July 12, 2020

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 Piano Music:

Morning Has Broken - Mary McDonald

"Morning Has Broken" was first published in 1931 in Songs of Praise. It was written by English author Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) and  set to a traditional Scottish Gaelic tune known as BUNESSAN.  In Songs of Praise Discussed, the editor, Percy Dearmer, explains that as there was need for a hymn to give thanks for each day, English poet and children's author Eleanor Farjeon had been "asked to make a poem to fit the lovely Scottish tune". A slight variation on the original hymn, also written by Eleanor Farjeon, can be found in the form of a poem contributed to the anthology Children's Bells, under Farjeon's new title, "A Morning Song (For the First Day of Spring)", published by Oxford University Press in 1957. English pop musician and folk singer Cat Stevens (known as Yusuf Islam since 1978) included a version on his 1971 album “Teaser and the Firecat”. The song became identified with Stevens when it reached number six on the US “Billboard” Hot 100 and number one on the US easy listening chart in 1972. 

Farjeon was born in London, England.  She came from a literary family and was an author of children’s stories and plays, among numerous other literary pursuits.  Known as ‘Nellie’ to her immediate family, she was a sickly child who suffered from poor eyesight and educated at home.  Her father encouraged her to write from the age of five.  She eventually earned a living as a journalist, broadcaster, writing poetry and stories and counted among her friends the celebrated D H Lawrence and Walter de la Mare.  Farjeon never married but had two long term relationships.  First with an English teacher, George Earle, and after his death with the actor, Denys Blakelock.   In 1951, she converted to become a Roman Catholic.  She won numerous literary awards during her lifetime.  The Children’s Book Circle, a society of publishers, present the Eleanor Farjeon Award annually to individuals or organizations whose commitment and contribution to children’s books is deemed to be outstanding.

Sweet as dew and drenched in sunlight,  Farjeon’s lyrics are built, surprisingly, on verses found in The Book of Lamentations, written, it’s widely believed, by Jeremiah, the grieving, raging, weeping prophet. In this book of sorrows, the despairing observer lists all that is wrong with the world around him: illness, exile, hunger and misery, crime, ravage and ruin.  The list sounds familiar: check out today’s news. Is there nothing new under the sun?

But, in the middle of this inventory of woe (Lamentations 3:22-23), the weeping prophet waves away clouds of doom and gloom, steps into the sunshine, and startles us with joy. Jeremiah affirms his trust in God, whose mercies are “new every morning,” and proclaims, “Great is Thy faithfulness!” These exclamations of praise arise from a litany of despair.

Knowing that this refreshing and gentle hymn was inspired by verses in Lamentations deepens our experience of it. We are reminded that our task is to awaken, not only to this day, but to the world around us, to be mindful of all of it — the beauty and the pain. This hymn calls us to be faithful to the whole of God’s wondrous, suffering creation.

Morning has broken like the first morning;

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.

Praise for the singing, Praise for the morning,

Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven

Like the first dew fall on the first grass.

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, Mine is the morning

Born of the One Light Eden saw play.

Praise with elation, praise every morning

God's recreation of the new day.

Mary McDonald’s sacred music career spans over thirty-five years. More than eight hundred anthems, seasonal musicals and keyboard collections testify to her significant contribution to sacred literature. In 2000, Mary became the first ever woman President of the Southern Baptist Church Music Conference. In addition, she has served as accompanist for the Tennessee Men's Chorale since 1985. Her greatest desire is "to give God glory for the songs He has allowed me to compose. He alone, is the true Creator behind my pen."  In 2011, after serving as sacred music editor for The Lorenz Corporation in Dayton, Ohio for more than twenty years, Mary answered a new call. Now she takes her tremendous passion and love for music making directly to churches as an independent artist by holding Composer Weekend workshops. 

Love Lifted Me - Ruth Elaine Schram

Author John Rowe (1865-1933) was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States in 1889. Rowe went to work for several music publishers, including Trio Music Company in Waco, Texas; A. J. Showalter Music Company of Chattanooga, Tennessee; and James D. Vaughan Music Company of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Late in life, Rowe moved to Vermont where his daughter was an artist. He worked with her, writing greeting card verses.  Composer Howard E. Smith (1863-1918) was a church musician and organist in Connecticut.  Rowe and Smith collaborated to write this song in Saugatuck in 1912.  According to Rowe’s daughter, “Howard E. Smith was a little man whose hands were so knotted with arthritis that you would wonder how he could use them at all, much less play the piano.  I can see them now, my father striding up and down humming a bar or two and Howard E. playing it and jotting it down.”  It gained popularity among United Methodists as one of the most frequently sung songs in The Cokesbury Hymnal.

Rowe's text uses images from two biblical stories. The first is found in Matthew 14:22-33, where the disciples were in a boat in the midst of a terrifying storm. They saw Jesus walking on the sea. He commanded Peter to join him, and Peter also began walking on the water toward Jesus. The storm frightened Peter and he began to sink, calling out to Jesus to save him. Jesus caught Peter by the hand and lifted him up as they got into the boat.  The second story is Matthew 8:23-27, in which Jesus is asleep in the boat while the disciples are terrified by the fierce storm threatening to plunge them all into the sea. They wake Jesus and appeal to him. Jesus rebukes the wind and sea, and there is calm.  Rowe's text skillfully draws on both stories, using sinking or being swamped into the sea as an image for "sinking deep in sin…sinking to rise no more." Jesus, "Master of the sea," hears our cry for help, reaches out to us in love, and lifts us up into the safety of salvation. 

I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore,

very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more;

but the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry,

from the waters lifted me; now safe am I.

All my heart to Him I give; ever to Him I’ll cling,

In His blessed presence live, ever his blessings sing.

Love so mighty and so true merits my souls best songs;

Faithful, loving service, too, to Him belongs.

Souls in danger, look above, Jesus completely saves;

he will lift you by his love out of the angry waves.

He’s the Master of the sea, billows his will obey;

he your Savior wants to be – be saved today. 

Love lifted me!  Love lifted me! 

When nothing else could help, Love lifted me.

Ruth Elaine Schram (b. 1952) wrote her first song at the age of twelve, and her first octavo was published twenty years later, in 1988. In 1992, she became a full-time composer and arranger and now has over 2,000 published works.  Over seventeen million copies of her songs have been purchased in their various venues, and she has been a recipient of the ASCAP Special Award each year since 1990.  In addition to her choral music for church and school choirs, her songs appear on thirty albums (four of which have been Dove Award Finalists) and numerous children's videos, including sixteen songs on four gold videos, and four songs on one multi-platinum video.  Her songs have also appeared on such diverse television shows as "The 700 Club" and HBO's acclaimed series "The Sopranos.”  Schram began piano and theory lessons at the age of five. She studied music at Lancaster Bible College and Millersville State College and taught Elementary Music in Pennsylvania for several years. She now lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

To God Be the Glory - Mark Hayes

Fanny Jane Crosby (1820-1915), born in New York and died in Connecticut, wrote over 8,500 gospel hymns. In 1972, Hope Publishing Co. found over 1,000 unpublished manuscripts. Her work defined what it meant to be a successful writer of gospel hymns.  By the age of six weeks, Fanny Crosby was completely blind. She entered the New York School for the Blind at age twelve. She began writing hymns and poetry at age twelve.  Her collaborators in publishing gospel hymns included the most successful and popular composers of her day, including William Bradbury, William Doane, Robert Lowry, Ira Sankey, and William Kirkpatrick. Crosby used numerous pen names in publishing her songs, including: Ella Dale, Mrs. Kate Gringley and Miss Viola V. A.  She married blind musician Alexander Van Alstyne, and the British most often refer to her by her married name rather than Fanny Crosby.  She was a lifelong Methodist and her contributions to The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) include: “Blessed Assurance,” “Close to Thee,” “I Am Thine, O Lord,” “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Rescue the Perishing,” and “To God Be the Glory.”

This text is unique from Crosby’s other hymns because, rather than focus on our experience of God, the words are wholly about God and His perfect glory. In a sense, the hymn perfectly displaces us, removing us from the pedestal on which we so often place ourselves. This displacement is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith. It feels very natural for us to seek attention, approval, and our own glory. We like to be in control and present our own image to the world, an image we seek to improve through any means possible. On the other hand, there is great comfort in knowing that the image we try to make for ourselves doesn’t matter. We are made in the image of God, which means that whatever we do has to bring Him and Him alone glory. Our lives are wrapped up in God, and so too are the mistakes we make, the wounds we inflict, and all of our shortcomings. These are the things we try to avoid while we maintain control of our lives. But what a joy and a comfort to know that though these things may happen, because God is ultimately in control, and because our own image does not matter, God is still glorified. While we should still try to live a holy and upright life, we should do so to bring God glory, not ourselves. What a beautiful freedom that is.

Frances Jane Crosby’s hymns have historically been among the most popular songs sung by Methodists.  The tune TO GOD BE THE GLORY was written and the refrain was added by George Washington Doane (1799-1859). “To God be the glory” was included in William Doane’s Songs of Devotion in 1870.  Ira Sankey probably saw the hymn in Doane’s collection and incorporated it into the first edition of his Sacred Songs and Solos (1875).  Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey helped to establish the hymn’s popularity during their revivals in Great Britain in the late 19th century.  It also appeared in some British hymnals including the Methodist Hymn Book (1933).

However, it was not until the 1954 Billy Graham Crusade in Nashville that Cliff Barrows introduced this song to congregations in the United States.  Mr. Graham and Mr. Barrows had learned the song during the 1952 revivals they had conducted in Great Britain.  Hymnologist William J. Reynolds, writing in his hymnal companion Hymns of Faith (1964), documented the return of this hymn to the USA: “It is most extraordinary that this long-forgotten American gospel song should have been imported from England and become immensely popular during the last decade.” 

To God be the glory, great things He hath done,
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in. 

Oh, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

Great things He hath taught us, great things He hath done,
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
But purer, and higher, and greater will be
Our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear His voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice!
Oh, come to the Father, through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He hath done.

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”.

About the Vocal Solo Music:

On Eagle’s Wings – arr. Mark Hayes

        Paul Burnett, soloist

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:

Spirit of Faith, Come Down

Exploring the hymns of Charles Wesley (1707-1788) is like examining a trove of treasures excavated from the pages of his writings. While the church has preserved many of these treasures intact within its hymnals, sometimes a single gem is lost or forgotten. When such a jewel is recovered, it provides fresh color to the hymn as newly shed light streams through it and dances across the page. One such gem is the excised third stanza of “Spirit of Faith Come Down.”

“Spirit of Faith Come Down” by Charles Wesley was first published in Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father (1746) and is also found in the collection Whitsunday [Pentecost] Hymns (1746). The original hymn is composed of five stanzas, though in most hymnals today, there are only four, sometimes three, stanzas. This is due to the long lasting editorial change made by John Wesley when he included the hymn in his famous Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780). As observed by Carlton Young in the Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal, John Wesley removed the original third stanza and slightly altered the second line of the original fourth stanza.

The hymn is filled with references to Scripture. Charles Wesley directly quotes both 1 Corinthians 12:3 and John 20:28 in the second stanza. His construction of this stanza makes it clear, using Scripture as the basis, that one desperately needs the Spirit to have the faith required to fully accept Jesus and redemption through him.  Wesley’s theology of atonement also plays a key role in the text of this hymn, infusing the entirety of the hymn. The first stanza quickly delivers a statement of the ongoing process of redemption, pleading (possibly demanding) that the “Spirit of faith come down” to “reveal the things of God” so to “give us eyes to see who did for every sinner die, hath surely died for me.” In their Companion to Hymns and Psalms, Richard Watson and Kenneth Trickett note that Wesley often uses the expression, “Tis thine the blood to apply,” as he does in the first stanza, fifth line. This phrase is a poetic manifestation of Charles Wesley’s belief that the Spirit’s mission is to the individual person. Salvation is encountered through the Spirit and is delivered as an intimate gift, given through faith. This first stanza is a condensed teaching of Wesleyan redemption. Indeed, the entire hymn is written as a proclamation on the extraordinarily active and vital role the Spirit plays in giving, sustaining, and nurturing faith so one might believe and accept Jesus as the Redeemer.

While the hymn as we know it contains the Wesleyan standard of attention to Scripture and theological depth, the words of the original third stanza enrich the hymn as a whole and fulfill a role that stanzas currently available cannot hope to do.  The text of the individual stanza as it appears in the original 1746 hymnal is as follows:

I know my Savior lives, He lives who died for me,

My inmost Soul his Voice receives Who hangs on yonder Tree:

Set forth before my Eyes Ev’n Now I see Him bleed,

And hear his Mortal Groans and Cries While suffering in my stead.                                                                   

Here, in the original third stanza, is a vivid depiction of Jesus’ act of redemption and victory over death.  The stanza opens with a paradox of life and death and then moves on to a brutally vivid and deeply personal vision of the crucifixion.  In light of the vivid scene (known by the poetic device, hypotyposis) just painted in the original third stanza, to claim Jesus’ redemption as deeply personal gives a rather stirring and evocative opening statement. The words do not inspire a general claim or reality, but one that is intimately personal, which a person cannot help but share with the world. By omitting the third stanza, the hymn loses a key turning point in the journey through the hymn as well as a climactic follow up to the second stanza. The second stanza ends, “Thou art my Lord, my God,” and then the third stanza depicts in a shockingly graphic manner the one whom the individual is claiming as Lord and God. Stanza four then affirms that indeed, the one who is “my Lord and God…who hangs on yonder tree” truly and surely is “My dear atoning Lamb.”

The tune BEALOTH was first published in Sacred Harp, a songbook created and published by Lowell Mason and his sons in 1840.

Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that originated in New England and was later perpetuated and carried on in the American South of the United States. The name is derived from The Sacred Harp, a ubiquitous and historically important tunebook printed in shape notes. The work was first published in 1844 and has reappeared in multiple editions ever since. Sacred Harp music represents one branch of an older tradition of American music that developed over the period 1770 to 1820 from roots in New England, with a significant, related development under the influence of "revival" services around the 1840s. This music was included in, and became profoundly associated with, books using the shape note style of notation popular in America in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Brothers Lowell and Timothy Mason published their own Sacred Harp in 1840 in Cincinnati.  Originally from Boston, the Mason family is hardly associated with the promotion of shape-note (or “patent note”) notation—indeed, Lowell Mason would become a famously successful antagonist of shape-notes, which he derided as an obstacle to “scientific” music education.  Shape-notes were flourishing in the Ohio Valley in the 1830s, and the music publishers recognized that a shape-note version of the hymnal would boost its commercial prospects. The Masons were clear that their use of shape-notes was in no way intended as an endorsement, however: the preface acknowledges that “the Sacred Harp is printed in patent notes (contrary to the wishes of the Authors) under the belief that it will prove much more acceptable to a majority of singers in the West and South.

If the notation style of both Sacred Harps is the same, the contents are dramatically different. While B. F. White’s Sacred Harp largely followed its shape-note predecessors in reprinting a broad range of early American singing-school repertoire, southern vernacular hymnody, and new compositions based on those styles, the Masons’ Sacred Harp features music by European composers and new compositions based on a European aesthetic, many by Lowell Mason himself. In fact, the Masons intended their volume to supplant the American hymnody then popular in the region—the “patent notes” would be but a minor concession if the tunebook could succeed in pushing local musical taste toward the style that the Masons favored.   In the few examples of eighteenth-century American music they included, Lowell and Timothy Mason altered the harmonies to better conform to the European style they favored, eliminating parallel fifths and open chords.  

I Love to Tell the Story

"I Love to Tell the Story" is a well-known hymn which was written as a poem by an English evangelist, Katherine Hankey (1834-1911). Hankey was the daughter of a wealthy banker and was associated with the Clapham sect of William Wilberforce, a group of prominent evangelical Anglicans from the Clapham area. This group helped to establish the British and Foreign Bible Society, promoted the … abolition of slavery, and was involved in improving the lot of England's working classes. Hankey taught Bible classes for shop girls in London, visited the sick in local hospitals, and used the proceeds of her writings to support various mission causes. Her publications include Heart to Heart (1870) and The Old, Old Story and Other Verses (1879).

Hankey had a serious spell of sickness while in a mission in Africa. During her long days of convalescence, she wrote a long on the life of Jesus in 1866 in two parts. The first part was a poem of fifty stanzas, titled "The Story Wanted" (dated January 29, 1866) and second part titled "The Story Told" (dated November 18, 1866). Certain verses were taken from Part I. by Dr. W. H. Doane in 1867 to make the popular and familiar hymn beginning, "Tell me the old, old story". From Part II. certain verses were selected to make the hymn, "I Love to Tell the Story".

Apart from the context of the larger poem, some of the couplets of this text appear rather shallow or repetitious; thus the Psalter Hymnal includes only the original stanzas 1, 3, and 4. But the entire original poem provides a fine autobiographical testimony to Hankey's evangelical fervor, which she expressed in her writings and in her support of foreign and home missions (she taught church school classes to the rich and poor of London). The text simply affirms the Christian's zeal to "tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love" to the unsaved as well as to the saved, here on earth and in glory.

The tune HANKEY was composed by William G. Fischer and appeared in Fischer's Joyful Songs, Nos. 1 to 3 published in 1869 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Methodist Episcopal Book Room. Fischer also added a refrain to the original text. The tune set to Hankey's text was published in Joyful Songs (1869) and in many gospel hymnals. The hymn was popularized through its use in the Ira D. Sankey and Dwight L. Moody crusades.

In his youth, Fischer (1835-1912) developed an interest in music while attending singing schools. His career included working in the book bindery of J. B. Lippencott Publishing Company, teaching music at Girard College, and co-owning a piano business and music store–all in Philadelphia. Fischer eventually became a popular director of music at revival meetings and choral festivals. In 1876 he conducted a thousand-voice choir at the Dwight L. Moody/Ira D. Sankey revival meeting in Philadelphia. Fischer composed some two hundred tunes for Sunday school hymns and gospel songs.

First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas

A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus