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:
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen – Max Drischner
"Es ist ein Ros entsprungen" ("A rose has sprung up"), most commonly translated to English as "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" or "A Spotless Rose", is a Christmas carol and Marian Hymn of German origin. The text is thought to be penned by an anonymous author, and the piece first appeared in print in the late 16th century. The English translation "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" was written by Theodore Baker in 1894.
This German carol from the Rhineland region combines the story of Luke 1-2 and Matthew 2 with Isaiah's prophecies about the "rose" from the "stem of Jesse " (Isa. 11:1; 35:1-2). Stanzas 1 and 2 are a combination of folklore ("amid the cold of winter") and Christological interpretation of Isaiah 11:1 and 35: 1-2. Stanza 3 introduces imagery from John 1.
"Es ist ein Ros entsprungen," may date to the fifteenth century. However, the earliest manuscript containing the text, found in St. Alban's Carthusian monastery in Trier and preserved in the Trier municipal library, is dated around 1580. It was first published with twenty-three stanzas in Alte catholische geistliche Kirchengesiinge (Cologne, 1599). Originally stanza 2 interpreted the "rose" as being Mary, mother of Jesus, but in Musae Sionae (1609) Michael Praetorius changed the interpretation to point to Christ as the rose in accord with actual biblical imagery.
Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to improve the relationship between Protestants and Catholics. After receiving his musical education, from 1587 he served as organist at the Marienkirche in Frankfurt. From 1592/3 he served at the court in Wolfenbüttel, under the employ of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He served in the duke's State Orchestra, first as organist and later (from 1604) as Kapellmeister.
His first compositions appeared around 1602/3. Their publication primarily reflects the care for music at the court of Gröningen. The motets of this collection were the first in Germany to make use of the new Italian performance practices; as a result, they established him as a proficient composer. These "modern" pieces mark the end of his middle creative period. The nine parts of his Musae Sioniae (1605–10) and the 1611 published collections of liturgical music (masses, hymns, magnificats) follow the German Protestant chorale style.
From 1613 until his death, Praetorius was employed by the court in Dresden, where he was declared Kapellmeister von Haus aus and worked with Heinrich Schütz. Michael Praetorius died on his 50th birthday, in Wolfenbüttel, Germany and is entombed in a vault beneath the organ of the Marienkirche there.
A literal translation of the original German text is:
A rose has sprung up, from a tender root.
As the old ones sang to us, Its lineage was from Jesse.
And it has brought forth a floweret In the middle of the cold winter
Well at half the night.
As the old ones sang to us, Its lineage was from Jesse.
And it has brought forth a floweret In the middle of the cold winter
Well at half the night.
The rosebud that I mean, Of which Isaiah told
Is Mary, the pure, Who brought us the floweret.
At God’s immortal word, She has borne a child
And remained a pure maid. Who makes us blessed.
Is Mary, the pure, Who brought us the floweret.
At God’s immortal word, She has borne a child
And remained a pure maid. Who makes us blessed.
With its clear light Dispels the darkness.
True man and true God! He helps us from all trouble,
Saves us from sin and death.
Max Drischner (1891-1971) was a German composer, Kantor, organist, and harpsichordist. Drischner was born in Silesia. After completing his secondary education, he pursued studies in theology in Leipzig and Breslau, beginning in 1910. By 1914, however, he had decided to quit his theological studies in favor of studying music. At this time, Drischner relocated to Berlin, and was enrolled in the Berlin University of the Arts, where he studied harpsichord. In 1924, Drischner was named Kantor and organist of St. Nicholas Church in Brieg. While in Brieg, Drischer built a reputation for himself as a choirmaster, as well, organizing and directing many successful events, and founding a youth choir. This earned him a renown that stretched beyond Brieg. His efforts earned him the title of Kirchenmusikdirektor ("Church music director"), a very high honor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Our
Christmas season would hardly seem complete without the singing of Joy to
the World, the most joyous of the carols. Yet Isaac Watts, its author,
never intended it to be a Christmas carol at all. Rather, it was a part of his Psalms
of David Imitated, published in 1719, which contained paraphrases of many
of the Psalms in New Testament language.
Joy to the World – John Ferguson
The story of the hymn, Joy to the World, is the story of the author, Isaac Watts (1675-1748), who is universally acknowledged as "The Father of English Hymnody". He has earned the title, not because he was first to write English hymns, but because he gave impetus to hymnody and established its place in the worship of the English church. For over one hundred years, congregational singing had been strictly limited to the Psalms of the Old Testament in poetic form. Many of these rhymed Psalms were so unnatural that Samuel Wesley, father of the famous brothers Charles and John, called them "scandalous doggerel," and his opinion was shared by many.
The birth of Isaac Watts to a dissenting deacon and the daughter of a Huguenot refugee was followed by fourteen years of persecution and hardships for the entire family. Perhaps this suffering was responsible for Isaac Watts’ ill health, for he grew only to a height of just over five feet and was weak and sickly all his life. Though weak in body, the boy was strong in mind and spirit and early in life showed promise of poetic capability. After one Sunday morning service, Isaac, then fifteen years old, complained of the atrocious worship in song. One of the deacons challenged him: "Give us something better, young man." His answer was to write hundreds of hymns that are still sung today.
Joy to the World is the "imitation" of the last half of Psalm 98. The author transformed the old Jewish psalm of praise for some historic deliverance into a Christian song of rejoicing for the salvation of God that began to be manifested when the Babe of Bethlehem came "to make his blessing flow far as the curse is found." This is one of the most joyous hymns in all Christendom because it makes so real what Christ’s birth means to all mankind. The tune to which the hymn is sung is attributed to George Frederick Handel and bears resemblance to phrases of his great oratorio, Messiah. Notably the first four tones match the beginning of the chorus, "Lift Up Your Heads."
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king;
Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns! Let all their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks hill, and plains repeat the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness, and wonders of his love.
John Allen Ferguson (b. 1941) is an American organist, teacher, and composer. Ferguson is probably best known for his many choral compositions. He has also published alternate accompaniments and festival arrangements for organ, brass, and percussion of hymns and Lutheran liturgy, and has appeared on several recordings. He has more than 100 titles to his credit. Ferguson earned a B.M. from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, an M.M. from Kent State University, and a D.M.A. from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Russell Saunders. Ferguson is a well-respected organ teacher and leader of congregational singing via the organ. He has been invited as a visiting professor by the faculties of the University of Notre Dame and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Long associated with the Holtkamp Organ Company, Ferguson's doctoral dissertation was on the work of Walter Holtkamp Sr. "Walter Holtkamp: American Organ Builder" was published in 1979 by Kent State University Press. He also served as music editor of the United Church of Christ Hymnal, published in 1974. He worked as both professor of music at Kent State University and organist-choirmaster at Kent United Church of Christ until 1978. He later worked as the director of music at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1983 he became the Elliot & Klara Stockdahl Johnson professor of organ and church music at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, and later became the conductor of the St. Olaf Cantorei.
About the Vocal Solo Music:
Sing Joy! – Mark Hayes
Mark Hayes is an award-winning concert pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. His personal catalog, totaling over 1,000 published works, includes work for solo voice, solo piano, multiple pianos, orchestra, jazz combo, small instrumental ensembles, and choruses of all kinds. Mark received a Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude in Piano Performance from Baylor University in 1975. He has conducted the SWACDA and MCDA Community and Church Honor Choir, and served as guest conductor at Carnegie Hall, featuring his Te Deum and Magnificat. In 2010, Baylor University Center for Christian Music Studies awarded Mark the Award for Exemplary Leadership in Christian Music. Mark arranged and orchestrated the music for Civil War Voices, which won six awards including "Best Musical" in the 2010 Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York. He conducted the world premiere of his work for chorus, orchestra and narrator, The American Spirit, at Lincoln Center in May 2011 and the world premiere of his Requiem in Lincoln Center in May 2013. Whether concertizing on the other side of the globe or composing at his home in Kansas City, Missouri, Mark is blessed to live out his mission "to create beautiful music for the world".
Joy to the world! The Lord is come; let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing.
For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given,
And His name shall be called: Wonderful, Counselor,
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem!
Come and behold Him, born the King of angels!
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.
Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation.
O sing, all ye bright hosts of heaven above!
Flory to God, all glory in the highest!
Venite adoremus, Dominum.
Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns. Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.
Sing joy! Repeat the sounding joy!
Joseph’s Song – Jim Strathdee
Internationally known artists, Jim and Jean Strathdee sing with thousands of people each year as they offer their music in concerts, worship, conferences, reteats, and workshops. Most often they travel throughout the United States and Canada, but over the 40 year span of their ministry they have shared their music in India, New Zealand, Cuba, and Central America. Their music spans a diversity of sound and style and includes use of guitar, piano, mandolin, harmonica, African drums, and Native American flute. They see music as an agent of transformation where ecumenical and inter-faith communities come together to make a stand for positive change. Jim and Jean have served on the staff of United Methodist churches in southern and northern California and Hawaii. They have written hundreds of hymns, songs, and anthems.
Mary, Mary, rock your baby, tiny crying child of ours.
Mary, wrap the baby warmly, chilly this night of shining stars.
How can it be that the Son of God could be born on such a night as this?
Mary, Mary, I love your baby. What peaceful joy and bliss.
Mary, Mary, I’ll hold the baby. You are so tired and need to sleep.
Under my coat you may rest safely, I’ll stay awake the watch to keep.
How can it be that the Son of God could be born to such a man as I?
Mary and baby quietly sleeping, God’s peace to you this night.
About the Hymns:
Good Christian Friends, Rejoice
In dulci jubilo ("In sweet rejoicing") is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J.M. Neale's arrangement "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" have increased its popularity, and Robert Pearsall's 1837 macaronic translation is a mainstay of the Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols repertoire. The original song text is thought to have been written by the German mystic Heinrich Seuse circa 1328. According to folklore, Seuse heard angels sing these words and joined them in a dance of worship. In his biography (or perhaps autobiography), it was written: “Now this same angel came up to the Servant (Suso) brightly, and said that God had sent him down to him, to bring him heavenly joys amid his sufferings; adding that he must cast off all his sorrows from his mind and bear them company, and that he must also dance with them in heavenly fashion. Then they drew the Servant by the hand into the dance, and the youth began a joyous song about the infant Jesus ...”
The tune first appears in Codex 1305, a manuscript in Leipzig University Library dating from c.1400, although it has been suggested that the melody may have existed in Europe prior to this date. In print, the tune was included in Geistliche Lieder, a 1533 Lutheran hymnal by Joseph Klug. It also appears in Michael Vehe's Gesangbuch of 1537. In 1545, another verse was added, possibly by Martin Luther. This was included in Valentin Babst's Geistliche Lieder, printed in Leipzig. The melody was also popular elsewhere in Europe, and appears in a Swedish/Latin version in the 1582 Finnish songbook Piae Cantiones, a collection of sacred and secular medieval songs. The tune appears in Michael Praetorius's Polyhymnia Caduceatrix & Panegyrica collection of 1619.
The Oxford Movement of 19th-century England resurrected many ancient Greek and Latin hymns and translated them for modern use. The chief proponent of this movement was John Mason Neale (1818-1866). “Good Christian friends, rejoice” is rather unusual compared to other translations rendered by Neale in that the original song was in two languages—Latin and German. The technical term for this is macaronic, meaning Latin plus the vernacular language, thus this song is classified as a macaronic carol. Macaronic carols were most certainly not sung as a part of the medieval Roman Catholic liturgy for at least three reasons: only Latin would have been sung in the Mass at this time; macaronic carols used dance-like rhythms in contrast to unmetered flow of plainsong chant; and folk instruments including percussion were often used to accompany these songs, instruments usually not permitted in the Mass. Folk carols were music the people used in more civic and domestic festival celebrations outside of the liturgical structure of the Mass.
Love Came Down at Christmas
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) came from a family steeped in the arts. The author of three collections of mostly religious poetry and four devotional books, she suffered poor health from age 16. Her deep faith is thought to be partially due to the solace she found in writing.
Her father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a professor of Italian at King’s College, London, living in exile in England. Her brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael gave birth to a 19th-century art movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, for which the beautiful Christina often served as a model, especially for portraits of the Madonna. Among the family friends was Charles Dodgson—under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Rossetti’s best-known hymns are the Christmas carols “In the Bleak Midwinter” (1872) and “Love Came Down at Christmas,” the latter appearing first in Time Flies: a Reading Diary (1885), as her entry for Dec. 29. While the first stanza of “In the Bleak Midwinter” paints a vivid picture of an unwelcoming and desolate landscape—a symbolic representation of the state of the world encountered by the incarnate God—“Love Came Down at Christmas” presents an inviting image of incarnate “Love” descending to Earth, heralded by “star and angels.” Indeed, if one includes the word “lovely,” “Love” is mentioned 12 times in three short stanzas. The personification of “Love,” an inanimate concept, as the name for the incarnate God is not a new idea in Christian hymnody. More than a century before Rossetti’s hymns, Charles Wesley’s “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown” (UMH No. 386) and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (UMH No. 384) show a similar anthropomorphic use of “Love.”
Though Rossetti’s poems were not composed as hymns for congregational use, this one first appeared in the Oxford Hymn Book (1908) as a hymn. Hymnal editor Percy Dearmer (1867-1936), editor of the famous Oxford Book of Carols (1928), championed the cause of incorporating English poems as hymns. He included this text in the influential Songs of Praise (1925).
The poem is based on 1 John 4:7-11, a passage that mentions “love” in some form 11 times: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
The author modified the original final line herself from “Love the universal sign” to “Love for plea and gift and sign.” In doing so, she eliminated the one four-syllable word “universal,” and maintained the utter simplicity of one- and two-syllable words throughout with the exception of “incarnate” in stanza two. As British hymnologist Richard Watson notes, “The sublime simplicity of this hymn is the mark of a very great writer.”
This poem is the perfect antidote for those who find themselves recovering from the stress of the Christmas season induced by materialism, extensive shopping, travel and multiple gatherings of family and friends—in short, everything except for a moment to reflect on the gift of “Love incarnate, Love divine.”
Her father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a professor of Italian at King’s College, London, living in exile in England. Her brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael gave birth to a 19th-century art movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, for which the beautiful Christina often served as a model, especially for portraits of the Madonna. Among the family friends was Charles Dodgson—under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Rossetti’s best-known hymns are the Christmas carols “In the Bleak Midwinter” (1872) and “Love Came Down at Christmas,” the latter appearing first in Time Flies: a Reading Diary (1885), as her entry for Dec. 29. While the first stanza of “In the Bleak Midwinter” paints a vivid picture of an unwelcoming and desolate landscape—a symbolic representation of the state of the world encountered by the incarnate God—“Love Came Down at Christmas” presents an inviting image of incarnate “Love” descending to Earth, heralded by “star and angels.” Indeed, if one includes the word “lovely,” “Love” is mentioned 12 times in three short stanzas. The personification of “Love,” an inanimate concept, as the name for the incarnate God is not a new idea in Christian hymnody. More than a century before Rossetti’s hymns, Charles Wesley’s “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown” (UMH No. 386) and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (UMH No. 384) show a similar anthropomorphic use of “Love.”
Though Rossetti’s poems were not composed as hymns for congregational use, this one first appeared in the Oxford Hymn Book (1908) as a hymn. Hymnal editor Percy Dearmer (1867-1936), editor of the famous Oxford Book of Carols (1928), championed the cause of incorporating English poems as hymns. He included this text in the influential Songs of Praise (1925).
The poem is based on 1 John 4:7-11, a passage that mentions “love” in some form 11 times: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
The author modified the original final line herself from “Love the universal sign” to “Love for plea and gift and sign.” In doing so, she eliminated the one four-syllable word “universal,” and maintained the utter simplicity of one- and two-syllable words throughout with the exception of “incarnate” in stanza two. As British hymnologist Richard Watson notes, “The sublime simplicity of this hymn is the mark of a very great writer.”
This poem is the perfect antidote for those who find themselves recovering from the stress of the Christmas season induced by materialism, extensive shopping, travel and multiple gatherings of family and friends—in short, everything except for a moment to reflect on the gift of “Love incarnate, Love divine.”
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