July 29, 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:

What a Fellowship, What a Joy Divine – Carlton Young


“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.

What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms;
what a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms

Leaning on Jesus, leaning on Jesus, safe and secure from all alarms;
leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms;
O how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms.

Carlton R. Young (b. 1926), was born in Hamilton, Ohio and served in the Air Force during World War II. A teacher, editor, composer and conductor, has the unique distinction of serving as editor of two revisions of hymnals for Methodists: The Methodist Hymnal, 1966; and The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989. Dr. Young, known to his friends as "Sam", has served on the faculties and directed graduate studies in church music at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University; and Scarritt College; and is emeritus Professor of Church Music at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He is a Past-President and Fellow of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and the first American to be named an honorary member of The British Methodist Church Music Society. He is the author of Music of the Heart: John and Charles Wesley on Music and Musicians (1995).  Founder of the Agape catalog for Hope, he has a choral series of anthems (The Carlton Young Choral Series) to his credit and continues to write and compose.

Processional for a Joyful Day – Dale Wood

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 Piano Music:

My Lord, What a Morning – J. Bert Carlson

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, When the stars begin to fall

You'll hear the trumpet sound, To wake the nations underground,
Look in 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.

J. Bert Carlson (b. 1937), retired pastor, holds a Master of Music from Duquesne University School of Music and has served as pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, Whiting, NJ since 1997. Carlson wears many diverse hats as a piano teacher, organ recitalist, tenor soloist, musical director, and conductor as well as cofounder of the Chicago Oratorio Society and clinician for numerous workshops with an emphasis on choral methods, organ and hymn composition. His prodigious list of publications includes anthems, vocal songs, organ works, and piano works.

About the Cello Music:

Le Cygne – Camille Saint-Saens

     Javier Betancourt, cello

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835- 1921), also known by his nom de plume, Sannois, was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist of the Romantic era. Saint-Saëns' large body of music achieved a degree of commercial success as well as critical acclaim, so that he became one of the most popular composers in France during his lifetime. He started out as a child prodigy performer on both organ and piano, and soon began composing. Saint-Saëns earned the Legion d'honneur in 1868 for his work.  In performance, Saint-Saëns is said to have been "unequalled on the organ", and rivaled by only a few on the piano. However, Saint-Saëns's concert style was restrained, subtle, and cool; he sat unmoving at the piano. His playing was marked by extraordinarily even scales and passagework, great speed, and aristocratic refinement.

Le cygne, or The Swan, is the 13th and penultimate movement of The Carnival of the Animals. Originally scored for solo cello accompanied by two pianos, it has been arranged and transcribed for many instruments but remains best known as a cello solo.  The slow cello melody is accompanied by almost constant broken chord figurations on the pianos. When performed as a separate movement, not in the context of The Carnival, The Swan is frequently played with accompaniment on only one piano. This is the only movement from The Carnival of the Animals that the composer allowed to be played in public during his lifetime. He thought the remaining movements were too frivolous and would damage his reputation as a serious composer. 

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".

An early form of the tune DIX was composed by Conrad Kocher (1786-1872). Trained as a teacher, Kocher moved from Germany to St. Petersburg, Russia, to work as a tutor at the age of seventeen. But his love for the music of Haydn and Mozart impelled him to a career in music. He moved back to Germany in 1811, settled in Stuttgart, and remained there for most of his life. The prestigious Cotta music firm published some of his early compositions and sent him to study music in Italy, where he came under the influence of Palestrina's music. In 1821 Kocher founded the School for Sacred Song in Stuttgart, which popularized four-part singing in the churches of that region. He was organist and choir director at the Striftsckirche in Stuttgart from 1827 to 1865. Kocher wrote a treatise on church music, Die Tonkunst in der Kirche (1823), collected a large number of chorales in Zions Harfe (1855), and composed an oratorio, two operas, and some sonatas. William H. Monk created the current form of DIX by revising and shortening Conrad Kocher's chorale melody for “Treuer Heiland, wir sind hir,” found in Kocher's Stimmen aus den Reiche Gottes (1838). Monk's tune was published in the 1861 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, of which Monk was music editor.

Spirit Song

John Wimber (1934-1997), one of the 20th century's leading charismatic pastors, is known primarily as a founder of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship. He was educated at Fuller Theological Seminary and graduated from Azusa Pacific University. He served first as pastor to the Society of Friends in Yorba Linda, Calif., beginning in 1970, and then moved in 1978 to Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Calif.  In 1982, he became senior pastor of the Vineyard Fellowship in 1983. 

"Spirit Song," written in 1979, is the most lasting musical contribution from Wimber. It appears widely in hymnals and is one of the more popular new hymns in The United Methodist Hymnal.  The song encourages an intimate relationship between the singer and Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. If the singer will surrender "all the things that hold you," the Holy Spirit will descend "like a dove... upon your life and make you whole."