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; most of it is copied from other websites 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:
Versillos de sexto tono para el Sanctus - Juan Cabanilles
This series of versets was written to serve as an introduction to the singing of the Sanctus in the Roman mass. Juan Bautista José Cabanilles (1644-1712) was a Spanish organist and composer at Valencia Cathedral. He is considered by many to have been the greatest Spanish Baroque composer. He probably began his musical career as a singer in a choir of a local church. Later he studied to become a priest in the cathedral at Valencia, which included lessons in music. In 1665, at 20 years of age, he was named the assistant organist of the cathedral. A year later, upon the death of his predecessor, he became the principal organist. In1668, he was ordained a priest. He kept his position as principal organist for 45 years. From 1675 to 1677, he also took charge of teaching the children in the cathedral choir. Many of Cabanilles's compositions are virtuosic and advanced for their time, but generally, he is in the Spanish tradition of keyboard music following 16th century patterns. The majority of his manuscripts are kept in the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona. Numerous compositions for organ (tientos, toccatas, passacaglias, and other works) have survived, as well as a number of works for choirs of up to 13 parts.
Sanctus. Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dominus Deus Sabaoth!
Pleni suni coeli et terra gloria tua.
Osanna in excelsis.
Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of Sabaoth.
Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
About the Piano Music:
Faith - Mark Hayes
(c. 2018, Lorenz Publishing Co.)
This freely-composed prelude was written by Mark Hayes, 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:
It is Well with My Soul - Patti Drennan
(c.2013, Alfred Music)
For more than a century, the tragic story of one man has given hope to countless thousands who have lifted their voices to sing, It Is Well With My Soul. Horatio Spafford (1828-1888) was a wealthy Chicago lawyer with a thriving legal practice, a beautiful home, a wife, four daughters and a son. He was also a devout Christian and faithful student of the Scriptures. His circle of friends included Dwight L. Moody, Ira Sankey and various other well-known Christians of the day.
At the very height of his financial and professional success, Horatio and his wife Anna suffered the tragic loss of their young son. Shortly thereafter on October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed almost every real estate investment that Spafford had.
In 1873, Spafford scheduled a boat trip to Europe in order to give his wife and daughters a much needed vacation and time to recover from the tragedy. He also went to join Moody and Sankey on an evangelistic campaign in England. Spafford sent his wife and daughters ahead of him while he remained in Chicago to take care of some unexpected last minute business. Several days later he received notice that his family's ship had encountered a collision. All four of his daughters drowned; only his wife had survived.
With a heavy heart, Spafford boarded a boat that would take him to his grieving Anna in England. It was on this trip that he penned those now famous words, When sorrow like sea billows roll; it is well, it is well with my soul..
Philip Bliss (1838-1876), composer of many songs including Hold the Fort, Let the Lower Lights be Burning, and Jesus Loves Even Me, was so impressed with Spafford's life and the words of his hymn that he composed a beautiful piece of music to accompany the lyrics. The song was published by Bliss and Sankey, in 1876.
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
“It is well, it is well, with my soul.”
It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part, but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
“Even so”, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul.
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Patti Drennan taught Choral Music for twenty-eight years in Norman, OK public pchools and was awarded the coveted “Director of Distinction Award” given yearly by the Oklahoma Choral Directors Association.An active composer and arranger, Drennan has published over 425 anthems. She has served as a clinician for school and church workshops, guest director at numerous churches, and adjudicator for choral contests in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas. Drennan retired from teaching in 2004 in order to compose and stay active as a clinician and workshop presenter. For almost ten years she served as Music and Worship Arts Director at First Baptist Church, Norman.
About the Hymns:
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.
Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father.
There is no shadow of turning with thee.
Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not.
As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
sun, moon, and stars in their courses above,
join with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love. [Refrain]
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow;
blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside! [Refrain]
Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand hath provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
A Charge to Keep I Have
As is the case with hymns by Charles Wesley, “A charge to keep I have” is grounded in Scripture. In this case, Leviticus 8:36 is the primary source: “Keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not” (KJV). The hymn was included in Short Hymns on Select Passages of Holy Scripture (1762), a massive two-volume collection of 2,030 hymns based on biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation.
Wesley scholars F. Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge propose in their commentary on the important Wesley hymnbook A Collection of Hymns for Use of the People Called Methodists (1780) that Charles Wesley (1708-1788) based his text on Mathew Henry’s Commentary on Leviticus. Henry notes: “We have every one of us a charge to keep, an eternal God to glorify, an immortal soul to provide for, needful duty to be done, our generation to serve; and it must be our daily care to keep this charge, for it is the charge of the Lord our Master, who will shortly call us to an account about it, and it is our peril if we neglect it. Keep it ‘that ye die not’; it is death, eternal death, to betray the truth we are charged with.”
This hymn is an unequivocal call to commitment to follow the Master and to fulfill our vocation through service. The language is unambiguous. Our calling is to save a “never dying soul” and “fit it for the sky”—that is for eternal life with Christ. This eschatological goal is central to Charles Wesley’s hymns: Our goal is heaven. In the second stanza, we find that we fulfill this calling by our service to “the present age.” Fulfilling this calling requires us to engage “all [our] powers.” The third stanza is a petition that God should “arm [us] with jealous care” as we live in God’s sight. Wesley is not afraid to offer a stern admonition that we will one day be required to give “a strict account” of our activities in pursuit of our calling. The final stanza is perhaps the most uncompromising. The singer begins with the imperative verb—a petition to the unnamed Holy Spirit—to “Help me to watch and pray . . . ” Rather than suggesting a positive reward for faithfulness, Wesley warns us of the outcome “if [we] our trust betray”: we “shall forever die.”
The tune BOYLSTON was composed by the famous New England music educator Lowell Mason (1792-1872) and was first found in his The Choir, or Union Collection of Church Music (1832). Dr. Lowell Mason (the degree was conferred by the University of New York) is justly called the father of American church music; and by his labors were founded the germinating principles of national musical intelligence and knowledge, which afforded a soil upon which all higher musical culture has been founded. To him we owe some of our best ideas in religious church music, elementary musical education, music in the schools, the popularization of classical chorus singing, and the art of teaching music upon the Inductive or Pestalozzian plan. More than that, we owe him no small share of the respect which the profession of music enjoys at the present time as contrasted with the contempt in which it was held a century or more ago. In fact, the entire art of music, as now understood and practiced in America, has derived advantage from the work of this great man.
Lowell Mason was born in Massachusetts, and from childhood he manifested an intense love for music and devoted all his spare time and effort to improving himself. In his twenties, he had the opportunity to study music with F. L. Abel and began composing. His first work was a collection of church music, which contained many of his own compositions. It was published in 1822 as The Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music. Mason's name was omitted from the publication at his own request, which he thus explains, "I was then a bank officer in Savannah, and did not wish to be known as a musical man, as I had not the least thought of ever making music a profession." The book soon sprang into universal popularity, being at once adopted by the singing schools of New England. It ran seventeen editions. On realizing this success, Mason determined to accept an invitation to come to Boston and enter upon a musical career. He became a member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and was also appointed director of music at the Hanover, Green, and Park Street churches, to alternate six months with each congregation.
In 1827, Lowell Mason became president and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society. It was the beginning of a career that was to win for him as has been already stated the title of "The Father of American Church Music." Although this may seem rather a bold claim it is not too much under the circumstances. Mason might have been considered average had he lived in Europe, but in America he was well in advance of his surroundings. It was not too high praise (in spite of Mason's very simple style) when Dr. Jackson wrote of his song collection: "It is much the best book I have seen published in this country, and I do not hesitate to give it my most decided approbation," or that the great contrapuntist, Hauptmann, should say the harmonies of the tunes were dignified and church-like and that the counterpoint was good, plain, singable and melodious. Charles C. Perkins gives a few of the reasons why Lowell Mason was the very man to lead American music as it then existed. He says, "First and foremost, he was not so very much superior to the members as to be unreasonably impatient at their shortcomings. Second, he was a born teacher, who, by hard work, had fitted himself to give instruction in singing. Third, he was one of themselves, a plain, self-made man, who could understand them and be understood of them."
The personality of Dr. Mason was of great use to the art and appreciation of music in this country. He was of strong mind, dignified manners, sensitive, yet sweet and engaging. Prof. Horace Mann, one of the great educators of that day, said he would walk fifty miles to see and hear Mr. Mason teach if he could not otherwise have that advantage. Dr. Mason visited a number of the music schools in Europe, studied their methods, and incorporated the best things in his own work. He founded the Boston Academy of Music. The aim of this institution was to reach the masses and introduce music into the public schools. Not only Boston benefited directly by this enthusiastic teacher's instruction, as he was constantly traveling to other societies in distant cities and helping their work. Iin his later years, he went as far as Rochester, where he trained a chorus of five hundred voices, many of them teachers, and some of them coming long distances to study under him. Before 1810, he had developed his idea of "Teachers' Conventions," and, as in these he had representatives from different states, he made musical missionaries for almost the entire country. He left behind him no less than fifty volumes of musical collections, instruction books, and manuals.
A charge to keep I have, A God to glorify,
A never dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky.
To serve the present age, My calling to fulfill:
O may it all my powers engage To do my Master's will!
Arm me with jealous care, As in Thy sight to live;
And O Thy servant, Lord, prepare A strict account to give!
Help me to watch and pray, And on Thyself rely,
Assured if I my trust betray, I shall forever die.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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