April 8, 2018

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:

For All the Faithful Women

Rev. Dr. Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr. (1924-2007) was a graduate of Susquehanna University and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. He received additional advanced degrees from Union Theological Seminary in New York and a doctoral degree at Southern California School of Theology at Claremont. He served as President of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg.  Stuempfle was the author of several books and numerous articles and lectures on preaching, history, and theology. He was also among the most honored and respected hymn writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was known for his leadership in community and civic projects. Always taking an active stance on social issues, he participated in the creation of day care centers, served on the Gettysburg interchurch social action committee, helped create and support prison ministries and a homeless shelter, and tutored young people in the after school program of Christ Lutheran Church, where he was a long time member.

Stuempfle draws from multiple Bible stories for “For All the Faithful Women”. 

For all the faithful women who served in days of old

To you shall thanks be given, to all their story told. 

They served with strength and gladness in tasks your wisdom gave. 

To you their lives bore witness, proclaimed your power to save.

O God, for saints and servants, those named and those unknown
In whom through all the ages Your light of glory shone,
We offer glad thanksgiving and fervent prayer we raise
That faithful in Your service, our lives may sing Your praise.

We praise your name for Miriam, who sang triumphantly

While Pharaoh's vaunted army lay drowned beneath the sea.

As Israel marched to freedom, her chains of bondage gone,

So we may reach the kingdom your mighty arm has won.

To Hannah, praying childless, before the throne of grace,

You gave a son and called him to serve before your face.

Grant us her perseverance; Lord, teach us how to pray

And trust in your deliverance when darkness hides our way.

For Ruth, who left her homeland and ventured forth in faith,

Who pledged to serve and worship Naomi's God till death.

We praise you, God of Israel, and pray for hearts set free

To bind ourselves to others in love and loyalty.

We honor faithful Mary, fair maiden, full of grace.

She bore the Christ, our brother, who saved our human race.

May we, with her, surrender ourselves to your command

And lay upon your altar our gifts of heart and hand.

We sing of busy Martha, who toiled with pot and pan

While Mary sat in silence to hear the word again.

Christ, keep our hearts attentive, to truth that you declare,

And strengthen us for service when work becomes our prayer.

Recall the outcast woman with whom our Lord conversed,

Christ gave her living water to quench her deepest thirst.

Like her, our hearts are yearning, Christ offers us his word,

Then may our lips be burning to witness to our Lord.

We praise the other Mary, who came at Easter dawn,

And near the tomb did tarry, but found her Lord was gone.

As joyfully she saw him in resurrection light,

May we by faith behold him, the day who ends all night.

Lord, hear our praise of Dorcas, who served the sick and poor.

Her hands were cups of kindness, her heart an open door.

Send us, O Christ, your body, where people cry in pain,

And touch them with compassion to make them whole again.

For Eunice and for Lois, we sing our thanks and praise.

Young Timothy they nurtured and led him in your ways.

Raise up in ev'ry household true teachers of your word

Whose lives will bear clear witness to Christ, our risen Lord.

All praise to God the Father!  All praise to Christ the Son!

All praise the Holy Spirit, who binds the Church in one!

With saints who went before us, with saints who witness still,

We sing glad alleluias and strive to do Your will.

Emily Maxson Porter (b. 1942) is organist at St. Philip’s Lutheran Church in Fridley, Minnesota.  She has previously taught organ and theory at Lynchburg College and Concordia College, St. Paul.  She has numerous published works, including anthems, vocal, choral, instrumental pieces, and larger organ works.  Porter won the 2002 Holtkamp-AGO Award in Organ Composition.

Ye Daughters of Jerusalem – Marcel Dupre

Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) was born into a musical family and was a child prodigy. His father Albert Dupré was organist in Rouen and built an organ in the family house when Marcel was 14 years old. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1904.  In 1914, Dupré won the Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata, Psyché. In 1926, he was appointed professor of organ performance and improvisation at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held until 1954.  Dupré became famous for performing more than 2000 organ recitals throughout Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe, which included a recital series of 10 concerts of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1920 (Paris Conservatoire) and 1921 (Palais du Trocadéro), both performed entirely from memory. The sponsorship of an American transcontinental tour by the John Wanamaker Department Store interests rocketed his name into international prominence. Dupré's "Symphonie-Passion" began as an improvisation on Philadelphia's Wanamaker Organ. In 1934, Dupré succeeded Charles-Marie Widor as titular organist at St. Sulpice in Paris, a post he held until his death in 1971.  From 1947 to 1954, he was director of the American Conservatory, which occupies the Louis XV wing of the Château de Fontainebleau near Paris. In 1954, Dupré became director of the Paris Conservatoire; but he held this post for only two years before the prevailing national laws forced him to retire at the age of 70.

Aside from a few fine works for aspiring organists (such as the 79 Chorales op. 28) most of Dupré's music for the organ ranges from moderately to extremely difficult, and some of it makes almost impossible technical demands on the performer. Being a virtuoso of the highest order, he contributed extensively to the development of technique (both in his organ music and in his pedagogical works).

A fair and objective critique of his music should take into account the fact that, occasionally, the emphasis on virtuosity and technique can be detrimental to the musical content and substance. However, his more successful works combine this virtuosity with a high degree of musical integrity, qualities found in works such as the Symphonie-Passion, the Chemin de la Croix, the Preludes and Fugues, the Esquisses and Évocation, and the Cortège et Litanie.


As well as composing prolifically, Dupré prepared study editions of the organ works of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann, César Franck, and Alexander Glazunov. He also wrote a method for organ (1927), 2 treatises on organ improvisation (1926 and 1937), and books on harmonic analysis (1936), counterpoint (1938), fugue (1938), and accompaniment of Gregorian chant (1937), in addition to essays on organ building, acoustics, and philosophy of music. As an improviser, Dupré was able to take given themes and spontaneously weave whole symphonies around them, often with elaborate contrapuntal devices including fugues.

“Ye Daughters of Jerusalem” is from a set of 15 pieces based on Antiphons, and is a setting of Song of Solomon 1.

Sortita – Luigi Bottazzo

Luigi Bottazzo (1845-1924) was an Italian organist and composer. At the age of 9, he became blind; studied music at the Institute for the Blind in Padova, and at the age of 19, he became teacher of harmony, counterpoint and organ in the same institute.   He composed more than 300 works, mostly for organ, but also for voice and piano, piano solo, solo voices, voice and organ. He also published a series of music theory books, some of which were adopted by music conservatories. 

“Sortita” is an Italian term for an organ postlude, and literally means to go forth or emerge.

About the Vocal Solo Music:

On Eagle’s Wings – arr. Mark Hayes

Michael Joncas (b. 1951) was ordained in 1980 to the Roman Catholic priesthood, and has served since 1991 on the faculty of the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.  He has written three books, more than a hundred published articles, and has compiled more than 20 collections of liturgical music. Father Joncas was visiting a friend at the major seminary in Washington. One evening, Father Joncas’ friend got word that his father had suffered a fatal heart attack. Father Joncas wrote “On Eagle’s Wings” in the days that followed and it was was sung for the first time publicly at the friend’s father’s wake service.  The song is based on Psalm 91 and Isaiah 4031:, its lyrics drawing from the Scripture’s descriptions of God’s protection and providence.  

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".

            You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord who abide in His shadow for life,

            Say to the Lord: “My refuge, my Rock in whom I trust!”

            The snare of the fowler will never capture you, and famine will bring you no fear:

            Under His wings your refuge, His faithfulness your shield.

            You need not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day;

            Though thousands fall about you, near you it shall not come.

            For to his angels He’s given a command to guard you in all of your ways;

            Upon their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

            And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn,

            Make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of His hand.

About the Hymns:

O Worship the King

Of Scottish ancestry, Robert Grant (1779-1838) was born in India, where his father was a director of the East India Company. He attended Magdalen College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1807. He had a distinguished public career a Governor of Bombay and as a member of the British Parliament, where he sponsored a bill to remove civil restrictions on Jews. Grant was knighted in 1834. His hymn texts were published in the Christian Observer (1806-1815), in Elliot’s Psalms and Hymns (1835), and posthumously by his brother as Sacred Poems (1839).

Grant’s text was influenced by William Kethe’s paraphrase of Psalm 104 in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter (1561). Grant’s text was first published in Edward Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody (1833) with several unauthorized alterations. In 1835 his original six-stanza text was published in Henry Elliott’s Psalm and Hymns. Stanza 3 was omitted in the Psalter Hymnal.

Rather than being a paraphrase or versification, the text is a meditation on the creation theme of Psalm 104, focusing on God’s creation as a testimony to his “measureless might.” More personal in tone, stanzas 4 and 5 confess the compassion of God toward his creatures and affirm with apocalyptic vision that the “ransomed creation, with glory ablaze” will join with angels to hymn its praise to God.  In the last verse, Grant points to Christ as the ultimate reconciler of a broken, but still beautiful creation. An original last stanza that we no longer sing reads, “The humbler creation, though feeble their lays, with true adoration shall lisp to Thy praise.”

Lord, You Give the Great Commission

Jeffery W. Rowthorn (b. 1934) wrote this text in 1978 while he was Chapel Minister at Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut. The text was first published in Laudamus (1980), a hymnal supplement edited by Rowthorn and used at the Yale Divinity School.  This powerful text about the various ministries of the Christian church has two striking features: each stanza includes a quotation of Christ's words (usually from Matthew), and a concluding refrain line turns each stanza into a prayer. Christ's words are applied to the tasks of God's people in the world with a fervent prayer that the Spirit will equip the saints to carry out these ministries faithfully.

Rowthorn graduated from Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Union Theological Serninary in New York, and Cuddeson Theological College in Oxford. Ordained in 1963 in the Church of England, he served several congregations in England before immigrating to the United States, where he was chaplain at Union Theological Seminary and a faculty member in liturgics at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, which he helped to establish. He was then elected Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. The writer of several hymns, Rowthorn was also coeditor with Russell Schulz-Widmar of A New Hymnal for Colleges and Schools (1991). Rowthorn has since moved to Paris, where he is Bishop in Charge of the American Churches in Europe.