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:
Vision from the Fields - George McKay
George Frederick McKay (1899-1970) was a prolific modern American composer. He was attracted to American folk-song, including jazz and blues and Native American themes, and to a great degree, his music contains a poignant evocation of the West Coast American spirit, including glimpses of a populist era of street marches, honky-tonk dance halls and social chaos along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of his home region and the vitality of its people. He admired composers who involved national folk-culture in their music.
George Frederick McKay was the first graduate in composition studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., in 1923. He then founded the Composition Department at the University of Washington, where he was a professor of music for more than 40 years. He composed works in various styles, including 70 orchestral works and nearly 1,000 musical titles, including songs, chamber works, romantic violin and cello sonatas, "ultramodern" dance music, jazzy piano pieces, band rhapsodies, string quartets, light opera tunes, folk music suites for string orchestra, large choral works, organ pieces and American symphonies. He composed several volumes of music for children and was a serious advocate for music education in the United States. McKay also conducted the Seattle Symphony on several occasions. McKay was the literary author of a number of papers and books on musical technique, including "Creative Orchestration," "The Technique of Modern Harmony" and "Creative Harmony.”
Grand Chorus - Alexandre Guilmant
Félix-Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) was a French organist and composer. In 1871, he was appointed to play the organ regularly at la Trinité church in Paris, and this position he held for 30 years. Guilmant was known for his improvisations, both in the concert and church setting. His inspiration came from gregorian chants, and he was greatly noted amongst his colleagues for his mastery of the melodies. From then on, Guilmant followed a career as a virtuoso; he gave concerts in the United States (the first major French organist to tour that country), and in Canada, as well as in Europe, making especially frequent visits to England. His American achievements included a 1904 series of no fewer than 40 recitals on the largest organ in the world, the St. Louis Exposition Organ, now preserved as the nucleus of Philadelphia's Wanamaker Organ.
In 1894 Guilmant founded the Schola Cantorum with Charles Bordes and Vincent d'Indy. He taught there up until his death at his home in Meudon, near Paris, in 1911. In addition, he taught at the Conservatoire de Paris where he succeeded Charles-Marie Widor as organ teacher in 1896. As a teacher, Guilmant was noted for his kindness and attention to detail. His students' recollections feature accounts of a particular focus on all facets of a note: attack, release, character. Marcel Dupré was the most celebrated of his many students.
Guilmant was an accomplished and extremely prolific composer. Unlike Widor, who produced a great deal of music in all the main genres, Guilmant devoted himself almost entirely to works for his own instrument, the organ. His organ output includes: 'Pièces dans différents styles', published in 18 books; 'L'organiste pratique', published in 12 books; Eighteen 'Pièces Nouvelles'; and 'L'Organiste liturgique', published in 10 books. Guilmant's Eight Sonatas were conceived with the Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Trinité in mind, and are therefore symphonic in style and form, taking their place alongside the symphonic organ works of César Franck and the Organ Symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor.
About the Piano Music:
O God Beyond All Praising - Paul Tate
Michael Perry (1942-1996) was born in Beckenham, Kent, England, where he served as Vicar of Tonbridge and a canon of Rochester Cathedral. One of England’s most promising hymn writers, he worked as editor and director of Jubilate Hymns until an inoperable brain tumor led to his untimely death in December 1996. Michael Baughen founded the Jubilate group in the early 1960s. According to Perry, the group pooled their talents to meet the challenge of a new generation in the United Kingdom., who wished to extend their singing beyond the foursquare ways of metrical hymnody and the “unpredictability of Anglican chant.” With the newfound popularity of Perry’s “Calypso Carol” and the support of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, Youth Praise 2 was published in 1969.
“O God beyond all praising” was written specifically for the melody THAXTED in 1982, a composition by the early 20th-century British composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934). This tune is normally associated in the U.K. with a more patriotic text. Perry composed this text, he said, “in response to a call for alternative words that would be more appropriate for Christian worship.” Rarely is a symphonic theme taken en toto and used for a hymn tune. The ranges are usually too wide and the phrases may be too long for congregational singing. The melody THAXTED, named for a small town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, comes from the middle section of the “Jupiter” movement in Holst’s orchestral suite, The Planets (1914-1916). In 1921, Holst adapted the theme to fit Cecil Spring-Rice’s patriotic poem “I vow to thee my country” (1908). It is hard to underestimate the fervor that this text/tune combination inspires in the British homeland. It is often sung at Remembrance Day services, and Princess Diana requested it for her wedding in 1981. The song was repeated for her funeral in 1997 and again for the 10th anniversary observance of her death in 2007.
Perry faced a formidable challenge in composing a text to such a stately theme, especially one that bears an association with a text that combines patriotic and religious fervor. To meet this challenge, he created a majestic hymn of praise that is biblically rooted. For example, the final line of the second stanza, “our sacrifice of praise,” come directly from Psalm 116:17 and Hebrews 13:15. In stanza one, the phrase, “wait upon your word,” echoes Psalm 130:5. Another phrase from stanza one, “for we can only wonder at every gift you send,” resounds in the spirit of James 1:17.
The brief words “without number” was an acknowledgment to fellow hymn writer Timothy Dudley Smith for his encouragement and an expression of homage to Dudley Smith because this was one of his favorite phrases. In the final stanza, the phrase “we’ll triumph through our sorrows and rise to bless you still” was, according to the author, a “reflect[ion on] my remembered determination of youthful days to overcome acute disappointment and personal loss.”
A new second stanza was added at the request of Roman Catholic composer Richard Proulx who wished to write an anthem based on the text. It was written for a specific Sunday based on the reading for the day, I Corinthians 15..
O God beyond all praising, we worship you today
and sing the love amazing that songs cannot repay;
for we can only wonder at every gift you send,
at blessings without number and mercies without end:
we lift our hearts before you and wait upon your word,
we honor and adore you, our great and mighty Lord.
The flower of earthly splendor in time must surely die,
its fragile bloom surrender to you the Lord most high;
but hidden from all nature the eternal seed is sown -
though small in mortal stature, to heaven's garden grown:
for Christ the Man from heaven from death has set us free,
and we through him are given the final victory!
Then hear, O gracious Savior, accept the love we bring,
that we who know your favor may serve you as our king;
and whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill,
we'll triumph through our sorrows and rise to bless you still:
to marvel at your beauty and glory in your ways,
and make a joyful duty our sacrifice of praise.
Paul A. Tate, a graduate of the University of Georgia, is a professional musician living in Sugar Hill, Georgia. As an active workshop presenter and concert performer, Paul has released a dozen recordings and published over 100 original songs and arrangements. His liturgical compositions appear in a number of hymnal resources, and his voice has been heard around the world on Sirius Satellite Radio.
About the Choral Music:
Life Has Many Rhythms - Jody Lindh
After attending Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, Jody Lindh earned his master's in organ performance at Southern Methodist University in 1968. While at SMU, he worked part time as organist at University Park. After graduating and completing a Fulbright fellowship -- he studied organ performance in Cologne, Germany -- he began his career at University Park. Lindh served University Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, TX from 1969 to 2013, directing the adult Chancel Choir, the youth Aldersgate Chorale and the fourth-to-sixth grade Wesleyan Choir. Lindh collaborated with Joe Cox to create six original musicals based on biblical and faith themes, traveling with the youth choir to present them across the U.S.
Life has many rhythms, every heart its beat;
Everywhere we hear the sound of dancing feet.
Life is this world’s secret: Lord of Life, forgive
If we never asked you what it means to live.
Life is meant for loving. Lord, if this is true,
Why do millions suffer without help from you?
Some who fought injustice added wrong to wrong:
Can it be that love is stronger than the strong?
It was you who promised: “All who seek shall find.”
What we find lies deeper than our reach of mind.
What we found was you, Lord, You, the God above,
You had come as Victim to the world you love!
Life is meant for loving. Lord, if this is true,
Love of life and neighbor spring from you.
Give us your compassion: yours the name we bear;
Yours the only victory we would serve and share.
About the Hymns:
I Sing the Almighty Power of God
Isaac Watts (1674-1748), often labeled the “Father of English-language hymnody,” believed that hymns were a formative tool in the Christian education of children. Watts’ Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language, for the Use of Children (1715) was one of the most popular collections published in its day. Poems from this hymnal were used to instruct many English children in Watts’ day and for decades after his death. In his preface,” Watts cites a biblical precedent for teaching songs to children for educational value: “The children of Israel were commanded to learn the words of the song of Moses, Deut. xxxi 19, 50, and we are directed in the New Testament, not only to sing ‘with grace in the heart, but to teach and admonish one another by hymns and songs,’ Ephes. v. 19.” Of the four reasons he gives for learning these songs, he states that these songs “will be a constant furniture of the minds of children, that they may have something to think upon when alone and sing over to themselves. This may sometimes give their thoughts a divine turn, and raise a young meditation. Thus, they will not be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind, out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age.”
“I Sing the Almighty Power of God,” originally published as “Praise for Creation and Providence,” is now the only song that remains in common usage from this children’s hymnal. Expanding on the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2, Watts’ Calvinistic theology comes to the fore. For Watts, God is an all-powerful and sovereign being who knows every “plant or flower” and controls all of nature. This sovereign God of the Calvinist Watts was also an omnipresent judge and ruler. While not specifically a hymn based on the Apostles’ Creed according to the preface, any child of Watts’ day who sang the hymn would likely think of it as a theological amplification of the first article of the Creed: “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Even the opening line of the hymn cites the “almighty power of God,” echoing the beginning of the Creed.
FOREST GREEN is an English folk tune associated with the ballad "The Ploughboy's Dream." Ralph Vaughan Williams turned FOREST GREEN into a hymn tune for The English Hymnal (1906), using it as a setting for "O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Great is Thy Faithfulness
A native of the small Kentucky town of Franklin, Thomas Obediah Chisholm (1866-1960) was born in a log cabin. He lacked formal education. Nevertheless, he became a teacher at age sixteen and the associate editor of his hometown weekly newspaper, the “Franklin Advocate”, at age twenty-one. Though he was ordained a Methodist minister in 1903, he served only a single, brief appointment at Scottsville, Kentucky, due to ill health. He wrote more than 1200 poems, 800 of which were published. They often appeared in religious periodicals such as the “Sunday School Times”, “Moody Monthly”, and “Alliance Weekly”. Many of these were set to music.
Chisholm had sent a number of his poems to the Rev. William H. Runyan (1870-1957), a musician with the Moody Bible Institute and one of the editors of Hope Publishing Company in Chicago. The tune FAITHFULNESS was written in Baldwin, Kansas, in 1923, and was first published in my private song pamphlets." A phrase in Lamentations 3:22-23 provides a basis for the refrain: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
Twenty years later Runyan wrote:
Mr. Chisholm and I were devoted co-workers, and I wrote harmonies to some 20 or 25 of his poems. This particular poem held
such an appeal that I prayed most earnestly that my tune might carryover its message in a worthy way, and the subsequent history
of its use indicates that God answers prayer.
Showing early musical promise, Runyan was a substitute church organist by the age of twelve. He became a Methodist minister in 1891 and served several churches in Kansas but turned to evangelism in 1903; he worked for the Central Methodist Conference for the next twenty years. Following that service, Runyan became pastor at the Federated Church at John Brown University, Sulphur Springs [sic: Siloam Springs], Arkansas. Editor of Christian Workers Magazine, he also served the Moody Bible Institute and was an editor for Hope Publishing Company until his retirement in 1948. Runyan wrote a number of hymn texts, gospel songs, and hymn tunes. "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" became an unofficial school hymn at Moody Bible Institute.
George Beverly Shea (1909-2013), the famous Canadian-born singer of the Billy Graham Crusades, introduced this hymn to those attending the evangelistic meetings in Great Britain in 1954. It immediately became a favorite. This hymn appeared in many evangelical hymnals and song collections but was not chosen for an official Methodist hymnal until The United Methodist Hymnal (1989), even though the author was a Methodist. It was a very popular hymn of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church and had been included in their hymnals.
According to Carlton Young, "Great is thy faithfulness" was second only to "In the garden" as the most requested hymn for inclusion in The United Methodist Hymnal. A survey conducted in 2000 by Dean McIntyre, Director of Music Resources, General Board of Discipleship, revealed that "Great is thy faithfulness" remains one of the favorite hymns among United Methodists.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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