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:
Over the Stars There is Rest - Frank Asper
(c.1960, Carl Fischer)
Theodore T. Barker was an editor and hymn writer in the late 19th century in Germany. He wrote the hymn “Uber den Sternen ist Ruh”. It was translated into English by Louis Charles Elson (1848-1920), an American music historian. He was music editor of the Boston Advertiser (1886–1920); was a teacher (from 1880) and head of the theory dept. (from 1881) at the New England Conservatory, of Music. He was ed.-in-chief of the University Encyclopedia of Music (10 vols., 1912). In his music criticism, he attacked the modernists with vicious eloquence, reserving the choicest invective for Debussy; he called La Mer “Le Mai de Mer,” and said that the faun of L’Apres-midi d’unfaune needed a veterinary surgeon. He wrote many music history books, including Great Composers and Their Work (1898); The History of American Music (1904; 2nd ed., 1915; rev. by A. Elson, 1925); Elson’s Music Dictionary (1905); Elson’s Pocket Music Dictionary (1909); Women in Music (1918); and Children in Music (1918).
The hymntune Uber den Sternen was written by Franz Abt (1819-1885), who was born in Eilenburg in the Prussian provinces of Saxony. His father was a musician and clergyman of the Lutheran Church. Franz studied music at Leipzig, and became known as a song-writer in 1838. In September, 1841, he was leader of the orchestra at the Zurich theatre; became a teacher in 1842, but was little known until he wrote the song "When the Swallows Homeward fly". In 1865 was concert-master at Brunswick, and conducted the great festival at Dresden. He came to the United States in 1872, and was present at the Peace Jubilee, Boston, where he directed the performance of some of his own music.
Over the stars there is rest, Over the stars there is rest,
Suffer in patience confiding Life with its trials and chiding,
There, peace eternal, abiding Makes the delight of the blest.
Dark though today be with sorrow, Hope gilds more brightly the morrow!
Over the stars there is rest! Over the stars there is rest!
Over the stars there is rest, Over the stars there is rest,
Bear up, to life’s ills resigning, There where the sun is still shining,
Comes neither grief nor repining, There are relieved the opprest.
Onward with courage reviving, Ever still patiently striving.
Over the stars there is rest! Over the stars there is rest!
Frank Wilson Asper (1892-1973) was a Mormon Tabernacle organist for more than 40 years. During his impressive career, Asper performed approximately 5,000 organ recitals for Temple Square visitors and played for more than 1,000 network Choir broadcasts, plus he had his own weekly organ broadcast. Additionally, he published many volumes of organ compositions and, for more than 30 years, conducted the McCune Symphony Orchestra, which he founded. He was also the organist of the First United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The melodeon was Asper’s first instrument. His father had brought one across the plains in a covered wagon. By age seven, Frank was playing piano accompaniments, and by 12, he played his first organ solo in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. Asper studied at Stern’s Conservatory in Berlin, Germany, and later he graduated with honors from from Boston’s New England Conservatory. In 1938, Bates College awarded him an honorary doctor of music degree. He was a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists.
Asper wrote lyrics or composed music for several LDS hymns. Seven of his hymns are included in the current LDS hymnbook, including “God Is in His Holy Temple,” “’Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love,” “O Thou, Before the World Began,” “Hear Thou Our Hymn, O Lord,” “This House We Dedicate to Thee,” “Rejoice! A Glorious Sound Is Heard,” and “Rise Up, O Men of God.”
Ein' feste Burg Festpräludium - Wilhelm Rudnick
(public domain)
This Sunday is also Reformation Sunday, the celebration of the date when Martin Luther posted his 99 Theses and began the Protestant Reformation.
"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" (“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”) is one of the best known of Martin Luther's hymns. Luther wrote the words and composed the melody sometime between 1527 and 1529. It has been translated into English at least seventy times and also into many other languages. The words are a paraphrase of Psalm 46. "A Mighty Fortress" is one of the best loved hymns of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. It has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation" for the effect it had in increasing the support for the Reformers' cause Heinrich Heine states that it was sung by Luther and his companions as they entered Worms on 16 April 1521 for the Diet.
The earliest extant hymnal in which it appears is that of Andrew Rauscher (1531), but it is supposed to have been in Joseph Klug's Wittenberg hymnal of 1529, of which no copy exists. Its title was “Der xxxxvi. Psalm. Deus noster refugium et virtus.” Before that it is supposed to have appeared in the Hans Weiss’ Wittenberg hymnal of 1528, also lost. This evidence would support its being written in 1527–1529, since Luther's hymns were printed shortly after they were written.
Tradition states that the third Protestant King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, had it played as his forces went to battle in the Thirty Years' War. The hymn had been translated into Swedish already in 1536, presumably by Olaus Petri, with the incipit, “Vår Gud är oss en väldig borg.” In the late 19th century the song also became an anthem of the early Swedish socialist movement.
It was first translated into English by Myles Coverdale in 1539 with the title, “Oure God is a defence and towre.” The first English translation in common usage was “God is our Refuge in Distress, Our strong Defence” in J.C. Jacobi's Psal. Ger. in 1722. The most popular English version is “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing” and was translated by Frederick H. Hedge in 1853.
The hymn's enduring popularity in Western Christendom has breached boundaries set in the Reformation as it is now a suggested hymn for Catholic Masses. It currently appears in the second edition of the Catholic Book of Worship, published by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, though its adoption is not without controversy.
Luther composed the melody, named "Ein feste Burg" from the text's first line, in meter 87.87.55.56.7. This is sometimes denoted "rhythmic tune" to distinguish it from the later isometric variant, in 87.87.66.66.7 meter which is more widely known and used. In 1906 Edouard Rœhrich wrote, "The authentic form of this melody differs very much from that which one sings in most Protestant churches and figures in (Giacomo Meyerbeer's) The Huguenots. ... The original melody is extremely rhythmic, by the way it bends to all the nuances of the text ..." While 19th-century musicologists disputed Luther's authorship of the music to the hymn, that opinion has been modified by more recent research; it is now the consensus view of musical scholars that Luther did indeed compose the famous tune to go with the words.
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
our helper he, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,
were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God's own choosing.
You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth his name, from age to age the same;
and he must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God has willed his truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.
That Word above all earthly powers no thanks to them abideth;
the Spirit and the gifts are ours through him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
the body they may kill: God's truth abideth still;
his kingdom is forever!
Wilhelm Rudnick (1850-1927) was a Polish/German organist and composer. He was born and lived primarily in modern-day Poland, which was part of the Prussian Empire of his lifetime. He studied at the Institut fur Kirchenmusik and Kullak’s Akademie in Berlin. He was organist and music director in Landsberg and later at St. Peter and Paul’s Church in Liegnitz. He was conductor of the ChorgesangVerein in Leignitz.
About the Piano Music:
For All the Saints - Paul Tate
(c.2013, GIA Publications)
“For All the Saints” is the quintessential hymn for All Saints’ Day, with its uplifting text and triumphant music. It was written as a processional hymn by the Anglican Bishop of Wakefield, William Walsham How (1823-1879). How was educated at Shrewsbury School and Wadham College, Oxford (B.A. 1845). Taking Holy Orders in 1846, he became successively Curate of St. George's, Kidderminster, 1846; and of Holy Cross, Shrewsbury, 1848. In 1851, he moved to the Rectory of Whittington, Diocese of St. Asaph, becoming Rural Dean in 1853, and Hon. Canon of the Cathedral in 1860. In 1879. he was appointed Rector of St. Andrew's Undershaft, London, and was consecrated Suffragan Bishop for East London, under the title of the Bishop of Bedford, and in 1888 Bishop of Wakefield. In 1854, he published Psalms and Hymns, Compiled by the Rev. Thomas Baker Morrell, M.A., . . . and the Rev. William Walsham How, M.A. This was republished in an enlarged form in 1864, and to it was added a Supplement in 1867. To this collection Bishop How contributed several hymns, and also to the S. P. C. K. Church Hymns , of which he was joint editor, in 1871. Nearly 60 of Bishop How’s hymns are still in common use, the most popular of which are "For all the Saints who from their labors rest" and "We give Thee but Thine own”.
Originally in eleven stanzas, “For All the Saints” was published in Earl Nelson's Hymns for Saints' Days (1864) with the heading, "Saints' Day Hymn. A Cloud of Witnesses. Heb. 12:1." The hymn was sung to the melody Sarum, by the Victorian composer Joseph Barnby, until the publication of the English Hymnal in 1906. This hymnal used a new setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams which he called Sine Nomine (literally, "without name") in reference to its use on the Feast of All Saints, 1 November (or the first Sunday in November, All Saints Sunday). It has been described as "one of the finest hymn tunes of [the 20th] century."
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light. Alleluia, Alleluia!
For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee: Alleluia, Alleluia!
O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold. Alleluia, Alleluia!
For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored. Alleluia, Alleluia!
For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify. Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. Alleluia, Alleluia!
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong. Alleluia, Alleluia!
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed. Alleluia, Alleluia!
But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way. Alleluia, Alleluia!
From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost: Alleluia, Alleluia!
Paul A. Tate, a graduate of the University of Georgia, is a professional musician living in Sugar Hill, Georgia. As an active workshop presenter and concert performer, Paul has released a dozen recordings and published over 100 original songs and arrangements. His liturgical compositions appear in a number of hymnal resources, and his voice has been heard around the world on Sirius Satellite Radio.
About the Choral Music:
Recollection of Joy – Donna Butler
(c. 1990, Beckenhorst Press)
Donna Butler Douglas has enjoyed parallel careers in church music and graphic design. For over 20 years she served as Director of Music for churches in Oklahoma, Dallas/Fort Worth, Kansas City and Little Rock, Arkansas. She currently manages communications and publications for Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri.A native of Ada, Oklahoma, Donna holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree in Piano from Oklahoma Baptist University and a Master of Music degree in Theory and Composition from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
Donna is published under her maiden name, Donna Butler, and has received annual standard awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) each year since 1989. Mrs. Douglas is an accomplished pianist, soloist and free-lance composer with over 100 compositions in print. Donna is a recipient of the “Profiles in Excellence” award, presented by Oklahoma Baptist University to noteworthy alumni.
“Recollection of Joy” is based on Phillippians 1.
I thank my God when I remember you, For He has blessed my life with yours.
With every prayer of mine for you, I’m filled with joy;
For I hold you in my heart.
And I pray that your love may abound yet more in knowledge
And in all judgement, that you may approve excellent things.
That you may be sincere, being filled with the fruits of righteousness
Unto the glory and praise of God.
Grace to you and peace to you from God our Father, Christ our Lord.
Oh, I thank my God when I remember you.
About the Hymns:
For All the Saints
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (1872-1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.
Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music and free it from Teutonic influences.
Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.
Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams's personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had a lasting emotional impact. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman, who later became his second wife. He went on composing through his 70s and 80s, producing his last symphony months before his death at the age of 85.
Despite his agnosticism Vaughan Williams composed many works for church performance. His two best known hymn tunes, both from c. 1905, are "Down Ampney" to the words "Come Down, O Love Divine", and "Sine nomine" "For All the Saints". Grove lists a dozen more, composed between 1905 and 1935. Other church works include a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (1925), the Mass in G minor (1920–1921), a Te Deum (1928) and the motets O Clap Your Hands (1920), Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge (1921) and O Taste and See (1953, first performed at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II).
Rejoice in God's Saints
(c.1980, Hope Publishing)
Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) gave us a fresh hymn for All Saints’ Day. Rather than elevating saints to a realm beyond the earthly, Pratt Green, in the words of Carlton Young, “describes the importance of saints and how they interact with the world.” In contrast to the “great cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 12:2 that hover above us, Pratt Green brings these saints to our level: “A world without saints forgets how to praise.” Saints model for us the “habit of prayer” and a “depth of adoring” that we should “share.” The last half of the second stanza—“Some carry the gospel through fire and through flood / our world is their parish; their purpose is God”—is reminiscent of John Wesley’s famous declaration, “I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.”
It was written for the six-hundredth anniversary celebration of [Julian of Norwich’s] Revelations of Divine Love (1373), commissioned by the Dean of Norwich Cathedral. British hymnal editor and composer John Wilson advised Pratt Green to explore the lives and influence of the saints beyond the cloistered life, showing how saints relate to common life.
An Englishman educated at Didsbury College in Manchester, Pratt Green was ordained in the Methodist ministry in 1928, serving circuits throughout the country between 1927 and 1969. During his ministry he wrote plays and hymns and published three collections of his poems. But it was not until his retirement that Pratt Green’s hymn writing blossomed, creating over 300 hymns. Generally considered to be the leader of the “hymnic explosion” that began in the 1960s, Pratt Green’s hymns appear more often than any other 20th-century hymn writer in English language hymnals published in North America.
Green’s approach to saints is in contrast to William Walsham How’s famous hymn, “For All the Saints” (UM Hymnal, No. 711), written more than 100 years earlier. How, echoing the conquests and colonization of the 19th century, drew heavily upon militaristic images of “faithful soldiers,” “victor’s crown,” “fierce strife” and “long warfare.” Images of “triumph,” “brave hearts” and “strong arms” in How’s text are replaced here with calls to prayer, patience and self-giving. Pratt Green offers an alternative to classical views of the saints that speaks to all of our experience.
Rejoice in God’s saints, today and all days;
A world without saints forgets how to praise.
Their faith in acquiring the habit of prayer,
Their depth of adoring, Lord, help us to share.
Some march with events to turn them God’s way;
Some need to withdraw, the better to pray,
Some carry the gospel through fire and through flood;
Our world is their parish; their purpose is God.
Rejoice in those saints, unpraised and unknown,
Who bear someone’s cross or shoulder their own.
They shame our complaining, our comforts, our cares;
What patience in caring, what courage, is theirs!
Rejoice in God’s saints, today and all days;
A world without saints forgets how to praise.
In loving, in living, they prove it is true:
The way of self-giving, Lord, leads us to you.
Goodness of God - Jenn Johnson, Ed Cash, Jason Ingram, Ben Fielding, and Brian Johnson
(c.2018, Alletrop Music/Shout! Music Publishing Australia/Fellow Ships Music/So Essential Tunes/Bethel Music Publishing)
Jennifer "Jenn" Johnson (b.1982) is an American Christian worship singer, songwriter and worship pastor. She is a co-founding member of Bethel Music, and is one-half of the husband-and-wife worship duo Brian and Jenn Johnson. She is also a senior worship pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California, and a Senior Overseer of WorshipU, an online school of worship sponsored by Bethel.
The story behind Bethel Music's "Goodness of God" centers on Jenn Johnson's personal experience of adopting her fourth child, Ryder Moses.
Johnson related this story: “We had just gotten home from our adoption of our son, Ryder. He was a gift that we never saw coming. We have three kids already. We thought we were done having children. Brian and I were always open to adoption. But, out of the blue, we just felt like the Lord say to us, 'I have this for you if you want this--like a gift. I have a present for you." We knew adoption was the Lord's plan for us; to have a baby again when you've been out of baby season for eight years was such a blessing. Darlene Zschech, who had been with us, told us the translation of the verse 'Here I am, send me' from Isaiah 6:8 says, 'my answer is yes before you even ask.' I was so struck with that phrase. When we had the chance to adopt, I felt myself saying yes before I was even asked. Within the next year, we were matched up. And, we brought our new son home to our family. During the adoption process, I found myself driving on a long country road. I was just singing to the Lord when I recorded a song on my phone about the "faithfulness" and "kindness of God." I wrote and sang most of "Goodness of God" as an overflow of my heart at that moment. That led to finishing and recording this song with Ed Cash, Jason Ingram, and Ben Fielding.”
This unplanned recording session became the foundation for the song, which expresses gratitude for God's unwavering presence and goodness through life's challenges and joys.
I love You, Lord. For Your mercy never failed me.
All my days I've been held in Your hands.
From the moment that I wake up Until I lay my head,
Oh, I will sing Of the goodness of God.
And all my life You have been faithful;
And all my life You have been so, so good.
With every breath That I am able,
Oh, I will sing Of the goodness of God.
I love Your voice, You have led me through the fire.
And in darkest night You are close like no other.
I've known You as a Father; I’ve known You as a Friend.
And I have lived In the goodness of God, yeah.
'Cause Your goodness Is running after, It's running after me;
Your goodness is running after, It’s running after me.
With my life laid down, I’m surrendered now.
I give You everything, ’Cause Your goodness
Is running after, It’s running after me, oh.
Deep Peace – Benjamin Harlan
(c.1998, Hal Leonard Corp.)
Dr. Benjamin Harlan has set this traditional Gaelic text. Harlan is a Professor of Church Music at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is an internationally known arranger and composer of choral, keyboard and handbell works. He has received awards from ASCAP annually since 1990. Dr. Harlan is a member of ASCAP, American Choral Directors Association and the Southern Baptist Church Music Conference.
Deep peace of the running wave to you, Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace, deep peace, deep peace of the Father’s love to you.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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