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:
Toccata on "What Wondrous Love is This" - Brenda Portman
(c.2022, Sacred Music Press)
What Wondrous Love Is This is sometimes described as a "white spiritual", from the American South. Its text was first published in 1811, during the Second Great Awakening, and its melody is derived from an English popular ballad. The hymn's lyrics were first published in Lynchburg, Virginia in the c. 1811 camp meeting songbook A General Selection of the Newest and Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs Now in Use. The lyrics may also have been printed, in a slightly different form, in the 1811 book Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Original and Selected published in Lexington, Kentucky. In most early printings, the hymn's text was attributed to an anonymous author, though the 1848 hymnal The Hesperian Harp attributes the text to a Methodist pastor from Oxford, Georgia named Alexander Means. Camp meeting attendees during the Second Great Awakening would sing the hymns printed in these hymnals to a variety of popular melodies, including "The Ballad of Captain Kidd", which was well known at the time; this is likely how the text and melody came to be paired. The text and melody were first published together in The Southern Harmony, a book of shape note hymns compiled by William Walker. In 1966, the United Methodist Hymnal became the first standard hymnal to incorporate “What Wondrous Love Is This”. Today it is a widely known hymn included in many hymnals.
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down beneath God's righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb Who is the great 'I am';
While millions join the theme, I will sing.
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on.
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I'll sing on.
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.
About the Piano Music:
There in God's Garden - Jeremy Young
(c.1987, MorningStar Music Publishers)
We owe the English text of “There in God’s Garden” to Erik Routley, who prepared this unrhymed loose paraphrase from a prose translation of the Hungarian hymn “Paradicsomnak te szép élo Fája” for inclusion in the 1974 edition of Cantate Domino. Routley served as chair of the editorial board for that ecumenical hymnal published by the World Council of Churches, and he was undoubtedly instrumental in seeing to it that there was at least one example of a hymn from Hungary, along with translations in German and English. Dieter Trautwein worked with Vilmos Gyöngyösi to prepare the German text, which is more a translation. Routley’s text is so different from the original that it could be better considered his own text, inspired by the Hungarian hymn. Yet, it is a powerful link to a tradition about which little is known; at the time, Routley wrote that this hymn “is just about all that is yet available from Hungarian Protestantism.” We still have little access to translations of Hungarian hymn texts, but “There in God’s Garden,” is a wonderful example, made especially memorable by a recent tune by American composer K. Lee Scott.
The text was written for Good Friday by Pécselyi Király Imre (c.1585–c.1641), who began a career as a school teacher in Komarom (now in Slovakia) before studying theology in Heidelberg (1609–1612). In 1615 he became a pastor in a Reformed church in Komárom, later in Érsekújvár.3 He also served as dean of the tractus (like a classis or presbytery). He wrote several studies, including a popular introduction to rhetoric, a catechism dedicated to the Protestant sol- diers in Érsekújvár, and a theological treaty. He also wrote several hymns that are still included in Hungar- ian hymnals, including this one, Paradiczomnak te szép elö fája (“You beautiful living tree of Paradise”).
The scriptural sweep of the text is breathtaking, moving from Genesis to Revelation in the opening two lines. The text begins with the reference to the Garden of Eden, with all kinds of trees that were pleas- ing to the eye and good for food, with “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden” (Gen. 2:9). The very next line takes us to the last chapter of the Bible, in a description not of a garden, but of a city, with the tree of life somehow on either side of the river of the water of life, “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2).
K. Lee Scott wrote the tune SHADES MOUNTAIN for Routley’s text as a commission for the Episcopal Churches in the Diocese of Alabama for their Year of Evangelism in 1995. He named the tune after the mountain on which he lives near Birmingham, Alabama; Shades Mountain is the first ripple on the bottom of the Appalachian chain. He remembers studying Routley’s texts (“because Routley had such an eye for texts”) and being drawn especially to this one because it was so panoramic. In fact, its very panoramic scope makes it difficult to decide where to place it in a hymnal. Scott remembers late at night sitting on the organ bench with just the organ light on in little Altadena Valley Presbyterian Church, walking back and forth from the organ bench down the aisles, as the tune gradually emerged out of his meditating on the text.
There in God's garden stands the Tree of wisdom,
whose leaves hold forth the healing of the nations.
Tree of all knowledge, Tree of all compassion, Tree of all beauty.
Its name is Jesus, name that says, 'Our Saviour!'
There on its branches see the scars of suffering;
see where the tendrils of our human selfhood feed on its life-blood.
Thorns not its own are tangled in its foliage;
our greed has starved it; our despite has choked it.
Yet look, it lives! Its grief has not destroyed it, nor fire consumed it.
See how its branches reach to us in welcome;
hear what the voice says, 'Come to me, ye weary!
Give me your sickness, give me all your sorrow. I will give blessing.'
This is my ending; this my resurrection;
into your hands, Lord, I commit my spirit.
This have I searched for; now I can possess it. This ground is holy!
All heaven is singing, 'Thanks to Christ, whose Passion
offers in mercy healing, strength and pardon.
All men and nations, take it, take it freely!' Amen! My Master!
Jeremy Young has been involved in church music since his time as a graduate student at Catholic University, where he was awarded the masters degree in liturgical music in 1976. During that time and for thirteen years afterwards, he was the music director at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in the District of Columbia. His work with children's theater music began in 1974 when he joined the Blue Sky Puppet Theater, a troupe of puppeteers who specialize in bringing value-oriented messages to school students.
About the Choral Music:
Lamb of God, What Wondrous Love - Allan Robert Petker
(c.1989, Gentry Publications)
Allan Robert Petker (b. 1955) is a published composer and arranger with over 250 published works. His conducting books, "Choral Questions and Answers" Vols. I, II, III, IV and V, have become staples in school curriculum and for secondary resource material. He has written original scores for live performance and has penned a number of original T.V. commercials which have appeared on the CNBC network. Allan holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from California State University at Northridge in music, specializing in viola (BA), voice and choral conducting (MA). Petker has been involved in the choral music publishing industry for many years. In 1977 he became the Director of Publications for Fred Bock Publishing Group. In 1989 he established his own company, Pavane Publishing, and later added John Rich Music Press.
As a conductor, Allan frequently serves as a guest clinician or conductor for publishers, choral societies, church festivals, state honor choirs and colleges. He formed Consort Chorale, in the San Francisco Bay area. He was the Conductor and Artistic Director for the e, and is the conductor of the Los Cancioneros Master Chorale. Petker has been a clinician in two summer church music conferences at Lake Tahoe, one for church choir singers, "Summer Sing" and another for church choir directors, "Tuning @ Tahoe." As an instrumentalist, Allan has done freelance studio work and occasional concert playing. You may even catch him playing jazz violin and viola at a local pub, one of his favorite things to do.
Petker has set this text to the music of the “Pavane” by Gabriel Faure. Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a small boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the Ecole Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, Fauré was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. His harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.
Lamb of God, what wondrous love, what woundrous love, O my soul,
Love, such love, that Thou shouldst die, that Thou, for me, shouldst die.
Lord of Grace what matchless love, what matchless love, O my soul.
Son of God, Thou loving sacrifice, Thou loving sacrifice for me.
Here, O Lord, am I, fearful, sinful man, guilty and condemned,
Thy death is surely mine.
Cross of God, I would to turn away, yet Love it bids me stay, O my soul.
Can it be the very death I fear is that which draws me near, Lord, to Thee?
Lamb of God, Thou died for me. Lamb of God, Thou died for me.
Lamb of God, what wondrous love.
The Lord's Peace - Aaron Zinter
(c.2000, Abingdon Press)
Aaron M. Zinter, Director of Music at Oak Grove Lutheran School, is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, and received his Master of Music degree in Choral Directing from Illinois State University in Normal, IL.
He is also director of the Master Chorale of Fargo-Moorhead.
As Director of Music at Oak Grove, he conducts the Concert Choir, Chapel Choir, 7th and 8th Grade Choir, 6th Grade General Music, AP Music Theory, Madrigals, Carolers and individual voice and guitar lessons. He directs and manages the annual 10-day Oak Grove Concert Choir Tour across the United States and Canada. He also prepares solo and ensemble members for academic competition, for which Oak Grove has earned 26 Outstanding Performances in the past six years at the North Dakota State Music Contest.
As the former Director of Music Ministries at Second Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, IL with a membership of 1500, he conducted twelve K-12 and adult choirs while serving as department head of seven musicians. While there, he directed and managed the Chancel Choir United States Mission Tour across 35 states and Canada. In March 2005, he led a 10-day choral mission trip to Northeastern Brazil with eight outstanding youth singers.
Mr. Zinter has composed and arranged original music for worship and special occasions, published choral works with Abingdon Press in Nashville, TN, and received an Outstanding Performance rating at the North Dakota State Music Contest with the Oak Grove Madrigals the past six years in a row. Mr. Zinter recorded four CDs with Chanson, a professional male acapella ensemble, and performed with Chanson in a Master Class with the King’s Singers. He has also been a volunteer facilitator of leadership training activities at Timber Pointe Outdoor Center in Illinois for youth and adults with disabilities.
The text of “The Lord’s Peace” is from John 14:27.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you;
not as the world gives do I give to you.
Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Amen.
About the Hymn:
Amazing Grace
"Amazing Grace" was written by the English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725–1807). With the message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of sins committed and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.
Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction, but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was drafted into the Royal Navy, and after leaving the service became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel so severely that he called out to God for mercy, a moment that marked his spiritual conversion. However, he continued his slave trading career until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether and began studying Christian theology.
Ordained in the Church of England in 1764, Newton became curate of Olney, Buckinghamshire, where he began to write hymns with poet William Cowper. "Amazing Grace" was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year's Day of 1773. It was first printed in 1779 in Newton and Cowper's Olney Hymns, but settled into relative obscurity in England. In the United States however, "Amazing Grace" was used extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. It has been associated with more than 20 melodies, but in 1835 it was joined to a tune named "New Britain" to which it is most frequently sung today.
The melody sung to John Newton’s 1779 hymn “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound” is, without a doubt, America’s best-loved hymn tune. Unlike Lowell Mason’s “Nearer, my God, to thee,” the “Amazing grace” tune is of unknown origin. It first appeared in print in 1829 without any composer attribution, and there were thought to be no earlier surviving instances of the tune. However, an 1828 manuscript by Lucius Chapin (1760-1842), who was famous in his day as a hymn tune writer, raises the possibility that Lucius was its composer.
Lucius and his brother Amzi (1768-1835) were among the first and most influential composers to harmonize American folk hymns, using principles they had absorbed from New England and English church music, and perhaps from the oral tradition as well. They also composed hymns in a similar style. The brothers came from a large, musical Massachusetts family. Their mother was an exceptional singer, though she did not read music, and two of their brothers also became singing masters. Lucius and Amzi moved south and west as young men and taught singing schools throughout their lives. In 1828, Lucius was living in central Kentucky and Amzi in western Pennsylvania. The 1828 manuscript was mentioned in passing in James Scholten’s 1972 dissertation on Lucius and Amzi Chapin. On July 25, 1828, Lusius’ son Cephas died from typhus in Oxford, Ohio en route home to visit his parents. There are three tender expressions of paternal love and grief on the back of Cephas’ last letter penned there by Lucius, the tunes AMAZING GRACE and BRAINARD and a brief poem.
The familiar melody had a number of titles in its early publications: ST. MARY’S, GALLAHER, HARMONY GROVE (Shenandoah Harmony), NEW BRITAIN (Sacred Harp), and more. The one title it did not have was AMAZING GRACE, though that title was used for at least two other melodies. The tune wasn’t paired with Newton’s text until 1835. The great nineteenth-century scholar W.E. Chute (1832-1900) attributed the melody to the Chapins.
It is possible that NEW BRITAIN was added to the manuscript after 1828, or copied from a source that does not survive. However, the version here doesn’t exactly match any tune found, either published or in manuscript, in Nikos Pappas’ exhaustive index of over 60,000 early American hymn tunes (1700-1870). It is closest to the tune ST. MARY’S found in Shaw and Spilman’s Columbian Harmony (1829) [4]. Like Lucius, Shaw and Spilman lived in central Kentucky.
Even if Lucius were the first to notate the tune, the concept of “authorship” in this repertoire is difficult. Composers felt free to write arrangements of popular sacred or secular melodies in oral tradition and publish them, either as unattributed tunes or with their own names attached. They also made their own versions of tunes in books or manuscripts, appropriated and rearranged European classical music, and composed music from scratch in a folk idiom.
If Lucius didn’t compose NEW BRITAIN, then who did? The basic structure of the tune is ancient. NEW BRITAIN is a folk hymn—a sacred melody that existed, in some form, in oral tradition prior to being notated. It belongs to a recognized “tune family,” or group of tunes, sacred or secular, that share enough structure and melodic phrases that they seem to be descended from a common root. Other related tunes include Amzi Chapin’s TWENTY-FOURTH (written in the 1790s) and, more distantly, the African-American spiritual “Swing low, sweet chariot” (published in 1873, but definitely older). The folk hymn CONSOLATION (attributed to the Chapins when first published in 1812) has the same contour, but is in the minor mode. However, just because a tune is a folk hymn doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an originator for a particular variant of the tune family. There were at least ten slightly different versions of NEW BRITAIN written down from 1828 to 1840 in Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Three of these were from central Kentucky. This argues for oral transmission, but the fact that each version differs from the others only in the amount of ornamentation notated suggests that one person, perhaps an itinerant preacher or singing master, was the “vector” that spread the tune through this area in the late 1820s to 1830s.
Another interesting story, though tangential, is the Chapin family’s connection to the antislavery movement. If you’ve read the story of John Newton (the author of the words to “Amazing Grace”), you know that he was the captain of a slave ship who later rejected his past and advocated against slavery. The Chapin family lived in central Kentucky and some of their neighbors owned slaves, though there weren’t large plantations in the area. However, the diary of Cephas’ sister Harriet survives, and she was profoundly antislavery, though as a woman she didn’t have power to make decisions about her household. She thanks God that her father is “an Emancipator.” I don’t know if that means that he had slaves and set them free or if he didn’t believe in slavery and never owned slaves. Harriet considered it her duty to educate the two young African-Americans who worked for the family, an act that would have been illegal in many states. Harriet died in 1827, just a year before Cephas.
In general, the early revivals in Kentucky were far more democratic than were churches later in the 19th century. Both white women and African-Americans—even slaves—were called on to testify and even preach, and everyone participated in group singing, which was one of the hallmarks of these revivals. So the fact that this particular tune, whoever wrote it, is often associated with black spirituals and related to “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is not surprising, as it was first popular in a mixed environment.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see.
Shout, shout for glory, Shout, shout aloud for glory;
Brother, sister, mourner, All shout glory hallelujah.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved;
how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come:
'tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me, his word my hope secures;
he will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease:
I shall possess, within the veil, a life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine;
but God, who called me here below, will be forever mine.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’d first begun.
It is Well with My Soul
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 VILLE DE HAVRE to accompany the lyrics. The song was published by Bliss and Sankey, in 1876.
Original lyrics:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for 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!
For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life,
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of 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,
A song in the night, oh my soul!
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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