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.
We welcome Rev. Marianne Brown-Trigg from the Wesley Foundation to the pulpit today, and the Wesley Band to bring our special music.
About the Organ Music:
Recessional on "Azmon" - Edward Good
(c.2001, H. W.Gray, admin. by Warner Bros. Pub)
“O For a Thousand Tongues” was written by Charles Wesley in 1739 to commemorate his conversion on May 21, 1738. It was first published in the Wesleys' collection Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1740 under the title, For the Anniversary Day of One's Conversion. It has traditionally held a place of honor as the opening hymn in Methodist hymnals ever since Wesley's 1780 hymnal, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists.
Apparently the only publication of all original eighteen stanzas was in the 1740 hymnal. Seventeen stanzas were included as number 58 in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989). The number, ordering, and wording of the text stanzas have varied in the different hymnals. The original stanza seventeen was omitted from the 1989 hymnal as being perceived as possibly racist, and stanza six includes an editorial note that it may be omitted because it may be perceived discriminatory or offensive to people who cannot hear, speak, or see. Stanza seven of the 1989 hymnal's number 5, (which is the original stanza eighteen) has also been altered, changing "With me, your chief" to "In Christ, your head." In the original language, Charles Wesley was identifying himself with Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15 as "the chief of sinners.”
Lowell Mason adapted the tune AZMON from a melody composed by Carl G. Gläser in 1828. Mason published a duple-meter version in his Modern Psalmist (1839) but changed it to triple meter in his later publications. Mason used (often obscure) biblical names for his tune titles; Azmon, a city south of Canaan, appears in Numbers 34:4-5.
Glory to God, and praise and love be ever, ever given,
by saints below and saints above, the church in earth and heaven.
On this glad day the glorious Sun of Righteousness arose;
on my benighted soul he shone and filled it with repose.
Sudden expired the legal strife, 'twas then I ceased to grieve;
my second, real, living life I then began to live.
Then with my heart I first believed, believed with faith divine,
power with the Holy Ghost received to call the Savior mine.
I felt my Lord's atoning blood close to my soul applied;
me, me he loved, the Son of God, for me, for me he died!
I found and owned his promise true, ascertained of my part,
my pardon passed in heaven I knew when written on my heart.
O for a thousand tongues to sing my dear Redeemer's praise!
The glories of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace.
My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim,
to spread through all the earth abroad the honors of thy name.
Jesus! the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease;
'tis music in the sinner’s ears, 'tis life, and health, and peace!
He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free;
his blood can make the foulest clean; his blood availed for me.
He speaks, and listening to his voice new life the dead receive;
the mournful, broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe.
Hear him, ye deaf, his praise, ye dumb, your loosened tongues employ;
ye blind, behold your Savior come, and leap, ye lame, for joy.
Look unto him, ye nations, own your God, ye fallen race!
Look, and be saved through faith alone, be justified by grace!
See all your sins on Jesus laid; the Lamb of God was slain,
his soul was once an offering made for every soul of man.
Harlots and publicans and thieves, in holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes From crimes as great as mine.
Murderers and all ye hellish crew, ye sons of lust and pride,
believe the Savior died for you; for me the Savior died.
Awake from guilty nature's sleep, and Christ shall give you light;
cast all your sins into the deep, and wash the Ethiop white.
With me, your chief, you then shall know, shall feel your sins forgiven;
anticipate your heaven below and own that love is heaven.
Edward L. Good (b.1961) received his bachelor of music degree in organ performance and master of music degree in organ performance, music theory, and composition from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. He is director of music and organist at First Christian Church, Pittsburg, and is a member of the Fellowship of Disciples Musicians and the Southeast Kansas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
About the Piano Music:
Amazing Grace - Jim Martinez
(c.2019, Desmond Music Co.)
"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.
Jim Martinez (b. 1966) is a Steinway Piano Artist and has performed/recorded with Jazz notables Lionel Hampton, Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Cheryl Bentyne (of the Manhattan Transfer), and many others. His performances have taken him from New York to Sydney, Australia. Martinez worked as pianist/musical director for Joan Rivers and Bob Newhart at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe. He is the founder, Executive and Artistic Director of the Roseville Jazz Festival, which takes place annually near Sacramento, CA.
About the Hymns:
Standing on the Promises
R. Kelso Carter became an ordained Methodist minister (1887) at the age of 38. A year earlier, he was a professor at the Pennsylvania Military Academy, where he wrote the hymn, "Standing On the Promises," after reading Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians I: 20: "For all the promise of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." I was published in Songs of Perfect Love, one of two hymns compiled by Carter. The drum-beating, military march style of the music reflects the influence of the military academy life that surrounded Carter when it was written. Carter was active in the Methodist Camp-Meeting movement, and “Standing on the Promises” was widely used in evangelistic crusades well into the 20th century and is still found in many hymnals. It is a reminder of the Christian’s daily dependence on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises of Christ my King,
Through eternal ages let His praises ring,
Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises that cannot fail,
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
By the living Word of God I shall prevail,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises I now can see
Perfect, present cleansing in the blood for me;
Standing in the liberty where Christ makes free,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord,
Bound to Him eternally by love’s strong cord,
Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises I cannot fall,
List’ning every moment to the Spirit’s call,
Resting in my Savior as my all in all,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing, standing, Standing on the promises of God my Savior;
Standing, standing, I’m standing on the promises of God.
The Church of Christ in Every Age
(c.1971, Hope Publishing)
Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) was born in Roby, England, just outside of Liverpool, to Charles Green and Hannah Greenwood. They were both very successful business owners as well as a strong religious influence over young Fred. The youngest of three children, he was born into a Christian home he described as “a place where religion was scrupulously observed but never made burdensome.” Following his education, Green was ordained in the British Methodist Church in 1924 and continued his ministry in various parishes throughout England well into the 1940s. As a minister, he rarely had time for outside interests, but when he met devout poet Fallon Webb, he was instantly fascinated. The two exchanged poetry for nearly 20 years, setting the stage for Green to focus on hymn writing after his retirement from active ministry. He died at age 97, leaving behind a legacy filled with words of wisdom for us to read and sing.
Green’s hymns reflect his concern with social issues. Many were written to serve the liturgical needs of the modern church, such as specific seasons of the Christian year. Others speak to topics for which there were few traditional hymns available. Eminent British hymnologist Erik Routley noted that with some exceptions, the Methodist influence in hymnody had decreased since the hymns and translations of the Wesley brothers. When a supplement to the Methodist hymnal, Hymns and Songs, was released in Great Britain in 1969, Routley declared “this [trend of few significant Methodist hymn writers] has changed; it has been irreversibly changed by Fred Pratt Green.”
This hymn calls the church to be the agent of change and reconciliation in the struggle against injustice and hunger. Green composed the hymn in 1969, a time of social unrest throughout much of the world, including the U.S., Europe and South Africa. Published at first under the heading of “The Caring Church,” it appeared in Green’s 26 Hymns (1971) and then in New Church Praise (1975), where it came into prominence. The first U.S. hymnal to publish the hymn, albeit with some modifications, was the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978). Since then, “The Church of Christ in Every Age” has been included in many hymnals.
The Church of Christ in every age Beset by change but Spirit led,
Must claim and test its heritage And keep on rising from the dead.
Across the world, across the street, The victims of injustice cry
For shelter and for bread to eat, And never live until they die.
Then let the servant Church arise, A caring Church that longs to be
A partner in Christ's sacrifice, And clothed in Christ's humanity.
For he alone, whose blood was shed, Can cure the fever in our blood,
And teach us how to share our bread And feed the starving multitude.
We have no mission but to serve In full obedience to our Lord:
To care for all, without reserve, And to spread his liberating Word.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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