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:
Go Tell it on the Mountain – Wilbur Held
The Fisk Jubilee Singers (drawing their name from Leviticus 25—the year of jubilee) were founded as a ten-member touring ensemble to raise funds for debt-ridden Fisk University. Taking the entire contents of the University treasury with them for travel expenses, they departed on October 6, 1871, from Nashville on their difficult, but ultimately successful eighteen-month tour, a triumph that is still celebrated annually as Jubilee Day on the campus. Though not the original repertoire of the group, by the time they reached New York in December of that year, their concerts grew to include more and more spirituals, until their program consisted primarily of choral arrangements of spirituals or, according to African American scholars C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya, “anthemized spirituals.”
They have been credited with keeping the Negro spiritual alive. Spirituals scholar Sandra Jean Graham places this development in context: “The students were at first reluctant ambassadors for the songs of their ancestors. As [Jubilee] singer Ella Sheppard recalled, ‘The slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past and represented the things to be forgotten. Then, too, they were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship . . . It was only through persuasion that the students sang their spirituals privately for [the University’s treasurer, George L.] White [who was a white man], and through White’s coercion that they sang them in concert.”
Taking the spiritual to white and black audiences in the United States and Europe earned the school and the spiritual an international reputation. The small ensemble of two quartets and a pianist grew to a full choral ensemble. Other historically black colleges eventually followed the same pattern, including Howard University (Washington, D.C.) and Tuskegee Institute (now University, Tuskegee, Alabama).
The earliest version of the spiritual appeared in in Religious Folk Songs of The Negro, as Sung on The Plantations, new edition (1909) with the heading “Christmas Plantation Song” with different stanzas and in slave dialect:
When I was a seeker
I sought both night and day.
I ask de Lord to help me,
An’ He show me de way.
He made me a watchman
Upon the city wall, [a reference to Isaiah 21:11-12]
An’ if I am a Christian
I am the least of all.
Chorus:
Go tell it on de mountain,
Over de hills and everywhere.
Go tell it on de mountain,
Dat Jesus Christ is born.
A few smaller and less broadly circulated versions use these stanzas or a variation, for example, “When I was a sinner . . ..”
African Canadian composer R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) added another harmonization and stanza in the volume he edited, Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro As Sung At Hampton Institute (1927). His stanza follows:
If you cannot sing like Angels,
If you cannot pray like Paul,
You can tell the love of Jesus,
You can say he died for all.
Dett’s stanza, or some version of it, is now most commonly associated with the spiritual, “There is a balm in Gilead.”
John Wesley Work, Jr. (1872?-1925), along with his brother Frederick Jerome Work (1878?-1942), led the Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1898-1904. Baptist hymnologist William J. Reynolds cites recollections by John Wesley Work, Jr.’s son about the role of “Go, tell it” on the campus: “[John Wesley Work, III] took pleasure in recalling his early days as a child on the campus of Fisk University where his father was a teacher. Very early on Christmas morning, long before sunrise, it was then the custom for students to gather and walk together from building to building singing [“Go, tell it on the mountain].”
Concert arrangements of spirituals were published in Frederick Work’s New Jubilee Songs, as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1902), a collection that may have been co-edited by John Wesley Work, though his name does not appear in this collection. “Go, tell it” appears in another collection for solo voice and four-part choir edited by John Wesley Work, III (Work, Jr.’s son) in American Negro Songs and Spirituals: a Comprehensive Collection of 230 Folk Songs, Religious and Secular (1940).
Drawing on an adaptation of the Work brothers’ setting, The Pilgrim Hymnal (1958), edited by Hugh Porter (1897-1960), professor in the Sacred Music Department at Union Seminary (New York), was the first mainline hymnal to include the spiritual. John Wesley Work’s stanzas based on Luke 2:8-20 have become the standard versions in hymnals. From this hymnal, versions of “Go, tell it” have spread to the point that it has become one of a “canon” of spirituals found in virtually every hymnal today.
John Wesley Work, Jr. (sometimes designated John Wesley Work II to distinguish him from his son) received his master’s degree from Fisk University, and after further study at Harvard, began teaching Latin and Greek at the University in 1898. He trained the Jubilee Singers and was a leader in preserving and performing African American spirituals. He taught at Fisk University until 1923 when he was relieved of his duties due to changing attitudes toward the spiritual. He then went on to be President of Roger Williams University in Nashville until his death in 1925.
The spiritual has inspired works in other media. Author James Baldwin’s (1924-1987) first major work and semi-autobiographical novel was titled Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). The novel discusses the role of the paradoxical church as experienced by African Americans, both as the incubator for repression and hypocrisy and as a foundation for hope, identity, and community. The ABC network produced a movie using this title in 1984.
In 1963, the musical team “Peter, Paul and Mary”, along with their musical director, Milt Okun, adapted and rewrote "Go Tell It on the Mountain" as "Tell It on the Mountain", their lyrics referring specifically to Exodus and using the phrase "Let my people go," but referring implicitly to the Civil Rights struggle of the early 1960s. According to Religious Studies professor and Civil Rights historian Charles Marsh, it was African American Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer who combined this song with the spiritual "Go Down Moses," taking the last line of the chorus, "Let my people go" and substituting it in the chorus of "Go Tell it on the Mountain". Marsh does not document this claim, but given that Hamer was highly active in Civil Rights work beginning in the 1950s, and that the use of the Exodus story and the singing of spirituals played a central role in her activities, this claim is compelling. The song was recorded by Yarrow, Stookey and Travers on their “Peter, Paul and Mary” album In the Wind and was also a moderately successful single for them.
Regardless of which version that is sung, “Go, tell it on the mountain” has become a truly American contribution to the telling of the Christmas story that is now sung around the world.
Go, tell it on the mountain, Over the hills, and everywhere,
Go, tell it on the mountain That Jesus Christ is born!
While shepherds kept their watching O'er silent flocks by night,
Behold throughout the heavens There shone a holy light.
The shepherds feared and trembled When lo! Above the Earth
Rang out the angel chorus That hailed our Savior's birth.
Down in a lowly manger Our humble Christ was born,
And God sent us salvation That blessed Christmas morn.
Wilbur C. Held (1914-2015) was born in Des Plaines, Illinois, and received his B.M. and M.M. degrees at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He then attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he earned his S.M.D. A member of the Episcopal Church, for many years Dr. Held was Professor of Organ and Church Music at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He remained in this position for over 30 years, and for most of that time was also organist-choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Held started composing little pieces for the organ because he felt there was a lack of teaching material aimed at developing style and registration, especially for the romantic use of the instrument. Having written several suites primarily for pedagogical use, he turned his attention to broadening the repertoire for church use, continuing to stress modest technical requirements and flexibility of registration. To date he has published 325 organ works. He has served on the national councils of both the AGO and the Hymn Society of America, and has appeared as recitalist at their national conventions.
Puer Nobis Nascitur: Grand Jeu et Dialogue - Pierre Dandrieu
"Puer nobis nascitur", usually translated as "Unto Us is Born a Son", is a medieval Christmas carol found in a number of manuscript sources—the 14th-century German Moosburg Gradual and a 15th-century Trier manuscript. The Moosburg Gradual itself contained a number of melodies derived from the 12 and 13th century organum repertories of Notre Dame de Paris and the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges, suggesting that its antiquity may be much greater.
The song was first published in the 1582 Finnish song book Piae Cantiones, a volume of 74 medieval songs with Latin texts collected by Jaakko Suomalainen, a Finnish Lutheran cleric, and published by T.P. Rutha, a Catholic printer. The song book had its origins in the libraries of cathedral song schools, whose repertory also had strong links with medieval Prague, where clerical students from Finland and Sweden had studied for generations. Songs from Piae Cantiones continued to be performed in Finland until the 19th century.
The book became well known in Britain after a rare original copy of Piae Cantiones owned by Peter of Nyland was given as a gift to the British Minister in Stockholm. He subsequently gave it to John Mason Neale in 1852, and it was from this copy that Neale, in collaboration with Thomas Helmore published songs in two collections in 1853 and 1854 respectively, although this carol was not included in either. The carol became popular as a processional hymn following a translation by George Ratcliffe Woodward (1859-1934) first published in 1902. Robert Cummings of the All Music Guide notes that, "Its text speaks of the birth of Christ and of his mission on Earth. The melody is glorious in its triumphant character and ecstatic devotional sense...a radiant hymn of strong appeal, brighter and more colorful than most of the chants emerging from and before the fourteenth century."
Percy Dearmer also translated the hymn for inclusion in the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols as "Unto Us a Boy is Born”. Percival Dearmer (1867–1936) was an English priest and liturgist best known as the author of The Parson's Handbook, a liturgical manual for Anglican clergy. A lifelong socialist, he was an early advocate of the public ministry of women and concerned with social justice. Dearmer also had a strong influence on the music of the church and, with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, is credited with the revival and spread of traditional and medieval English musical forms. His ideas on patterns of worship have been linked to the Arts and Crafts Movement, while Dearmer and Vaughan Williams' English Hymnal has been linked to the influence of both it and Christian Socialism. Dearmer was Canon of Westminster Abbey, from where he ran a canteen for the unemployed in the 1930s.
Unto us a Boy is born, King of all creation:
Came He to a world forlorn, The Lord of every nation.
Cradled in a stall was He 'Midst the cows and asses;
But the very beasts could see That He all men surpasses.
Herod then with fear was filled: "A prince," he said, "in Jewry!"
All the little boys he killed At Bethl'em in his fury.
Now may Mary's Son, who came Long ago to love us,
Lead us all with hearts aflame To the joys above us.
Omega and Alpha He! Let the organ thunder,
While the choir with peals of glee Rends the air asunder.
Pierre Dandrieu (d'Andrieu) (1664-1733) was a French priest, composer and organist. Pierre Dandrieu was the organist of Saint-Barthélemy church, now destroyed, on the île de la Cité in Paris, for more than 40 years. His nephew Jean-François Dandrieu succeeded him on his death in 1733. Pierre Dandrieu published a book of 42 Noëls around 1714 and various pieces for the organ (mainly) or harpsichord, published around 1725. Several of these pieces were reworked by his nephew Jean-François and published in 1759.
Puer nobis nascitur is number 12 in NOELS. /O Filii, Chansons de Saint Jacques, /Stabat Mater, et Carillons. /Le Tout Revû augmenté /et Extrêmement Varié, et mis pour L’Orgue /Et pour le Claveçin. /par Mr. Dandrieu /Prêtre et Organiste de St. Barthelemy /À Paris.
About the Vocal Solo Music:
Away in a Manger - Christopher Ruck
The origin of this popular Christmas hymn is shrouded in apocryphal associations with Martin Luther (1483-1546). Methodist hymnologist Fred Gealy (1894-1976) noted that “evidence suggests that [“Away in a Manger”] is wholly an American product. The original two-stanza form probably originated among German Lutherans in Pennsylvania about 1885.” The hymn first appeared with two stanzas in Little Children’s Book for Schools and Families, a Sunday school collection published in 1885 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America.
Stanza three first appeared unattributed in Gabriel’s Vineyard Songs (1892), compiled by gospel composer Charles H. Gabriel (1856-1932). Gealy conjectured “the song may have been contributed by an editor or publisher who thought the two narrative stanzas needed to be supplemented by a prayer.”
The only German version of the carol is clearly a translation from the English because the metrics are not natural to the German language. Furthermore, this version was first included in Herbert W. Werneke’s Christmas Songs and Weihnachts-Lieder (1934), a privately published collection. The false association between “Away in a Manger” and Luther appears to have been made by James R. Murray (1841-1905), who in his Dainty Songs for Little Lads and Lasses (1887) called it “‘Luther’s Cradle Hymn,’ composed by Martin Luther for his children and still sung by German mothers to their little ones.” However, no one has uncovered an original German version by the reformer. Theophilus Baker Stork (1814-1874) wrote Luther at Home (1872), in which he stated, “Luther’s carol for Christmas, written for his own child Hans, is still sung.” The irony of this assertion is that we actually have a Luther hymn that may have been written for young Hans, “Von Himmel hoch da komm ich her” (1531), published in Joseph Klug’s Gesangsbuch (1535).
“Away in a Manger” is sung to several tunes. This setting uses AFTON WATER, by Jonathan E. Spilman (1812-1896), who was a Kentucky lawyer, minister, and composer. While at Transylvania Law School, in 1837, he wrote the music for Robert Burns' "Flow gently, sweet Afton". After working as a lawyer for 18 years, he became Presbyterian minister at the age of 46.
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes ,
But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.
I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky,
And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.
Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,
And take us to heaven to live with Thee there.
Christopher Ruck has published many arrangements of spirituals, Christmas carols, and musical theater songs for vocal soloists.
About the Hymns:
O Come, all Ye Faithful
The original text of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” has been from attributed to various groups and individuals, including St. Bonaventure in the 13th century or King John IV of Portugal in the 17th, though it was more commonly believed that the text was written by an order of monks, the Cistercian, German, Portuguese and Spanish orders having, at various times, been given credit.
The original text consisted of four Latin verses, and it was with these that the hymn was originally published. John Francis Wade (1711=1786) had written the music and the hymn in Latin in 1744, and was first published in 1751. The Abbé Jean-François-Étienne Borderies wrote an additional three verses in the 18th century; these are normally printed as the third to fifth of seven verses, while another, anonymous, additional Latin verse is rarely printed. The text has been translated innumerable times, but the most used version today is the English "O Come, All Ye Faithful". This is a combination of one of Frederick Oakeley's translations of the original four verses and William Thomas Brooke's of the three additional ones, which was first published in Murray's Hymnal in 1852. Oakeley originally titled the song “Ye Faithful, approach ye” when it was sung at his Margaret Church in Marylebone before it was altered to its current form.
O come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant,
O Come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him, Born the King of angels;
God of God, Light of Light,
Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb;
Very God, Begotten not created.
Sing, choirs of angels, Sing in exultation;
Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above!
Glory to God, In the highest;
Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, Born this happy morning;
Jesu, to Thee be glory given;
Word of the Father, Now in flesh appearing.
See how the shepherds, Summoned to His cradle,
Leaving their flocks, draw nigh to gaze;
We too will thither Bend our hearts' oblations
There shall we see Him, His Eternal Father's
Everlasting Brightness now veiled under flesh;
God shall we find there, a Babe in infant clothing;
Father eternal, Thine eternal splendour
Now veiled in flesh our eyes shall see:
God as an infant, swaddling clothes about him.
Child, for us sinners Poor and in the manger,
We would embrace Thee, with love and awe;
Who would not love Thee, Loving us so dearly?
Lo! Star-led chieftains, Magi, Christ adoring,
Offer Him frankincense and gold and myrrh;
We to the Christ-child, Bring our hearts oblations:
O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.
Angels We Have Heard on High
"Angels We Have Heard on High" is a Christmas carol of French origin. The song commemorates the story of the birth of Jesus Christ found in the Gospel of Luke, in which shepherds outside Bethlehem encounter a multitude of angels singing and praising the newborn child. People began to chant the phrase "Gloria in excelsis Deo" in Christmas Eve worship services as early as 130 A.D. In medieval times, French shepherds had a Christmas Eve tradition of shouting "Gloria in excelsis Deo" to each other as they watched over their sheep flocks on their respective hills in southern France. A Latin chorale version may have inspired the traditional French Christmas carol 'Les Anges dans nos Campagnes,' which Edward Shippen Barnes used in the 1800s to arrange the first version of 'Angels We Have Heard on High'. The most common English version that was translated in 1862 by James Chadwick, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, northeast England. 'Angels We Have Heard on High' was first published in English as part of an 1862 book called Crown of Jesus Music. But the version that has become popular worldwide was published later, in 1916, in the book Carols Old and Carols New.
Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o’er the plains,
And the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains,
Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong?
What the gladsome tidings be which inspire your heavenly song?
Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Come to Bethlehem and see Christ whose birth the angels sing;
Come adore on bended knee, Christ the Lord, the newborn King.
Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
See him in a manger laid, whom the choirs of angels praise;
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, while our hearts in love we raise.
Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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