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:
Sortie - George Blake
(c.1995, Lorenz Publishing Co)
At age fourteen, George Blake (1912–1986) began to play the theater organ professionally at the Franklin Theatre in Nutley, New Jersey. His father having died when he was very young, Blake quickly became the primary supporter of his family through his performing, and he lived with his mother in New Jersey for many years until her death. His younger brother was the cartoonist Bud Blake (of the popular comic strip "Tiger.") A student and protégé of Lew White (organist of the original Roxy Theatre), George Blake served as principal organist for a number of theaters in New Jersey and New York City, including the New Roxy (later the Center Theatre) in Rockefeller Center. He was also a regular performer on several radio programs of the day, including the "Lucky Strike Hour." As the age of the cinema organist ended, Blake focused primarily on sacred music. During his cinema years, he was organist at several churches in New Jersey including St. Andrew's Episcopal (South Orange) and Grace Episcopal (Nutley) and was the school organist for Columbia High School (Maplewood). Blake composed and published extensively in both sacred and secular genres. He cowrote a number of popular songs with Richard Leibert, organist of Radio City Music Hall, several of which were performed and recorded by leading artists of the day, including Mario Lanza.
About the Piano Music:
Lead On Medley - Dick Torrans
(c.1994, Singspiration Music, admin Benson Music Group)
George Young (c. 1855-1935) was a carpenter, and a preacher of the gospel. In the late nineteenth century he laboured in obscurity, serving small rural areas in the United States. Often his income was so small he had difficulty supporting his wife and family. Finally, after a great deal of effort and years of sacrifice, the Youngs were able to move into a small house they had built for themselves. All were delighted with the new place, but tragedy soon overtook them. While George was away holding meetings in another community, some ruffians who were hostile to the gospel he preached set fire to the Young’s home burning it to the ground.
In 1903, George Young published a hymn for which he wrote both words and music. It is a testimony to his faith in God, in spite of this severe trial. It depicts different kinds of circumstances and experiences we face in life, with a reminder that the Lord provides for us in them all. The opening stanza paints a lovely picture, reminiscent of the 23rd Psalm. But the author was well aware that not all of life is like that. The song’s refrain gives a more sobering view of life’s trials.
Around 1942, hymn writer Haldor Lillenas decided to track down George Young’s widow. He got an address in a small town and, driving there, he stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. When the attendant saw the address, he said, “Why sir, that’s the County Poor House up the road about three miles. And mister, when I say poor house, I really mean poor house!” Not knowing what to expect, Lillenas made his way there. He found Mrs. Young, a tiny, elderly woman, in surroundings that were far from congenial. However, she radiated the joy of the Lord, and spoke of how He’d guided her and her husband over many years. Then, she exclaimed, “Dr. Lillenas, God led me here!” I’m so glad He did, for you know, about every month someone comes into this place to spend the rest of their days….So many of them don’t know my Jesus. I’m having the time of my life introducing them to Jesus! Dr. Lillenas, isn’t it wonderful how God leads!”
In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet,
God leads His dear children along;
Where the water’s cool flow bathes the weary one’s feet,
God leads His dear children along.
Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright,
God leads His dear children along;
Sometimes in the valley, in darkest of night,
God leads His dear children along.
Though sorrows befall us and evils oppose,
God leads His dear children along;
Through grace we can conquer, defeat all our foes,
God leads His dear children along.
Away from the mire, and away from the clay,
God leads His dear children along;
Away up in glory, eternity’s day,
God leads His dear children along.
Refrain:
Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,
In the night season and all the day long.
Although Joseph Gilmore (1834-1918) became a distinguished university and seminary professor, an author of several textbooks in Hebrew and English literature, and a respected Baptist minister, he is best remembered today for this one hymn, hurriedly written when he was just twenty-eight. Gilmore scribbled down these lines in 1862, while visiting with friends after preaching about the truths of the 23rd Psalm at the Wednesday evening service of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He left this account:
At the close of the service we adjourned to Deacon Watson’s pleasant home, where we were being entertained. During our conversation the blessedness of God’s leading so grew upon me that I took out my pencil, wrote the text just as it stands today, handed it to my wife, and thought no more of it.
Without telling her husband, Mrs. Gilmore sent the verses to the “Watchman and Reflector Magazine”, where it first appeared the following year. Three years later Joseph Gilmore went to Rochester, New York, as a candidate to become the pastor of Second Baptist Church. He recalls:
Upon entering the chapel I took up a hymnal, thinking—I wonder what they sing here. To my amazement the book opened up at “He Leadeth Me,” and that was the first time I knew that my hurriedly written lines had found a place among the songs of the church.
William Bradbury, an important American contributor to early gospel hymnody, added two additional lines to the chorus: “His faithful foll’wer I would be, for by His hand He leadeth me.”
He leadeth me: O blessed thought! O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate'er I do, where'er I be, still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.
Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom, sometimes where Eden's flowers bloom,
by waters calm, o'er troubled sea, still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.
Lord, I would clasp thy hand in mine, nor ever murmur nor repine;
content, whatever lot I see, since 'tis my God that leadeth me.
And when my task on earth is done, when, by thy grace, the victory's won,
e'en death's cold wave I will not flee, since God through Jordan leadeth me.
Refrain:
He leadeth me, he leadeth me; by his own hand he leadeth me:
his faithful follower I would be, for by his hand he leadeth me.
When Ernest Shurtleff’s seminary class was preparing for their graduation in 1887, they turned to Ernest, who had written two volumes of poetry, and asked him to write a hymn for their graduation ceremony. He wrote “Lead on, O King Eternal” for that occasion.
This hymn is really a prayer — a prayer for God’s guidance. It speaks of marching and “fields of conquest” and “battle song” — not because it celebrates war, but because it acknowledges the daily struggle in which good people must engage against evil. It looks forward to the celebration of victory — not with clashing swords and stirring drums, but with “deeds of love and mercy” — acknowledging that Christ calls us to conquer the world by demonstrating love and showing mercy rather than by using force. This hymn acknowledges the difficulties of the Christian life — standing armed only with holiness against “sin’s fierce war. It acknowledges the reality of the cross, but celebrates the reality of the crown — the reward of those who are faithful — and closes, “Lead on, O God of might!”
Henry T. Smart composed the tune LANCASHIRE in 1835 for use at a missions festival at Blackburn, Lancashire, England. For that festival, which celebrated the three-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in England, the tune was set to Reginald Heber's “From Greenland's Icy Mountains.” First printed in leaflets, LANCASHIRE was published In Smart's Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867). It was set to Shurtleffs text in the 1905 Methodist Hymnal. In some hymnals this tune is also associated with "The Day of Resurrection”.
Lead on, O King eternal, the day of march has come;
henceforth in fields of conquest your tents will be our home.
Through days of preparation your grace has made us strong;
and now, O King eternal, we lift our battle song.
Lead on, O King eternal, till sin's fierce war shall cease,
and holiness shall whisper the sweet amen of peace.
For not with swords' loud clashing or roll of stirring drums
with deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.
Lead on, O King eternal; we follow, not with fears,
for gladness breaks like morning where'er your face appears.
Your cross is lifted o'er us, we journey in its light;
the crown awaits the conquest; lead on, O God of might.
Dick Torrans studied piano pedagogy at Michigan State University and church music at Southern Seminary. He is currently president of Melode, Inc., Franklin, Tenn. He has published a number of piano and organ arrangements.
About the Choral Music:
One Faith, One Hope, One Lord – Craig Courtney
(c.1989, The Sacred Music Press)
A native of Indiana, Craig Courtney received a Bachelors and a Masters degree in piano performance from the University of Cincinnati. He served on the faculty of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, serving as piano teacher and accompanist for the woodwind and brass department. While serving in the music ministry of the Salzburg International Baptist Church, Courtney began composing sacred choral music. In 1985, his compositions came to the attention of John Ness Beck through the publication of his octavo, Thy Will Be Done, initiating a close working relationship between the two men which continued until Beck’s death in 1987. In making plans for the ongoing of Beckenhorst Press, Beck appointed Craig Courtney staff composer and editor. Courtney’s published works include more than two hundred choral octavos, nine vocal collections, two piano solo collections and six extended works for choir and orchestra. Courtney combines his background as pianist, cellist, vocal coach, accompanist and choral director to create works in his unique style.
Dignified and thoughtful, this powerful affirmation of faith is harmonically rich and features beautiful choral writing, which thickens through the piece. The text is based on Ephesians 4:4-6, 13.
One faith, one hope, one Lord, one church for which He died,
One voice, one song, we lift in praise to Him who was and is and shall be evermore.
There is one body, one spirit, as you were called to one hope.
One Lord, baptism and faith, one God and Father of all,
One God and Father of us all, one God and Father of all, who is in you all.
One faith, one hope, one Lord, one church for which He died,
One voice, one song, we lift in praise to Him who was and is and shall be evermore.
Though we be many people, diverse with various gifts,
We are given to each other for the unity of faith,
That we grow in the knowledge of the Son of God, in the fullness of Christ.
One faith, one hope, one Lord, one church for which He died,
One voice, one song, we lift in praise to Him who was and is and shall be evermore.
One faith. One hope. One Lord. One God.
About the Hymns:
A Charge to Keep I Have
As is the case with hymns by Charles Wesley, “A charge to keep I have” is grounded in Scripture. In this case, Leviticus 8:36 is the primary source: “Keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not” (KJV). The hymn was included in Short Hymns on Select Passages of Holy Scripture (1762), a massive two-volume collection of 2,030 hymns based on biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation.
Wesley scholars F. Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge propose in their commentary on the important Wesley hymnbook A Collection of Hymns for Use of the People Called Methodists (1780) that Charles Wesley (1708-1788) based his text on Mathew Henry’s Commentary on Leviticus. Henry notes: “We have every one of us a charge to keep, an eternal God to glorify, an immortal soul to provide for, needful duty to be done, our generation to serve; and it must be our daily care to keep this charge, for it is the charge of the Lord our Master, who will shortly call us to an account about it, and it is our peril if we neglect it. Keep it ‘that ye die not’; it is death, eternal death, to betray the truth we are charged with.”
This hymn is an unequivocal call to commitment to follow the Master and to fulfill our vocation through service. The language is unambiguous. Our calling is to save a “never dying soul” and “fit it for the sky”—that is for eternal life with Christ. This eschatological goal is central to Charles Wesley’s hymns: Our goal is heaven. In the second stanza, we find that we fulfill this calling by our service to “the present age.” Fulfilling this calling requires us to engage “all [our] powers.” The third stanza is a petition that God should “arm [us] with jealous care” as we live in God’s sight. Wesley is not afraid to offer a stern admonition that we will one day be required to give “a strict account” of our activities in pursuit of our calling. The final stanza is perhaps the most uncompromising. The singer begins with the imperative verb—a petition to the unnamed Holy Spirit—to “Help me to watch and pray . . . ” Rather than suggesting a positive reward for faithfulness, Wesley warns us of the outcome “if [we] our trust betray”: we “shall forever die.”
The tune BOYLSTON was composed by the famous New England music educator Lowell Mason (1792-1872) and was first found in his The Choir, or Union Collection of Church Music (1832). Dr. Lowell Mason (the degree was conferred by the University of New York) is justly called the father of American church music; and by his labors were founded the germinating principles of national musical intelligence and knowledge, which afforded a soil upon which all higher musical culture has been founded. To him we owe some of our best ideas in religious church music, elementary musical education, music in the schools, the popularization of classical chorus singing, and the art of teaching music upon the Inductive or Pestalozzian plan. More than that, we owe him no small share of the respect which the profession of music enjoys at the present time as contrasted with the contempt in which it was held a century or more ago. In fact, the entire art of music, as now understood and practiced in America, has derived advantage from the work of this great man.
Lowell Mason was born in Massachusetts, and from childhood he manifested an intense love for music and devoted all his spare time and effort to improving himself. In his twenties, he had the opportunity to study music with F. L. Abel and began composing. His first work was a collection of church music, which contained many of his own compositions. It was published in 1822 as The Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music. Mason's name was omitted from the publication at his own request, which he thus explains, "I was then a bank officer in Savannah, and did not wish to be known as a musical man, as I had not the least thought of ever making music a profession." The book soon sprang into universal popularity, being at once adopted by the singing schools of New England. It ran seventeen editions. On realizing this success, Mason determined to accept an invitation to come to Boston and enter upon a musical career. He became a member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and was also appointed director of music at the Hanover, Green, and Park Street churches, to alternate six months with each congregation.
In 1827, Lowell Mason became president and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society. It was the beginning of a career that was to win for him as has been already stated the title of "The Father of American Church Music." Although this may seem rather a bold claim it is not too much under the circumstances. Mason might have been considered average had he lived in Europe, but in America he was well in advance of his surroundings. It was not too high praise (in spite of Mason's very simple style) when Dr. Jackson wrote of his song collection: "It is much the best book I have seen published in this country, and I do not hesitate to give it my most decided approbation," or that the great contrapuntist, Hauptmann, should say the harmonies of the tunes were dignified and churchlike and that the counterpoint was good, plain, singable and melodious. Charles C. Perkins gives a few of the reasons why Lowell Mason was the very man to lead American music as it then existed. He says, "First and foremost, he was not so very much superior to the members as to be unreasonably impatient at their shortcomings. Second, he was a born teacher, who, by hard work, had fitted himself to give instruction in singing. Third, he was one of themselves, a plain, self-made man, who could understand them and be understood of them."
The personality of Dr. Mason was of great use to the art and appreciation of music in this country. He was of strong mind, dignified manners, sensitive, yet sweet and engaging. Prof. Horace Mann, one of the great educators of that day, said he would walk fifty miles to see and hear Mr. Mason teach if he could not otherwise have that advantage. Dr. Mason visited a number of the music schools in Europe, studied their methods, and incorporated the best things in his own work. He founded the Boston Academy of Music. The aim of this institution was to reach the masses and introduce music into the public schools. Not only Boston benefited directly by this enthusiastic teacher's instruction, as he was constantly traveling to other societies in distant cities and helping their work. Iin his later years, he went as far as Rochester, where he trained a chorus of five hundred voices, many of them teachers, and some of them coming long distances to study under him. Before 1810, he had developed his idea of "Teachers' Conventions," and, as in these he had representatives from different states, he made musical missionaries for almost the entire country. He left behind him no less than fifty volumes of musical collections, instruction books, and manuals.
A charge to keep I have, a God to glorify,
a never-dying soul to save, and fit it for the sky.
To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill,
O may it all my pow'rs engage to do my Master's will!
Arm me with watchful care as in Thy sight to live,
and now Thy servant, Lord, prepare a strict account to give!
Help me to watch and pray, and still on Thee rely,
O let me not my trust betray, but press to realms on high.
Sent Out in Jesus' Name
(c.1996, Abingdon Press)
“Enviado soy de Dios/Sent Out in Jesus’ Name” is Cuban in origin. Jorge Maldonado’s translation catches the spirit of the Spanish text without trying to render it literally. The text establishes its theme early on: responsibility for change in this world is ours. Empowered by our experience in worship, we can go forth into all the world as Christ commands. But this is not mountaintop rhetoric, and “the world” we are sent to may be severely circumscribed—a Cuban village or our own neighborhood, a shack of a church or our own comfortable parish. We are reminded that it is seldom by the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, but often by hard physical labor, that the reign of God comes to earth: the gospel must not merely be preached but must be seen in what we actually do. And the importance of our actions is underlined by the repetition of the entire first section. The second section moves us out from physical labor to more abstract ideas of love, justice, and peace that are made manifest in those works of our hands. But first we are reminded that though angels may watch over us, they are unable to change the world; that is our task. The world is only set free when we—as individuals and collectively—obey the will of God and carry it out in the world.
ENVIADO is a Nicaraguan folk melody.
Sent out in Jesus’ name, our hands are ready now
to make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes.
Sent out in Jesus’ name, our hands are ready now
to make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes.
The angels cannot change a world of hurt and pain
into a world of love, of justice, and of peace.
The task is ours to do, to set it really free.
O help us to obey and carry out your will.
On Eagles Wings
Michael Joncas (b. 1951) was ordained in 1980 to the Roman Catholic priesthood, and has served since 1991 on the faculty of the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has written three books, more than a hundred published articles, and has compiled more than 20 collections of liturgical music. Father Joncas was visiting a friend at the major seminary in Washington. One evening, Father Joncas’ friend got word that his father had suffered a fatal heart attack. Father Joncas wrote “On Eagle’s Wings” in the days that followed and it was was sung for the first time publicly at the friend’s father’s wake service. The song is based on Psalm 91 and Isaiah 4031:, its lyrics drawing from the Scripture’s descriptions of God’s protection and providence.
And God will raise you up on eagles' wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of God’s hand.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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