June 24, 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:

Caithness – Healey Willan

By all accounts, the author of the hymn O for a closer walk with God led a tragic life clouded by mental instability. After receiving his education at Westminster School, William Cowper (1731–1800) studied law and was called to The Bar in 1754. During the next few years he suffered spells of severe depression, and though he was offered several prestigious posts, the thought of taking them up induced such terror in his mind that he tried to take his own life three times. After 1765, Cowper went to live with the Reverend John Newton, Curate of Olney, and between them they composed over 350 hymns.

William Cowper wrote this text on December 9, 1769, during the illness of his long-time friend and housekeeper, Mrs. Unwin. In a letter written the next day Cowper voiced his anxieties about her condition and about what might happen to him if she died. Saying that he composed the text "to surrender up to the Lord" all his "dearest comforts," Cowper added, “Her illness has been a sharp trial to me. Oh, that it may have a sanctifying effect!. . . I began to compose the verses yesterday morning before daybreak, but fell asleep at the end of the first two lines; when I awoke again, the third and fourth were whispered to my heart in a way which I have often experienced.”

The text was published in Richard Conyers's Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1772) and, with some revision, in the Olney Hymns (1779). There it had the heading "Walk with God" and included a reference to Enoch in Genesis 5:24. Although Cowper frequently battled depression, doubt, and melancholy, this text speaks of a very intimate walk with the Lord. That walk is rooted in Scripture, rejoices in conversion, and denounces all idols that would usurp God's sovereignty. This is one of the most beautiful, tender, and popular of Cowper's hymns.

The tune CAITHNESS derives from a melody in The Scottish Psalter of 1635, also known as ‘The Old Psalter’ or ‘John Knox’s Psalter’. This psalter, an incomplete version of which was published in 1561 for use in the Anglo-Scottish Church, was brought back from Geneva by the Scottish refugees who had fled there to escape the persecutions of the Reformation. The psalter was completed and issued in Edinburgh in 1564; it appeared in many later editions and served the churches for a century. The early editions contained melodies only but 1635 saw the publication of an edition which provided harmonized tunes.

O for a closer walk with God, a calm and heav'nly frame,
a light to shine upon the road that leads me to the Lamb!

Where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view of Jesus and His Word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! How sweet their mem'ry still!
But they have left an aching void the world can never fill.

Return, O holy Dove, return, sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins that made Thee mourn and drove Thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known, whate'er that idol be,
help me to tear it from Thy throne and worship only Thee.

So shall my walk be close with God, calm and serene my frame;
so purer light shall mark the road that leads me to the Lamb.

Healey Willan (1880-1968) was an Canadian organist and composer.  He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano, but is best known for his religious music.  Willan was born in England, and he began musical training at age eight, with studies at St. Saviour's Choir School in Eastbourne.  He earned, by examination in organ playing, harmony, counterpoint, history and orchestration, the Royal College of Organists' Associateship in 1897 and Fellowship in 1899. The Anglo-Catholic Tractarian movement led to an Anglican revival of plainsong, and in 1910, Willan joined the London Gregorian Association (which strove to preserve and revive "plain-chant").  In 1913, Willan emigrated to Canada.  In 1921, he become Precentor of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene (Toronto), where he remained until his death.  St. Mary Magdalene, under Willan, became a North American mecca for choral and Anglican church musicians.  In 1920, the Toronto Conservatory (now the Royal Conservatory of Music) appointed Willan Head of its Theory Department.  In 1934, he founded the Tudor Singers, which he conducted until it disbanded in 1939.  From 1937 to 1950, Willan was University of Toronto Professor of Music and Organist. When the Order of Canada was established in 1967, it named Willan a Companion. In Britain, it was customary for the Archbishop of Canterbury to occasionally grant very distinguished English cathedral musicians the Lambeth Doctorate, Mus. D Cantaur; in 1956, Willan, "the Dean of Canadian composers", became the first non-English church musician to be so honored.  People who remember Willan from his time at St Mary Magdalene's like to moderate his somewhat dourly pious public image by quoting him: "English by birth; Canadian by adoption; Irish by extraction; Scotch by absorption."


If You But Trust in God to Guide You – Daryl Hollinger


Georg Neumark (1621-1681) lived during the time of the Thirty Years' War, when social and economic conditions were deplorable. He had personal trials as well. On his way to Konigsberg to study at the university, traveling in the comparative safety of a group of merchants, he was robbed of nearly all his possessions. During the next two years he spent much of his time looking for employment. He finally secured a tutoring position in Kiel. When he had saved enough money, he returned to the University of Konigsberg and studied there for five years. In Konigsberg he again lost all his belongings, this time in a fire. Despite his personal suffering Neumark wrote many hymns in which he expressed his absolute trust in God. In 1651 he settled in Weimar, Thuringia, where he became court poet and archivist to Duke Johann Ernst and librarian and registrar of the city. Neumark wrote thirty-four hymns, of which "If You But Trust in God to Guide You" has become a classic.

Neumark wrote this text, literally translated “Who only lets dear God rule”, at age twenty, just after he had finally been able to find employment as a tutor for a judge in Kiel. Neumark was so relieved and grateful to God by his change in circumstance that he wrote this text, saying, “This good fortune, which came so suddenly and, as it were, from heaven, so rejoiced my heart that I wrote my hymn 'Wer nur den lieben Gott' to the glory of my God on that first day.”  Written in Kiel, Germany, in 1641, the seven-stanza text (“Wer nur den lieben Gott lasst walten”) had the following heading: "a hymn of consolation, that God will care for and preserve his own in his own time; after the saying 'cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee.' Psalm 55:22." The text was published with the tune, also composed by Neumark, in Fortgepflanzter Musikalisch-Poetischer Lustwald (1657).  The hymn draws on parts of Psalm 55 as well as 1 Peter 3:8-15, which contains instructions to honor life and seek peace. This text is especially poignant in the context of the atrocities and violence of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which would have still been fresh in the minds of the singers. 

If thou but trust in God to guide thee And hope in Him through all thy ways,
He'll give thee strength, whate'er betide thee, And bear thee through the evil days.
Who trusts in God's unchanging love Builds on the Rock that naught can move.

What can these anxious cares avail thee, These never-ceasing moans and sighs?
What can it help if thou bewail thee O'er each dark moment as it flies?
Our cross and trials do but press The heavier for our bitterness.

Be patient and await His leisure In cheerful hope, with heart content
To take whate'er thy Father's pleasure And His discerning love hath sent,
Nor doubt our inmost wants are known To Him who chose us for His own.

God knows full well when times of gladness Shall be the needful thing for thee.
When He has tried thy soul with sadness And from all guile has found thee free,
He comes to thee all unaware And makes thee own His loving care.

Nor think amid the fiery trial That God hath cast thee off unheard,
That he whose hopes meet no denial Must surely be of God preferred.
Time passes and much change doth bring And sets a bound to everything.

All are alike before the Highest; 'Tis easy to our God, we know,
To raise thee up, though low thou liest, To make the rich man poor and low.
True wonders still by Him are wrought Who setteth up and brings to naught.

Sing, pray, and keep His ways unswerving, Perform thy duties faithfully,
And trust His Word, though undeserving, Thou yet shalt find it true for thee.
God never yet forsook in need The soul that trusted Him indeed.

Daryl Hollinger is my former classmate at the University of Montevallo and is a worship consultant, composer and author.  He recently was the Dean of the Chapel, Organist and adjunct faculty member at Lancaster Theological Seminary.  He is minister of music at First Congregational Church in Stockton, California, and has been active as a church musician for over thirty years.  

Toccata, from Symphony No. 5 – Charles-Marie Widor

The organ is back!  What better way to celebrate than with the most famous toccata of them all.

Charles-Marie Jean Albert Widor (1844-1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher, most notable for his ten organ symphonies.  Widor was born in Lyon, to a family of organ builders, and initially studied music there with his father, François-Charles Widor, titular organist of Saint-François-de-Sales from 1838 to 1889. The French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, reviver of the art of organ building, was a friend of the Widor family; he arranged for the talented young organist to study in Brussels in 1863 with Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens for organ technique and with the elderly François-Joseph Fétis, director of the Brussels Conservatoire, for composition. After this term of study Widor moved to Paris, where he resided for the rest of his life. At the age of 24 he was appointed assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns at Église de la Madeleine.

In January 1870, with the combined lobbying of Cavaillé-Coll, Saint-Saëns, and Charles Gounod, the 25-year-old Widor was appointed as "provisional" organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, the most prominent position for a French organist. The organ at St-Sulpice was Cavaillé-Coll's masterwork; the instrument's spectacular capabilities proved an inspiration to Widor. Despite his job's ostensibly "provisional" nature, Widor remained as organist at St-Sulpice for nearly 64 years, until the end of 1933. He was succeeded in 1934 by his former student and assistant, Marcel Dupré.

In 1890, upon the death of César Franck, Widor succeeded him as organ professor at the Paris Conservatoire. The class he inherited was initially stunned by this new teacher, who suddenly demanded a formidable technique and a knowledge of J.S. Bach's organ works as prerequisites to effective improvisation. Later (1896), he gave up this post to become composition professor at the same institution. Widor had several students in Paris who were to become famous composers and organists in their own right, most notably the aforementioned Dupré, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Darius Milhaud, Alexander Schreiner, Edgard Varèse, and the Canadian Henri Gagnon. Albert Schweitzer also studied with Widor, mainly from 1899; master and pupil later collaborated on an annotated edition of J. S. Bach's organ works published in 1912–1914. Widor, whose own master Lemmens was an important Bach exponent, encouraged Schweitzer's theological exploration of Bach's music.

Among the leading organ recitalists of his time, Widor visited many different nations in this capacity, including Russia, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Poland and Switzerland. In addition he participated in the inaugural concerts of many of Cavaillé-Coll's greatest instruments, notably Notre-Dame de Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Près, the Trocadéro and Saint-Ouen de Rouen.

Well known as a man of great culture and learning, Widor was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1892, and reached the rank of a Grand-Officier de la Legion d'honneur in 1933. He was named to the Institut de France in 1910, and was elected "Secrétaire perpetuel" (permanent secretary) of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1914, succeeding Henry Roujon.

In 1921, Widor founded the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau with Francis-Louis Casadesus. He was the Director until 1934, when he was succeeded by Maurice Ravel. His close friend, Isidor Philipp gave piano lessons there, and Nadia Boulanger taught an entire generation of new composers.

Widor wrote music for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles (some of his songs for voice and piano are especially notable) and composed four operas and a ballet, but only his works for organ are played with any regularity today. These include: ten Organ Symphonies, three Symphonies for orchestra with organ, Suite Latine, Trois Nouvelles Pièces, and six arrangements of works by Bach under the title Bach's Memento (1925). The organ symphonies are his most significant contribution to the organ repertoire.

It is unusual for a work written for one instrument to be assigned the term "symphony." However, Widor was at the forefront of a revival in French organ music, which utilized a new organ design pioneered by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll that was "symphonic" in style. The organ of the Baroque and Classical periods was designed to project a clear and crisp sound capable of handling contrapuntal writing. Cavaillé-Coll's organs, on the other hand, had a much warmer sound and a vast array of stops that extended the timbre of the instrument. This new style of organ, with a truly orchestral range of voicing and unprecedented abilities for smooth crescendos and diminuendos, encouraged composers to write music that was fully symphonic in scope.

Widor's best-known single piece for the organ is the final movement, Toccata, from his Symphony for Organ No. 5, which is often played as a recessional at wedding ceremonies and at the close of the Christmas Midnight Mass at Saint Peter's Basilica (Vatican City). Although the Fourth Symphony also opens with a Toccata, it is in a dramatically different (and earlier) style. The Toccata from Symphony No. 5 is the first of the toccatas characteristic of French Romantic organ music, and served as a model for later works by Gigout, Boëllmann, Mulet, Vierne and Dupré. Widor was pleased with the worldwide renown this single piece afforded him, but he was unhappy with how fast many other organists played it. Widor himself always played the Toccata rather deliberately.

About the Choral Music:

Trust and Obey – Vernon Whaley

This hymn was inspired in 1886 when the composer of the music, Daniel B. Towner (1850-1919), was the music leader during one of Dwight L. Moody’s famous revivals. Towner provided the following account cited by Moody’s musical partner, Ira D. Sankey, in his biography, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns: “Mr. Moody was conducting a series of meetings in Brockton, Massachusetts, and I had the pleasure of singing for him there. One night a young man rose in a testimony meeting and said, ‘I am not quite sure—but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.’ I just jotted that sentence down, and sent it with a little story to the Rev. J. H. Sammis, a Presbyterian minister. He wrote the hymn, and the tune was born.”

Sammis is said to have composed the lines of the refrain upon receiving the letter: “Trust and obey—for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” As is the case with most gospel songs, these lines provide the central theme around which all of the stanzas were written. The text and tune first appeared in the 1887 collection, Hymns Old and New, and has been included in countless hymnals since. Methodist hymnals in the United States have carried it since 1897. 

Dr. Vernon Whaley was born in Jacksonville, N.C. He sang in church as a child and played the trumpet in the high school band. He has produced over 100 recording projects from 1985-2005 and is the primary editor of two hymnals. He started and maintained the music publishing company, Integra Music Group, which specializes in producing major works for young voices. He has served as a Minister of Music at several churches. He has served as Music Department Chair at Welch College and has taught as an associate professor of music at Cedarville University. He has published several articles and books through Thomas Nelson, Prism Music, Baker Books, and Lifeway.

            When we walk with the Lord in the light of his Word, what a glory he sheds on our way!

            Wile we do his good will, He abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey.

            Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

            But we never can prove the delights of his love Until all on the altar we lay;

            For the favor he shows and the joy he bestows Are for them who will trust and obey.

            Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

            Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at his feet, or we’ll walk by his side in the way;

            What he says we will do, where he sends we will go.  Never fear, only trust and obey.

            Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

            To be happy in Jesus, simply trust and obey.

About the Hymns:

Give to the Wind Thy Fears

“Give to the winds thy fears” (“Befiehl du deine Wege”) represents a collaboration of two ministers in two different centuries—each among the most influential of their time. 

Next to Martin Luther, Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) is the most significant Lutheran hymn writer. He was educated at the University of Wittenberg. In 1642 he moved to Berlin to assume the position as a tutor for the children of Andreas Barthold, and married Barthold’s daughter Anna Maria in 1655. Following his ordination in 1651, Gerhardt served several congregations as pastor and deacon until he was appointed archdeacon and pastor of the congregation at Lübben. Gerhardt refused to sign an edict from Elector Frederick Wilhelm I forbidding Lutheran pastors to preach on the doctrinal differences between Lutheran and Reformed theology. As a result, he was deposed from his ministerial office and prohibited from performing any clerical functions. 

He began writing hymns during his years as a tutor, and following his marriage, began publishing them. Gerhardt published this hymn in 1656 during his first pastorate in the village church in Mittenwald. It originally was 12 stanzas long with eight lines per stanza. In 1739, John Wesley reduced the number of stanzas to eight, and divided them into two parts: Part one began with “Commit thou all thy griefs” and part two begins with “Give to the winds thy fears.” Hymnologist Albert Bailey notes: “No doubt [Gerhardt] repeated these lines to himself many a time in the after years when, one by one four of his five children died, his influential position in Berlin was taken away, and his wife succumbed after a long illness, leaving him with a single surviving son.” 

John Wesley (1703-1791) immersed himself the hymns of the Moravians while sailing to Georgia in October 1735. While on board the ship, the Moravians practiced their Singstunde (singing meetings). The German version of our hymn was contained in this collection, prompting Carlton Young to suggest that the “first stanza may have been a comfort to Wesley during the stormy voyage to Georgia.” Wesley immediately began translating German hymns and included some in the 1737 Collection of Psalms and Hymns published in Charlestown—the first hymnal published in the American colonies. This hymn was first published in Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) in 16 stanzas in four lines apiece under the heading “Trust in Providence. From the German.” 

No doubt this hymn served as a comfort to the Wesley brothers as they traveled into hostile towns to spread the gospel.  Mr. Bailey describes one such incident that happened in Devizes in February 1747: “The mob opposition was worked up by the local Anglican clergyman who went from house to house to make the absurd charge that he heard Charles preach blasphemy at the University. When the crowd got underway, the leaders proved to be led by ‘the chief gentleman of the town,’ accompanied by ‘the jealous curate, dancing for joy.’ They surrounded the house where Wesley and his aides were staying, they broke the windows, ripped off the shutters and drove the horses into the pond. Next day they got out the fire engine and deluged the house in which Wesley had taken refuge, flooding all the rooms and ruining the stock-in-trade of the shopkeeper on the street floor. Local leaders of the Methodist Society were ducked in the pond.” 
Though the circumstances that Gerhardt and the Wesleys faced were different, this hymn must have served as a source of comfort for two influential leaders in two different cultures, languages and centuries. 

Stand by Me

The Rev. Charles Albert Tindley (1851-1933) was one of the eminent preachers of Methodism at the turn of the 20th century. Emory University hymnologist James Abbington has called Tindley a “pastor, orator, poet, writer, theologian, social activist, ‘father of African American Hymnody,’ ‘progenitor of African American gospel music’ and ‘prince of preachers.’”  Dr. Abbington comments that biographies often refer to Tindley’s slave background, but that an autobiographical reference in his Book of Sermons (1932) implies that he was never a slave. However, economic conditions were very difficult after the death of Tindley’s mother, forcing his father to “hire him out.” African American scholar Bernice Johnson Reagon notes, “This practice was not unusual for freed Blacks. Hired-out workers often labored alongside slaves, experiencing much of the reality of the slave plantation. The major differences were that there was some remuneration . . . and hired-out workers did get the opportunity to go home.”

Tindley moved to Philadelphia as a young person, attending school at night. He said, “I made a rule to learn at least one new thing—a thing I did not know the day before—each day.” He was self-taught, never graduating from college or seminary, yet acquiring and reading more than 8,000 books in his library. He learned Greek through Boston School of Theology and Hebrew through a synagogue in Philadelphia. Tindley was awarded two honorary Doctorates of Divinity from colleges in North Carolina and Maryland.  Granted a license to preach from Bainbridge Street Methodist Church in Philadelphia, where he was employed as a janitor between 1880-1885, Tindley became a member of the Delaware Annual Conference. In 1902 he was assigned to Bainbridge Street Methodist Episcopal Church, this time as its pastor.  His return to the congregation as pastor was not universally appreciated, since he had served more than 15 years as their janitor; but Bainbridge Street’s 150th anniversary journal notes that “All were pleasantly surprised, for as Tindley mounted the rostrum, wearing a Prince Albert coat—then the garb of many African American Protestant preachers—he had the dignified bearing acquired during his previous appointments. They were further surprised when Tindley delivered a masterful, soul-gripping sermon that brought loud amens and ‘Praise God’ exclamations from his listeners.” Tindley inherited an overcrowded church that continued to grow quickly under his leadership. The area was economically depressed, especially for African Americans during this time. Our hymn undoubtedly speaks to the difficulties that many of Tindley’s parishioners faced.

One of the most famous of his many gospel songs is “Stand By Me,” for which he composed both the words and the music. It was included in a collection of hymns that he published in 1905, New Songs of Paradise, No. 6.  Life was not easy for many people in the northeastern United States at the turn of the 20th century. The hymn’s opening stanza draws upon images from a narrative found in three of the Gospels in which Christ rebukes the winds and stills the raging waters. Later stanzas paint a realistic picture of life’s struggles through apocalyptic references such as “the midst of tribulation,” “the host of hell assail” and “the midst of persecution.”

In its final stanza, “Stand By Me” provides the assurance that Christ has the power to overcome all suffering on earth. Comfort will finally come as we approach “chilly Jordan” though Christ, the “Lilly of the Valley.”  The song appears to focus on the petition of an individual singer for the Lord to “stand by me.” But congregational singing, by its nature, unifies its participants. When sung by a community of believers, a petition in the first-person singular may be transformed by those gathered as the body of Christ. “Stand by me” becomes, in effect, “stand by us.”