August 16, 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:

Let Streams of Living Justice Flow - C. F. Walz

Set to Gustav Holst’s THAXTED, “Let streams of living justice” was written by William Whitla (b. 1934) in 1989 as a response to the events in Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, China; and dedicated to the mothers of the disappeared (in Argentina), the author’s home community of Holy Trinity in Toronto, and the people of Tiananmen Square. It was first published in Sing Justice, Do Justice (1998).

THAXTED is based on the stately theme from the middle section of the Jupiter movement of Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets and named after Thaxted, the English village where he resided much of his life. He adapted the theme in 1921 to fit the patriotic poem "I Vow to Thee, My Country" by Cecil Spring Rice but that was as a unison song with orchestra.  It did not appear as a hymn-tune called THAXTED until his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams included it in Songs of Praise in 1926. 

Let streams of living justice flow down upon the earth.
Give freedom’s light to captives; let all the poor have worth.
The hungry’s hands are pleading; the workers claim their rights,
The mourners long for laughter, the blinded seek for sight.
Make liberty a beacon, strike down the iron power.
Abolish ancient vengeance. Proclaim your people’s hour.

The dreaded disappearance of family and friend,
The torture and the silence – the fear that knows no end.
The mother with her candle, the child who holds a gun,
The old one nursing hatred – all seek release to come.
Each candle burns for freedom, each light’s a tyrant’s fall.
Each flower placed for martyrs gives tongue to silenced call.

For healing of the nations, for peace that will not end.
For love that makes us lovers, God grant us grace to mend.
Weave our varied gifts together: knit our lives as they are spun.
On your loom of life enrol us till the thread of life is run.
O great Weaver of our fabric, bind church and world in one.
Dye our texture with your radiance, light our colours with your sun.

Your city’s built for music: we are the stones you seek.
Your harmony is language. We are the words you speak.
Our faith we find in service, our hope in other’s dreams.
Our love in hand of neighbour. Our homeland brightly gleams.
Inscribe our hearts with justice, your way – the path untried:
Your truth – the heart of stranger, your life – the Crucified.

C.E. (Carolyn) Walz was born and raised near Atlanta, Georgia, where, at age ten, she began piano lessons with Robert Fraumann, the minister of music at her church. By age twelve, Carolyn was playing piano solos for church services and accompanying children’s choirs.  Apart from her musical studies, she had a keen interest in teaching English and writing children’s books. She earned her Bachelor of Art Degree in Christian Education from Atlanta Christian College and her Master of Science Degree in Middle Grades Education from Georgia State University. She authored several books for children and became a full-time English teacher at Woodward Academy. In 2015, she retired as English Department Head of the Middle School after more than thirty years of service.

Since retirement, Walz has become an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and a two-time national winner of the DAR’s American Heritage Instrumental Music Award. Today she continues to serve as a church musician, accompanist, and children’s choir director as she pursues her new interest: composing and arranging piano solos and choral anthems for Lorenz and other publishing companies.

This Little Light of Mine - Mark Hayes

"This Little Light of Mine" is a gospel children's song written by composer and teacher Harry Dixon Loes (1895–1965) circa 1920. Loes, who studied at the Moody Bible Institute and the American Conservatory of Music, was a musical composer, and teacher, who wrote, and co-wrote, several other gospel songs. The song has since entered the folk tradition, first being collected by John Lomax in 1939. Often thought of as a Negro spiritual, it does not, however, appear in any collection of jubilee or plantation songs from the nineteenth century:

The song may take its theme from Matthew 5:16, "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heaven."; Luke 11:33, "No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light."; and Matthew 5:14–15, where Jesus said, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house." 

This little light of mine I'm going to let it shine

Let it shine, all the time, let it shine

All around the neighborhood I'm going to let it shine

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine

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:

The Prayer – arr. Tom Fettke

    Paul Burnett, soloist

"The Prayer" was written by David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager. It is most commonly known as a duet between Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. The song won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song from the 1998 film Quest for Camelot. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1999 and a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals in 2000.  This solo arrangement was written by Tom Fettke, who has taught music in both public and Christian schools and has served as a church choir director and minister of music in churches large and small for over 30 years. He is a composer, arranger, clinician, and producer of Christian music recordings.  Fettke was the creator and senior editor of the Hymnal for Worship and Celebration (1986).  

We pray You’ll be our eyes, and watch us where we go,

And teach us to be wise in times when we don’t know.

Let this be our prayer when we lose our way.

Lead us to a place, guide us with Your grace

To a place where we’ll be safe.

We pray we’ll find Your light, and hold it in our hearts

As darkness falls each night, remind us where You are.

Let this be our prayer, when shadows fill our day.

Lead us to a place, guide us with Your grace.

Give us faith so we’ll be safe.

Lead us, Lord.  Lead us in Your righteousness;

Make Your way plain for us to see.

Let this be our prayer, just like every child

Needs to find a place, guide us with Your grace.

Give us faith so we’ll be safe.  Lead us, Lord.

About the Hymns:

What Does the Lord Require

The 20th century fostered a new birth in hymn writing centered in the United Kingdom and led by many well-known composers such as Fred Pratt Green, Fred Kaan, Brian Wren and Albert Bayly. In his article “The Twentieth-Century Hymn Explosion: Where the Fuse Was Lit,” hymnologist and clergyman Alan Luff refers to Bayly as “very much a father of the new hymnody.” 

Albert Frederick Bayly (1901-1984) was born on the coast of England in Sussex. At the age of 15, Bayly studied to be a shipwright at the Royal Dockyard School in Portsmouth. After a few years of working in the shipyard, Bayly received his bachelor’s degree from London University. He was ordained in 1929 after studying ministry at Mansfield College, a Congregationalist theological college in Oxford, where he graduated the year before. He served as a Congregational minister from 1929 to 1972.  Green wrote that, “he lived to find himself honored as the pioneer of the remarkable revival of hymn writing in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.” His hymns have been printed in many volumes, including his own publications Rejoice, O People, Again I say Rejoice, Rejoice Always and Rejoice in God. 

Bayly’s best-known hymn, “What Does the Lord Require?” was written in January 1949. The hymn was based on the text from Micah 6:6-8 and was published in Rejoice, O God (1950) along with 16 other hymns representing prophets from the Old Testament. This hymn’s first appearance was in an Episcopal publication, More Hymns and Spiritual Songs, and contained three of the five stanzas. United Methodist Hymnal editor Carlton Young says “it is one of two of Bayly’s hymns that were at the front of the British hymnic explosion . . . and mark the transition in English language hymnody to a resurgence of the social gospel hymn and hymns embodying space-age imagery and warnings of nuclear destruction.” 

The tune mostly associated with Bayly’s hymn is SHARPTHORNE, written by Erik Routley (1917-1982) in 1968.  Erik Routley was an English Congregational minister, composer and musicologist. He was educated at Lancing College and Magdalen and Mansfield Colleges in Oxford. He was chaplain of Mansfield from 1948 to 1959 and then held appointments as minister in Edinburgh and Newcastle before becoming Professor of Church Music at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey in 1975. His publications include Congregational Praise (1951), The University Carol Book (1961) and critical and historical works on hymnody, church music and carols. He wrote the preface to the Summit Choir Book and composed many hymn tunes and texts. 

Take My Life and Let it Be

Frances R. Havergal (1836-1879) originally composed her text in eleven couplets as a hymn of "self-consecration to Christ" on February 4, 1874. She told the following story about writing this hymn:

I went for a little visit of five days [to Areley House, Worcestershire, in December 1873]. There were ten persons in the house, some unconverted and long prayed for, some converted but not rejoicing Christians. [God] gave me the prayer, "Lord, give me all this house." And He just did! Before I left the house, everyone had got a blessing. The last night of my visit. . . I was too happy to sleep and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my own consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves and chimed in my heart, one after another, till they finished with "Ever, only, all, for Thee."

The text is a "catalog" hymn that lists aspects of our lives and offers them in Christ's service.  "Take My Life and Let It Be" was first published in the 1874 appendix to Charles B. Snepp's Songs of Grace and Glory (1872). A twelfth couplet was added at some later point, producing the six stanzas published in the Psalter Hymnal.

Although her formal education was sporadic because of poor health, Havergal learned six foreign languages, including Greek and Hebrew, and was well read in many subjects. She began writing poetry at an early age and was also an accomplished singer and pianist. The daughter of a clergyman, she had a conversion experience at the age of fourteen and was confirmed in the Church of England in 1853. Taking seriously her own words "take my silver and my gold," she sent all her jewelry to the Church Mission Society to be sold. She also supported other charitable organizations. Her more than one hundred hymns were originally published in leaflets and later gathered into seven collections: Ministry of Song (1869), Twelve Sacred Songs for Little Singers (1870), Under the Surface (1874), Loyal Responses (1878), Life Mosaic (1879), Life Chords (1880), and Life Echoes (1883), as well as in one large volume, Poetical Works (1884).

The tune MESSIAH, also sometimes called HEROLD, was written by Ferdinand Herold (1791-1833)

First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas

A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus