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:
Meditation on "St. Flavian" - Brenda Portman
(c.2019, Lorenz Publishing)
“In Sweet Communion, Lord, with Thee” This text is a paraphrase of the final segment of a wisdom psalm, Psalm 73:23-28. The versification of the text (usually one biblical verse per stanza) is a revision of that found in the 1912 Psalter. "In Sweet Communion" sets forth the joy of walking closely with God, following his directives, shunning earthly distractions, and experiencing his comfort and power. The final stanza proclaims the wisdom theme of the psalm: "To live apart from God is death; 'tis good his face to seek.”
William U. Butcher (1829-1910) wrote this hymn in 1860. Except for the fact that he had some association with the Oliver Ditson Music Company, no information is available about Butcher.
The original form of the ST. FLAVIAN was first published in The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London: John Day, 1562), which was the completion of the English psalter by Sternhold & Hopkins and others. The composer of the tune is unknown. The original, full version was intended for Psalm 132, a Common Meter Double text. The paraphraser of Psalm 132, “Remember David’s troubles, Lord,” was John Marckant. The tune was halved to suit Common Meter texts, starting with The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London: W. Barley, ca. 1598), where it was set to Psalm 138, “Thee will I praise with my whole heart,” a paraphrase which had first appeared only six years earlier in Thomas Est’s publication of The Whole Booke of Psalmes. The two-part arrangement (tenor and bass) was by G. Farnaby. The change in the third note of the melody from 5 to 7 can be traced as early as Thomas Ravenscroft’s The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London: Company of Stationers, 1621); Ravenscroft used the full CMD version of the tune for Psalm 132. Many hymnals use a harmonization based on the one by Richard Redhead (1820–1901), from his Church Hymn Tunes Ancient & Modern (London: I. Masters, 1853). Redhead’s arrangement was adopted into the first edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861), with a few harmonic changes and the reduction of most whole notes to halves. The tune was called REDHEAD NO. 29 and set to four different texts. In the revised edition of 1875, the tune was renamed ST. FLAVIAN, probably in recognition of Redhead not being the author; in the index it was credited to “Barber’s Psalm Tunes, 1686,” a reference to Abraham Barber’s A Book of Psalm Tunes in Four Parts. The name is apparently in honor of Flavian of Constantinople (5th century).
In sweet communion, Lord, with you I constantly abide;
my hand you hold within your own to keep me near your side.
Your counsel through my earthly way shall guide me and control,
and then to glory afterward you will receive my soul.
Whom have I, Lord, in heav'n but you, to whom my thoughts aspire?
And, having you, what more on earth is there I can desire?
Though flesh and heart should faint and fail, the Lord will ever be
the strength and portion of my heart, my God eternally.
Originally from Grafton, Wisconsin, Brenda Portman (b. 1980) is the Resident Organist at Hyde Park Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Executive Director of the church’s organ concert series. She is organ instructor at Xavier University and holds a DMA in organ performance from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. Portman is active as a composer of organ and choral music and has won several awards for her compositions.
Lord, You Are My Dwelling Place - Robert Powell
(c.2019, Lorenz Publishing)
Robert Powell (b. 1932) is an American composer, organist, and choir director. Powell earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Louisiana State University with a focus on organ and composition. He studied with Alec Wyton at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and he was also Wyton's assistant at The Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. For three years (1965–1968), he served St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire) as Director of Music. Later, Powell was Director of Music and Organist of Christ Church (Episcopal) of Greenville, South Carolina from 1968 to 2003. He has composed in nearly all genres common to church music, including anthems, service music, hymn concertatos, organ music, music for handbell choir, and large-scale oratorios. Powell's conservative, neo-Romantic style stems from his practical approach to composition. According to Powell himself, he writes for "choirs of twenty-five because that's what most choirs are. When you come right down to it, most choirs are not of cathedral ability or size. My pieces are all practical things and useful for specific occasions." His publications appear in The Hymnal 1982 as well as in the catalogs of most of the significant American publishers of church music. According to publisher GIA, Powell is "a composer whose output bridges denominational boundaries and who is able to serve the larger Church. He has made ecumenical sharing a reality–-and always with a genteel touch." Powell is an active member of the Association of Anglican Musicians and is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists.
Powell’s “Lord, You are My Dwelling Place” is freely composed and inspired by Psalm 90:
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
About the Piano Music:
I've Got the Joy - Pepper Choplin
(c.2008, Lorenz Pub.)
"Joy In My Heart," sometimes titled "I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy" is a popular Christian song often sung around the campfire and during scouting events. It is often included in Gospel music and a cappella concerts, songbooks, and Christian children's songbooks. The song was written by George William Cooke. Cooke was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England in 1884 and died in Jamestown, New York in 1951. He was the author of "Joy in My Heart" which was copyrighted in 1925 (but not renewed). At that time he was living in Wilmington, Delaware. He was a minister and associated with a group called Gospel Crusaders which was associated with the Methodist Church. He ran the Delmarva Camp, a Methodist camp that held gospel meetings and revivals. He was later minister of Methodist churches in Buffalo and Rochester New York. As a young man, he twice circled the globe in evangelistic tours with Commissioner Samuel L. Brengle of the Salvation Army.
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy Down in my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart, (where?) Down in my heart.
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy Down in my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart to stay.
I've got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus Down in my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart, (where?) Down in my heart.
I've got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus Down in my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart to stay.
I've got the peace that passes understanding Down in my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart, (where?) Down in my heart.
I've got the peace that passes understanding Down in my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart to stay.
I've got the wonderful love of my Redeemer down of my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart, (where?) Down my heart.
I've got the wonderful love of my Redeemer down my heart, (where?)
Down in my heart to stay.
You shall love the Lord your God With all your heart and soul and strength,
Heart and soul and strength, Heart and soul and strength.
You shall love the Lord your God With all your heart and soul and strength,
Heart and soul and strength always.
Pepper Choplin is a full-time composer, conductor and humorist. He has gained a reputation as one of the most creative writers in church music today. With a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, he went on to earn a Master of Music degree in composition from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. With a diverse musical background, Choplin incorporates varied styles such as folk, Gospel, classical, and jazz. His published work includes over 280 anthems for church and school choir with 19 church cantatas and a book of piano arrangements. In 2013, he made his Carnegie Hall debut in a joint concert with Joseph Martin. Since then, he has twice premiered his cantatas at Lincoln Center with 200 voices and orchestra. He also visits many schools, churches and conferences to conduct and to entertain. Beyond his choral music, Choplin has produced two humorous CDs and an inspirational recording. Currently, he attends Greystone Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he served as music minister for twenty-two years.
About the Vocal Solo Music:
Open the Eyes of My Heart - Carol Tornquist
(c.1997, Integrity's Hosanna! Music)
"Open the Eyes of My Heart" is a contemporary Christian song by Paul Baloche. The lyrics are based on Ephesians 1:18. The song was originally recorded by Paul Baloche, and first appeared on his album Open the Eyes of My Heart, released in the year 2000.
A prolific songwriter and inspired praise leader, Paul Baloche has written or co-written more than 120 recorded worship songs. His experiences as a worship leader fuel Paul’s creative expression. He’s led worship in a variety of locales including Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, not to mention his home church, Community Christian Fellowship in Lindale, Texas, where he serves as praise and worship pastor. Among the most moving of his songs is “Open the Eyes of My Heart.”
“Of all the songs that I’ve written, it’s amazed me how people have responded to this one so quickly,” says Paul. “I’ve gotten more e-mails and calls and letters and responses from churches saying, ‘This is the theme of our church this year,’ or ‘This is the theme of our conference,’ or ‘This is the cry of our hearts.’ It’s great hearing people resonate with that same desire to say, ‘I’ve been in religion a long time and that’s not enough. I want to know Him. I want to see God. I want to wake up each day and be more aware of Your presence in my life. I want to see Your kingdom in the midst of this world, so I can be a part of it and I can do my part.’”
Paul says the song was inspired in part by Ephesians 1:18. “The Apostle Paul was writing a letter to the Ephesians and he says, ‘I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened.’ That verse stirred in my heart. One morning, while playing during a ministry time at my church, I began to sing that phrase over and over again: ‘Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart.’ The whole song pretty much rolled off my tongue while prayerfully playing my guitar and singing out to Him. It really is a simple song that reflected the sincere prayer of my heart.” He admits the song was also influenced by his teaching experiences. “For years, I’ve taught at these worship conferences on Biblical worship and Biblical expressions of worship,” he says. “It occurred to me that so often we’re teaching the externals. In Psalm 95 it says, ‘Come let’s sing for joy. Let’s shout out loud. Let’s kneel in worship. Let’s clap our hands.’ That’s all neat, but I began to realize you can teach externals, but unless something is happening from the inside out, it’s just really a form. It’s like a cloud without rain.”
This arrangement is by Carol Tornquist, who graduated from State University of New York with a degree in music education and taught vocal music in elementary and high schools, as well as the local Yamaha Music School. She has been editing and arranging Christian music since 1975, and serves as director of music at St. Matthias Episcopal Church, Nashville.
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, Open the eyes of my heart -
I want to see You, I want to see You.
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, Open the eyes of my heart -
I want to see You, I want to see You.
To see You high and lifted up, Shining in the light of Your glory,
Lord, pour out Your power and love as we sing, “Holy, holy, holy.”
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, Open the eyes of my heart -
I want to see You, I want to see You.
You are high and lifted up, And You’re shining in the light of Your glory,
Lord, pour out Your power and love as we sing, “Holy, holy, holy.
Holy, holy, holy.” You are holy, holy, holy.
I want to see You, I want to see You.
Open my eyes, I want to see You.
About the Hymns:
There’s Within My Heart a Melody
Luther Burgess Bridgers (1884-1948) was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Born in North Carolina, he attended Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. Though he did not graduate, he was the pastor of congregations in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Georgia. In addition to pastorates, he served as an evangelist in the southern United States and abroad, including mission activities in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Russia.
At first glance, this hymn appears to be a quintessential example of a song of amazing faith born out of tragedy. Indeed, there are several famous examples of such hymns. For example, Thomas A. Dorsey's "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"was composed in 1932 shortly after his wife's death in childbirth followed by the death of the infant. Horatio G. Spafford wrote "It Is Well With My Soul" after his four daughters were tragically lost at sea in 1873. If one visits Internet sources, various heart-rending accounts exist about "There's within my heart," some with immense detail of the events surrounding the creation of this hymn. It is common for some writers about hymns to fill in the gaps in a story with imagination rather than fact. Scholars agree that Bridgers experienced an immense loss in his life. While he was preaching a revival at Middlesboro, Kentucky, Bridgers left his wife and three small sons with her parents in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. At the conclusion of the revival, March 26, 1911, he received a call that his wife, Sarah, and all three sons, ages five, three, and seven months, had lost their lives in a fire.
The date of the tragic fire -- March 26, 1911 -- is crucial because numerous writers have attempted to link the composition of the gospel song with this event. However, as hymnologist William Reynolds has demonstrated, the song was penned the previous year in 1910. The hymn was first published in The Revival No. 61 (1910) by Charlie D. Tillman, a well-known publisher in Atlanta, Georgia. When Bridgers had finished the words, he picked out the melody on the piano, and his wife's sister wrote down the notes he played to complete the song.
The author draws upon a number of metaphors to describe the story of his redemption and the joy that Jesus brought to his life. His relationship with Jesus is intimate as Jesus "whispers" a melody "sweet and low" in his heart. The words of that melody are a conflation of two passages, "Fear not, I am with thee" (Isaiah 41:10) and "Peace, be still" from the account of Jesus' calming of the storm on the lake found in the synoptic gospels (Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:37-41; Luke 8:23-25). Composers of gospel songs are often less systematic about how they choose and develop scriptural allusions than other hymn writers.
Perhaps the best evidence that this hymn was not written as a response to a tragic event is internal to the hymn itself. Dorsey and Spafford both composed hymn texts and tunes that come from the sorrow of loss and work through their grief in a meaningful way. Bridgers' text and tune, if it had been written immediately following the death of his entire family, would certainly not follow a normal pattern of grief with its jaunty melody. One might assume under the circumstances that the composer was in denial. While indeed hymns are sometimes forged in the fires of tragedy, this appears not to have been case here. Bridgers remarried in 1914 and continued his long ministry until his retirement in Gainesville, Georgia, in 1945. This fact does not negate the popularity of this hymn and its appearance in a wide variety of hymnals and song collections. Of the fourteen songs written by Bridgers, this is the only hymn with wide circulation, appearing 150 times.
There's within my heart a melody; Jesus whispers sweet and low,
"Fear not, I am with you, peace, be still,” in all of life's ebb and flow.
All my life was wrecked by sin and strife, discord filled my heart with pain,
Jesus swept across the broken strings, stirred the slumbering chords again.
Though sometimes He leads through waters deep, trials fall across the way;
though sometimes the path seems rough and steep, see His footprints all the way.
Feasting on the riches of His grace, resting 'neath His sheltering wing,
always looking on His smiling face, that is why I shout and sing.
Soon He's coming back to welcome me far beyond the starry sky;
I shall wing my flight to worlds unknown, I shall reign with Him on high.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know,
fills my every longing, keeps me singing as I go.
Jesus, Lover of My Soul
“Jesus, lover of my soul” is perhaps one of the most personal hymns penned by Charles Wesley (1707-1788). This hymn is considered to be among Wesley’s greatest hymns. It demonstrates, among many other things, Charles Wesley’s vast knowledge of Biblical texts, classic literature, and other intellectual sources of his era. The apocryphal book, The Wisdom of Solomon, 11:23-26, provides the inspiration for this primary theme of this hymn: “But thou hast mercy upon all; for thou canst do all things, and winkest at the sins of men, because they should amend. For thou lovest all the things that are, and abhorrest nothing which thou hast made: for never wouldest thou have made any thing, if thou hadst hated it. And how could any thing have endured, if it had not been thy will? or been preserved, if not called by thee? But thou sparest all: for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls.”
Another possible source is Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471), who often commented on the nature of love. In The Imitation of Christ, for example, he states: “A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.” Another quote also addresses Jesus’ followers as “lovers”: “Jesus has now many lovers of the heavenly kingdom but few bearers of His cross.” Perhaps even more to the point is this statement: “Most mighty God of Israel, zealous Lover of faithful souls.”
The hymn was written shortly after Wesley’s conversion” in 1738. English Methodist literary scholar Richard Watson notes, “From the moment of its wonderful opening, ‘Jesu, lover. . .', on which the intimacy of ‘Jesu’ plays such a crucial part, this hymn proclaims itself as a work of unusual intensity.” Examples of this language of intimacy include: “let me to thy bosom fly” and “Thou, O Christ, art all I want,/more than all in thee I find. . .”. Wesley also draws from the Psalms:“safe unto the haven guide” (Psalm 107:30); “the shadow of thy wing” (Psalm 91:4); “Thou of life the fountain art. . .” (Psalm 36:9). He draws from English poet and diplomat Matthew Prior (1664-1721) with an image in the first stanza:
We weave the Chaplet, and We crown the Bowl;
and smiling see the nearer waters roll;
'Till the strong Gusts of raging Passion rise;
'Till the dire Tempest mingles Earth and Skies; . . .
The hymn was first published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740) with five stanzas. An omitted stanza further adds to intensity of this hymn:
Wilt thou not regard my call? Wilt thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sing, I faint, I fall! Lo, on thee I cast my care!
Reach me out thy gracious hand! While I of thy strength receive,
hoping against hope I stand, Dying, and behold I live!
The whole point of the hymn is the tender and loving presence of the Saviour in a world where the sinner feels helpless; and Charles Wesley has not been afraid to give intense expression to that love, and to the life which it brings.
“Jesus, lover of my soul” foreshadows famous hymns on a related theme including “Rock of Ages” (1776) by English Anglican turned Calvinist Augustus M. Toplady, and “Abide with me” (1847) by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte. Like these hymns, “Jesus, lover of my soul” has attracted a number of stories. Some have tried to connect the sea images in the hymn to the tumultuous voyage of the Wesley brothers to America in 1736. Rather than focusing on the circumstances surrounding the poem’s composition, there can be no doubt as to its influence and popularity on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1877), the great American preacher, stated: “I would rather have written this hymn of Wesley’s than to have the fame of all the kings that ever sat on earth.”
"Aberystwyth" is a hymn tune composed by Joseph Parry, written in 1876 and first published in 1879 in Edward Stephen's Ail Lyfr Tonau ac Emynau (Welsh for Second Book of Tunes and Hymns). Parry was at the time the first professor and head of the new department of music at the recently founded University College Wales, Aberystwyth, now called Aberystwyth University. The tune "Aberystwyth" has been the most popular setting for Charles Wesley's hymn "Jesus, Lover of My Soul”.
Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly,
while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high;
hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past;
safe into the haven guide, O receive my soul at last!
Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on thee;
leave, ah! leave me not alone, still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed, all my help from thee I bring;
cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing.
Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin;
let the healing streams abound; make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art; freely let me take of thee;
spring thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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