresses; he can change them with a breath.
Wherefore the story - tell of His glory with hearts and voices;
all heaven rejoices in him forever: Allelujah!
We shout for gladness, triumph o'er sadness, love him and praise him,
and still shall raise him glad hymns forever: Allelujah!

Dale Wood (1934-2003) was a prominent composer, organist, choral director, and clinician.  He was honored many times by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) for his “very important contribution towards the creation and development of contemporary American church music”.  He wrote many collections of organ works, most of which are based on both old and new hymn tunes.  Over eight million copies of his publications have been purchased in over 50 countries.

About the Choral Music:

He Never Failed Me Yet – Robert Ray

Robert Ray is a composer and conductor, and is currently professor of music and coordinator of keyboard studies at the University of Missouri St. Louis. He is also director of the University Community Chorus and Director of the Saint Louis Symphony IN UNISON® Chorus.  Ray received his Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from Northwestern University. He has appeared as piano soloist with the Kirkwood Symphony Orchestra, Northwestern University Orchestra, Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, and Seoul (Korea) Philharmonic Orchestra. Ray has served as the Repertoire and Standards Chair for Ethnic Music and Multi-Cultural Prospectives for the American Choral Directors Association (Southwestern Division) and has appeared as a lecturer and clinician at numerous universities and colleges, as well as MENC, ACDA, and IAJA conventions.

“He Never Failed Me Yet” was written in 1982 for the Echos of Grace choir at Second Baptist Church in Evanston, Illinois, the oldest black church in Evanston, founded in 1882.

            I will sing of God’s mercy, every day.

Every hour, He gives me power.

            I will sing and give thanks to Thee

for all the dangers, toils, and snares that He has brought me out.

            He is my God, and I’ll serve Him, no matter what the test.

            Trust and never doubt, Jesus will surely bring you out.

            He never failed me yet.

            I know God is able to deliver in time of storm.

            I know that He’ll keep you safe from all earthly harm.

            One day when my weary soul is at rest,

            I’m going home to be forever bless’d.

            Didn’t my God deliver Moses from King Pharoah?

            And didn’t He cool the fiery furnace for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?

            When I think what my God can do,

            He delivered Daniel; I know He will deliver you.

About the Hymns:

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

"Praise to the Lord, the Almighty" is a hymn based on Joachim Neander's German chorale Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren, published in 1680. John Julian, in his A Dictionary of Hymnology, calls the German original "a magnificent hymn of praise to God, perhaps the finest creation of its author, and of the first rank in its class."  Neander wrote this particular hymn while dying and it says much about his faith. While contemplating the words to go along with the melody, he reflected on Psalm 103 with its claim that everything within us should praise the Father’s holy name.  It was the favorite hymn of King Frederick William III of Prussia, who first heard it in 1800.  In the Neander original, first the singer calls himself (my beloved soul) to praise God, then calls for a larger group to join the praise with musical instruments as well as song.  John Julian‍‍ '​‍s A Dictionary of Hymnology lists more than ten English translations of "Lobe den Herren" printed in various nineteenth century hymnals.

The melody used by Neander, first published in 1665, is probably based on a folk tune. The common name given to this melody is "Lobe den Herren". Several variants were published with various secular texts between 1665 to 1680, when Joachim Neander published his German hymn, Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren, using its meter. The text paraphrases Psalm 103 and Psalm 150.  

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” was published in 1887 with music by Anthony J. Showalter and lyrics by Showalter and Elisha Hoffman.  Elisha Hoffman (1839-1929) after graduating from Union Seminary in Pennsylvania was ordained in 1868. As a minister he was appointed to the circuit in Napoleon, Ohio in 1872. He worked with the Evangelical Association's publishing arm in Cleveland for eleven years. He served in many chapels and churches in Cleveland and in Grafton in the 1880s, among them Bethel Home for Sailors and Seamen, Chestnut Ridge Union Chapel, Grace Congregational Church and Rockport Congregational Church. In his lifetime he wrote more than 2,000 gospel songs including "Leaning on the everlasting arms" (1894). The fifty song books he edited include Pentecostal Hymns No. 1 and The Evergreen, 1873.

Anthony J. Showalter received letters from two friends who had lost their wives about the same time. He wrote back to express his sympathy, and included a verse of Scripture: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27 KJV). As he thought about that text, he wrote the music and refrain to this hymn. He asked Elisha Hoffman to write the stanzas. The hymn was first published in 1887 in The Glad Evangel for Revival, Camp, and Evangelistic Meetings, for which Showalter was an editor.  The text has three stanzas and a refrain. The theme of the text is the peace that comes from knowing that God will protect us, and how that knowledge removes our fears.

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).