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:
Toccatina - Arthur Colinet
Arthur Colinet (1885-1956) was a blind French composer, organist of the Basilica of Saint-Nicolas in Nantes and the director of the music school for the blind in the same city. He wrote several short pieces for organ, among them this fun little Toccatina.
A toccata (from Italian toccare, "to touch") is a virtuoso piece of music, typically for keyboard, featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise rapid passages or sections. A toccatina is a shorter, often whimsical, version of this form.
About the Piano Music:
To Love You is to Live - Laurens Van Rooyen
Laurens van Rooyen (b.1935) is a Dutch pianist and composer. He composed many pieces for the piano and wrote the score for several Dutch films. He wrote two books on his experiences as a musician. He studied at the Utrecht Conservatory of Music, where he met with Herman van Veen. With him he founded in 1966 the Harlekijn Muziektheater. They wrote songs and performed together.
In 1976, he released his first solo album: Kaleidoskoop and continues to publish records with various record companies. He composed the score for Jos Stelling's Rembrandt fecit 1669, followed by Een vrouw als Eva (A Woman Like Eve), 1979, Lieve jongens (Dear Boys), 1980 and Een vlucht Regenwulpen (A Flight of Rainbirds), 1981.
Since the turn of the century Van Rooyen gives frequently piano recitals in the castles and coach houses along the river Vecht. He also performs for special occasions as anniversaries and jubilees. In 2004 he was commissioned a composition for the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the Cathedral of Utrecht. In 2014, Laurens van Rooyen received a royal decoration: Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
About the Vocal Solo Music:
In This Very Room - Ron Harris
Ronald Harris (b. 1941) is a composer, author, and arranger who lives in Los Angeles, Calif. He is probably best known for the song “In This Very Room”. Ron Harris wrote the following about the this song:
“Because there are now more than 350 recordings and over a million copies of “In This Very Room” in print, a great many people have wondered which room the song is about. In truth, the song will always be about whatever room it is sung in at any given moment. But the genesis of the song actually happened in a most unlikely place: a big old lonely hotel room at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana. I had been working in that very hotel as conductor for Carol Lawrence (Maria in West Side Story) for about a week. This particular night, after the show, I went back to my room and before going to bed I called home to my wife and children in Los Angeles to talk for a few minutes. During that conversation I really ached to be home with them. I fantasized crawling through the phone wire to magically be home with them in California.
After hanging up the phone, I turned off the lights and tried to go to sleep. I felt exceptionally lonely that night. I missed my family. Then, out of nowhere and in that pitch-dark room, the ideas of what became “In This Very Room”, came to me. And they came to me in the specific words that are now part of the song – with a heavy emphasis on "this VERY room". It was the word "very" that truly electrified me. I started thinking about what an awesome thing was happening in my VERY room in that VERY hotel. The word VERY enabled me to express, even to myself, how special I must be that, in the whole world; this was taking place in my VERY room. My loneliness vanished and I felt powerful and healed.
Well, being a songwriter, I was always on the alert to inspiring ideas. I knew then as I do now that any time words alone can do something like that to me, it was my job to ask if they could become a song. So I got out of bed in the total darkness and, without turning on a light, I found a pencil and wrote the first line of the song on some paper. I wrote in really large letters because I couldn't actually see anything in the dark. I got back in bed and fell asleep rather quickly, as I remember. My wife, Carol, arrived a couple of days later for a New Orleans weekend with me. We worked on the song at the piano in the hotel showroom. By the time she left for Los Angeles, the song was finished.
The song has never again been about my lonely hotel room. The song has its own life, its own ability to transform and inspire that no longer has anything to do with me at all. And that, I believe is why it has been so successful. Because whenever it is performed, due to the nature of the words, it is expressing something powerful and electrifying and entirely specific to the moment and the place. Its reach continues to amaze me."
In this very room there's quite enough love for one like me,
And in this very room there's quite enough joy for one like me,
And there's quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus ... is in this very room.
And in this very room there's quite enough love for all of us,
And in this very room there's quite enough joy for all of us,
And there's quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus ... is in this very room.
In this very room there's quite enough love for all the world,
And in this very room there's quite enough joy for all the world,
And there's quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus ... is in this very room.
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.
For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth over and around us lies.
For the wonder of each hour of the day and of the night,
hill and vale and tree and flower, sun and moon and stars of light,
For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind’s delight,
for the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight;
For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth, and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild,
For thy church, that evermore lifteth holy hands above,
offering up on every shore her pure sacrifice of love;
For Thyself, best gift divine, to the world so freely given,
for that great, great love of Thine, peace on earth, and joy in heaven.
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this, our hymn of grateful praise.
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise, this our sacrifice of praise.
The Gift of Love
Though I may speak with bravest fire,
And have the gift to all inspire,
And have not love; my words are vain
As sounding brass and hopeless gain.
Though I may give all I possess,
And striving so my love profess,
But not be given by love within,
The profit soon turns strangely thin.
Come, Spirit come, our hearts control.
Our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed.
By this we worship and are freed.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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