Musings: Sunday, October 12, 2025

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:

Prelude on Repton - Charles Callahan

(c.2012, Birnamwood Publications, div of MorningStar)

The name of the Rev. F. Pratt Green (1903-2000) is one of the best-known of the contemporary school of hymnwriters in the British Isles. His name and writings appear in practically every new hymnal and "hymn supplement" wherever English is spoken and sung. And now they are appearing in American hymnals, poetry magazines, and anthologies. Ordained in the British Methodist ministry, he was pastor and district superintendent in Brighton, York, and Norwich. He said he wrote new hymns "that fill the gap between the hymns of the first part of this century and the 'far-out' compositions that have crowded into some churches in the last decade or more.”

Composed in 1982 for Hope Publishing Company, “How Clear is Our Vocation, Lord” explores the challenges and joys of living out one's Christian calling in a world with worldly pressures, encouraging perseverance and spiritual repair.

The tune for the hymn was composed by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918), an English underwriter at Lloyds of London before devoting himself to music as a composer, teacher and historian. While head of the Royal Academy of Music, his pupils included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Parry named the tune “Repton” in honor of a friend who was music director of the Repton School, an English boarding school.

How clear is our vocation, Lord, When once we heed Your call:

To live according to Your word, And daily learn, refreshed, restored,

That You are Lord of all And will not let us fall.

But if forgetful, we should find Your yoke is hard to bear,

If worldly pressures fray the mind And love itself cannot unwind

Its tangled skein of care: Our inward life repair.

We mark Your saints, how they became In hindrances more sure,

Whose joyful virtues put to shame The casual way we wear Your name,

And by our faults obscure Your power to cleanse and cure.

In what You give us, Lord, to do, Together or alone,

In old routines or ventures new, May we not cease to look to You—

The cross You hung upon— All you endeavored done.

Charles Callahan (b. 1951) is one of America’s leading organist-composers. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and Catholic University of America. In recognition of his service to the church and his commissioned compositions for Papal visits to the U.S., he was awared the Papal Honor of Knighthood in the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem in 1999. In addition to compositions and performances, Charles Callahan is a noted educator and author whose two books on American organ-building have become standard reference works.

Hymn to Joy - Albert L. Travis

(c.2006, Birnamwood, div of MorningStar)

"The Hymn of Joy" (often called "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" after the first line) is a poem written by Henry van Dyke in 1907 with the intention of musically setting it to the famous "Ode to Joy" melody of the final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's final symphony, Symphony No. 9. Van Dyke wrote this poem in 1907 while staying at the home of Williams College president Harry Augustus Garfield. He was serving as a guest preacher at Williams at the time. He told his host that the local Berkshire Mountains had been his inspiration. The lyrics were first published in 1911 in Van Dyke's Book of Poems.

Van Dyke wrote of this hymn: “These verses are simple expressions of common Christian feelings and desires in this present time—hymns of today that may be sung together by people who know the thought of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy religion, or any revolution on earth overthrow the kingdom of heaven. Therefore this is a hymn of trust and joy and hope.” This hymn is generally considered by hymnologists to be one of the most joyous expressions of hymn lyrics in the English language.

Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) chaired the committee that wrote the first Presbyterian printed liturgy, The Book of Common Worship of 1906. In 1908–09 Dr. van Dyke was an American lecturer at the University of Paris. By appointment of President Wilson, a friend and former classmate of van Dyke, he became Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors. Among his popular writings are the two Christmas stories, The Other Wise Man (1896) and The First Christmas Tree (1897). Various religious themes of his work are also expressed in his poetry, hymns and the essays collected in Little Rivers (1895) and Fisherman’s Luck (1899).

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;

Hearts unfold like flow’rs before Thee, Op’ning to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; Drive the dark of doubt away;

Giver of immortal gladness, Fill us with the light of day!

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, Earth and heav’n reflect Thy rays,

Stars and angels sing around Thee, Center of unbroken praise.

Field and forest, vale and mountain, Flow’ry meadow, flashing sea,

Singing bird and flowing fountain Call us to rejoice in Thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving, Ever blessing, ever blest,

Wellspring of the joy of living, Ocean depth of happy rest!

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, All who live in love are Thine;

Teach us how to love each other, Lift us to the joy divine.

Mortals, join the happy chorus, Which the morning stars began;

Father love is reigning o’er us, Brother love binds man to man.

Ever singing, march we onward, Victors in the midst of strife,

Joyful music leads us Sunward In the triumph song of life.

It started in a farm pickup truck. To be precise, on the truck’s dashboard. Al Travis (b.1940) was born on a cotton farm in Batesville, Miss., and rode many times in his dad’s truck, sometimes with his grandfather also in the cab. He was about 6, he recalls, and he was playing on the dashboard as if it were a piano keyboard. “My grandfather said to my dad, ‘I think you need to get that boy a piano.’ Nobody in our family was a musician. So within a year, I was taking piano with our church organist and it took. “

Travis received a Bachelor of Music from Oklahoma Baptist University and a Master of Music from Syracuse University. He then studied with Helmut Walcha in Frankfurt for a year. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Michigan.

Travis served as organist at Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, for 41 years, which included overseeing the installation of the Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn Organ. He taught at Dallas Baptist College and Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth.

About the Hymns:

Holy, Holy, Holy

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) wrote this text for Trinity Sunday, the day for which lectionary in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer prescribes the reading of Revelation 4. Using reverent and apocalyptic language, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" alludes to Revelation 4:6-11; 5:13; 15:2-4; and Isaiah 6:1-3 to sing the great majesty of the triune God. Note the cosmic scope of the text: human beings (st. 1), saints and angels in glory (st. 2), and all creation (st. 4) praise the name of the Lord. Though God's holiness, love, and purity are cloaked in mystery, we can still experience God's mercy and mighty power, and we can participate in praising God. It references the Sanctus, which is often called the "Holy holy holy" in English. The name is a tribute to the First Council of Nicaea which formalized the doctrine of the Trinity in 325.

It was first published in the third edition (1826) of A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for the Parish Church of Banbury and was also published posthumously in Heber's Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Church Services of the Year (1827). The unusual single rhyme (all on the "ee" sound) and the uneven number of syllables in some lines have not detracted from the hymn's popularity. It was soon adopted by hymn-book compilers, and is the best known and most widely used of the author's hymns.

John Bacchus Dykes composed the tune NICAEA for this hymn in 1861. The tune name is a tribute to the First Council of Nicaea which formalized the doctrine of the Trinity in 325.

Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;

Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!

God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, Holy, Holy! All the saints adore Thee,

Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;

Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,

Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

Holy, Holy, Holy! though the darkness hide Thee,

Though the eye of sinful man, Thy glory may not see:

Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee,

Perfect in power in love, and purity.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!

All thy works shall praise Thy name in earth, and sky, and sea;

Holy, Holy, Holy! merciful and mighty,

God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Here I Am, Lord

(c.1989, Daniel L. Schutte and NALR)

Dan Schutte is a native of Wisconsin, who received his education at St. Louis University with a bachelor’s degree in 1973, a master of divinity degree in 1979 at the Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Calif., and a master’s degree in 1980 at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Following graduation, Mr. Schutte joined the Jesuits and served as the director of liturgy at Marquette University (1982-1986). He entered parish ministry in Milwaukee serving as director of music at Immaculate Heart of Mary and then Our Lady of Lourdes parishes. He is currently director of music at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution, and tours extensively as a Christian concert artist. Of his many hymns, “Here I Am, Lord” is the most commonly sung.

A salient feature of Catholic renewal hymnody since the Second Vatican Council is a stirring and memorable refrain. “Here I Am, Lord” recalls immediately Isaiah 6:8: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”

An unusual attribute of this hymn is the change in point of view that the singer makes between the stanzas and the refrain. The stanzas speak from the perspective of God in the first person singular, while the refrain, though remaining in first person, is from the perspective of the singers of the hymn offering their lives to God. Each stanza reflects a paradox. The powerful God, creator of “sea and sky,” “snow and rain” and “wind and flame” is also the God who hears the “people cry,” bears the “people’s pain” and “tend[s] the poor and lame.” This is a hymn of transformation. God transforms the darkness into light in stanza one, melts “hearts of stone” with love in stanza two and nourishes the “poor and lame” with the “finest bread”—a clear Eucharistic reference. Each stanza ends with the question, “Whom shall I send?” Rhetorical questions are very common poetical devices in Christian hymnody, but this is not one of them. The refrain immediately offers the response, “Here I am, Lord.”

I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard My people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin, My hand will save.
I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear My light to them? Whom shall I send?

I, the Lord of snow and rain, I have born my peoples pain.
I have wept for love of them, They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone, Give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak My word to them, Whom shall I send?

I, the Lord of wind and flame, I will tend the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them, My hand will save
Finest bread I will provide, Till their hearts be satisfied.
I will give My life to them, Whom shall I send?

Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord? I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me. I will hold Your people in my heart.