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:
Were You There - Lynn Petersen
(c.2001, Concordia Publishing)
Were You There was likely composed by African-American slaves in the 19th century. It was first published in William Eleazar Barton's 1899 Old Plantation Hymns. In 1940, it was included in the Episcopal Church hymnal, making it the first spiritual to be included in any major American hymnal. As reported in Howard Thurman's autobiography, the song was one of Mahatma Gandhi's favorites
For a time, the slaves simply by-passed the New Testament, especially since their white taskmasters used it to justify slavery. But there was something about the man Jesus, hanging there upon the hard, wooden cross. Here was a man who was beaten like they were. He was spit upon. He was falsely accused. He was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Finally, he was hung on a tree, a method of execution familiar to the slaves. Through all of these indignities, Jesus prayed, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
"How was he able to forgive?" they questioned. "What was it that enabled him to love those who were unlovable?" Was he in pain? They were in pain. Did he have to drink the cup of suffering? They had to drink theirs, too. Yes, their cross was one with his cross. Jesus died for the sins of all men, of every color. He had to be who he said he was. How else could he have done what he did? In time, they embraced Jesus as their Savior, and they experienced His peace, His grace and forgiveness, and His hope for the future. From this relationship they were able to sing. From the cross they felt a mighty emergence of the divine will, breaking down the barriers that separated man from man, and man from God. And so, instead of taking the destructive road to violence, many began to hum, then to sing, and sometimes to shout the spirituals - a cry to God for freedom and a declaration of faith in His ability to provide it.
“Were You There” utilizes a system of coded language in its lyrics like most, if not all, African-American spirituals. Metaphors, especially those involving Old Testament figures, as well as Jesus, are often central to the meanings of spirituals. “Were You There” tells the story of the Crucifixion of Jesus. Underneath this narrative, however, is a metaphor likening Jesus’s suffering to the suffering of slaves. In some versions of the song, the singer asks “Were you there when they nailed Him to the Tree?” Replacing Jesus’ cross with a tree further strengthens the metaphor between Jesus’ suffering and slaves’ suffering. African-Americans during the antebellum period, and all the way into the Jim Crow era, would have drawn a connection between Jesus nailed to a tree and the frightening prevalence of lynchings in their own lives. This expression of likening one’s experience to Jesus' is underscored by the first-person, present-tense perspective of “Were You There”; the singer personally witnesses the crucifixion. The use of first person pronouns in the spiritual reflects a sense of “communal selfhood” formed by African-American slaves in the face of oppression.
The following lyrics are those printed in the 1899 Unicorn. Old Plantation Hymns; other variations exist.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? (Were you there?)
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they nail'd him to the cross? (Were you there?)
Were you there when they nail'd him to the cross?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when they nail'd him to the cross?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side? (Were you there?)
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when the sun refused to shine? (Were you there?)
Were you there when the sun refused to shine?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when the sun refused to shine?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? (Were you there?)
Were you there when they laid him in the tome?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Lynn L. Petersen began piano lessons at the age of six with her mother as her first teacher, and showed an early interest in composition and improvisation. She earned a B.S. in Elementary Education from Dr. Martin Luther College, a Master of Church Music degree from Concordia College-River Forest, and a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition from the University of Minnesota. She recently completed a sabbatical in jazz studies at Washington State University under the tutelage of Dr. Gregory Yasinitsky. Dr. Petersen currently holds the position of Associate Professor of Music at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, where she has taught since 1999. She has also taught at St. Olaf College, the University of Minnesota, and St. Cloud State University, and she has held church music positions in the Twin Cities and Colorado Springs. She frequently serves as a piano adjudicator at music festivals and has remained active as a pianist and organist. Lynn's compositions include music for orchestra, band, jazz ensemble, chamber ensembles, choir, voice, piano, organ, and music for liturgy and worship.
Rathbun - Seth Bingham
(c.1942, H. w. Gray)
Sir John Bowring (1792-1872) was a distinguished scholar, ranked by some as one of the great minds of his day in the English-speaking world. Among his gifts was his ability as a linguist, publishing translations of poetry from such varied languages as Russian, Batavian, Spanish, Polish, Serbian, Bohemian, Magyar, Czech and Hungarian. Bowring was also a social progressive, advocating free trade, parliamentary reform, education for all and prison reforms, according to hymnologist Albert Bailey. Few hymn writers have been as involved in politics. Knighted in 1854, Bowring helped develop commercial relationships on behalf of Great Britain, traveling to France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Syria and Siam (now Thailand). Bowring also was twice a member of Parliament, a consul at Canton (in charge of trade in China) and a governor of Hong Kong. He was evidently relieved of his duties in Hong Kong because he “was full of conceit and without any very clear idea of political principles on a large scale.” After retirement in 1860, his public service continued as a commissioner to Italy and other diplomatic posts in Europe and Hawaii.
Despite a demanding political and diplomatic career, Bowring maintained an active avocation as a translator of poetry, composer of original poems and writer of essays on political and religious themes. Mr. Bailey notes that the “hymns that have lived were all written when he was about 30 years old, when his poetic interests were uppermost, and the idealism of youth made him the champion of the downtrodden and the underprivileged.” “In the cross of Christ I glory” (1825) was composed while the author was in his early thirties. Appearing in Hymns by John Bowring (1825), the theme and language suggests a much more mature poet. Galatians 6:14 provides the basis for this hymn: “Far be it for me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”
Ithamar Conkey (1815-1867) was born in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, and was of Scottish ancestry. He was organist at Central Baptist Church in Norwich, Connecticut. After his work in Norwich, he went to New York City and served as bass soloist at Calvary Episcopal Church and later bass soloist and choir director of Madison Avenue Baptist Church. One Sunday in 1849 Conkey walked out of the morning service at Central Baptist Church, where he was choir director and organist, frustrated because only one soprano from his choir had come that morning. The next Sunday, the minister preached a Lenten message on the words of Christ on the cross. One of the hymns to be sung was Bowring's "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." Later that day Conkey's discouragement changed to inspiration, and he composed a new tune for that text. He named the tune after that one faithful soprano, Mrs. Beriah S. Rathbun. The tune RATHBUN was published in Henry W. Greatorex's Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1851).
In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time;
all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.
When the woes of life o'ertake me, hopes deceive, and fears annoy,
never shall the cross forsake me. Lo! it glows with peace and joy.
When the sun of bliss is beaming light and love upon my way,
from the cross the radiance streaming adds more luster to the day.
Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, by the cross are sanctified;
peace is there that knows no measure, joys that through all time abide.
In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time;
all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.
Seth Daniels Bingham (1882-1972) was born in New Jersey, the youngest of four siblings in a farming family. After extensive childhood activities in church music, he studied organ and composition at Yale University, and in Paris with Alexandre Guilmant, Vincent d'Indy and Charles-Marie Widor. Bingham taught theory, composition and organ at Yale from 1908 to 1919. Beginning in 1913, he was organist and choirmaster at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, a position he held until his 1951 retirement. He was an associate professor at Columbia University, received an honorary doctorate from Ohio Wesleyan University, and lectured at the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary. Bingham's compositions include orchestral, choral, and chamber music, but most of his compositions are for organ solo.
About the Choral Music:
In the Heart Where Love is Abiding - John Barnard
(c.1998, Hope Publishing)
“Ubi caritas et amor” is a hymn of the Western Church, long used as one of the antiphons for the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday. The Gregorian melody was composed sometime between the fourth and tenth centuries, though some scholars believe the text dates from early Christian gatherings before the formalization of the Mass. It is usually sung at the Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and on Holy Thursday evening at the Mass of the Lord's Supper.
John Barnard has set this traditional plainsong melody with an English translation by Paul Wigmore.
John Barnard (b.1948) is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), an Associate of the Royal School of Church Music (ARSCM) and an active developer of church music as a composer, arranger, choir director, and organist in North West London, England. Barnard was on the Council of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland and has been active in helping to assemble such publications as Hymns for Today's Church, Carols for Today and Psalms for Today. He has been Director of Music at several churches, which include Emmanuel Church (Northwood), St. Alban's Church (North Harrow), John Keble Church (Mill Hill) and St. John the Evangelist Church (Stanmore).
Barnard went to Cambridge University to study Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Selwyn College followed by a PGCE at Exeter University. He taught modern languages at Cheltenham Grammar School from 1971 to 1974; John Lyon School, Harrow from 1974 to 2002; Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith from 2002 to 2004; and Aldenham School from 2002.
In the heart where love is abiding, God is in that heart.
In the heart where love is abiding, God is in that heart.
And the love of Christ has made us all of one heart.
Then with joyful and with glad hearts let us thank him.
Let us fear God and remember all his goodness.
Let us love each other with a pure and clean heart.
In the heart where love is abiding, God is in that heart.
May no quarreling or dispute come between us.
Let us see your face, O Lord Christ, now among us.
Let us sing with all the angels praise to Jesus.
In a song of joy that wells up from a clean heart.
In the heart where love is abiding, God is in that heart.
Amen. Amen.
About the Hymns:
Take My Life and Let it Be
Frances R. Havergal (1836-1879) originally composed her text in eleven couplets as a hymn of "self-consecration to Christ" on February 4, 1874. She told the following story about writing this hymn:
I went for a little visit of five days [to Areley House, Worcestershire, in December 1873]. There were ten persons in the house, some unconverted and long prayed for, some converted but not rejoicing Christians. [God] gave me the prayer, "Lord, give me all this house." And He just did! Before I left the house, everyone had got a blessing. The last night of my visit. . . I was too happy to sleep and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my own consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves and chimed in my heart, one after another, till they finished with "Ever, only, all, for Thee.”
The text is a "catalog" hymn that lists aspects of our lives and offers them in Christ's service. "Take My Life and Let It Be" was first published in the 1874 appendix to Charles B. Snepp's Songs of Grace and Glory (1872). A twelfth couplet was added at some later point, producing the six stanzas published in the Psalter Hymnal.
Although her formal education was sporadic because of poor health, Havergal learned six foreign languages, including Greek and Hebrew, and was well read in many subjects. She began writing poetry at an early age and was also an accomplished singer and pianist. The daughter of a clergyman, she had a conversion experience at the age of fourteen and was confirmed in the Church of England in 1853. Taking seriously her own words "take my silver and my gold," she sent all her jewelry to the Church Mission Society to be sold. She also supported other charitable organizations. Her more than one hundred hymns were originally published in leaflets and later gathered into seven collections: Ministry of Song (1869), Twelve Sacred Songs for Little Singers (1870), Under the Surface (1874), Loyal Responses (1878), Life Mosaic (1879), Life Chords (1880), and Life Echoes (1883), as well as in one large volume, Poetical Works (1884).
The tune MESSIAH, also sometimes called HEROLD, was written by Ferdinand Herold (1791-1833).
Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.
Take my moments and my days; let them flow in endless praise.
Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love.
Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee.
Take my voice and let me sing always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee.
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose.
Take my will and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart it is thine own; it shall be thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour at thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee.
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was the son of an English schoolmaster. He is said to have shown remarkable precocity in childhood, beginning the study of Latin at age four, and writing respectable verses at the age of seven. At the age of sixteen, he went to London to study in the Academy of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, an Independent minister. In 1698, he became assistant minister of the Independent Church, Berry St., London. In 1702, he became pastor.
The number of Watts' publications is very large. His collected works, first published in 1720, embrace sermons, treatises, poems and hymns. His Horae Lyricae was published in December, 1705. His "Hymns" appeared in July, 1707. The first hymn he is said to have composed for religious worship, is "Behold the glories of the Lamb," written at the age of twenty. It is as a writer of psalms and hymns that he is best known. Some of his hymns were written to be sung after his sermons, giving expression to the meaning of the text upon which he had preached. His published hymns number more than eight hundred.
The Lutheran Hymnal Handbook includes this little narrative about the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross:” “With regard to the practical application of the final stanza, Father Ignatius of St. Edmund’s Church in London is reported to have blurted to his congregation: ‘Well, I’m surprised to hear you sing that. Do you know that altogether you put only fifteen shillings in the collection bag this morning?’” While Watts might not have been talking explicitly about money in the last line of his text, there is the expectation that we dedicate ourselves entirely to God, for God demands not just a piece of who we are, but “our soul, our life, our all.” This can be an incredibly difficult line to sing with any sense of honesty.
Devotional author Jerry Jenkins writes in his book Hymns for Personal Devotions, “Perhaps it’s the distance between where Watts encourages me to be and where I truly am that makes this hymn so hard to sing. It’s a lofty and worthy spiritual goal to say that ‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all,’ but how short I fall!” And so as we sing this hymn of love and awe, we must sing it with a prayer in our hearts, asking God to enable us each day to live our life wholly for him.
Lowell Mason's hymn tune HAMBURG is one of the most familiar products of the church music reform that swept the United States during the early decades of the nineteenth century.1 Together with the English melody Rockingham (Old) it has become one of the two most common settings in United States hymnals for Isaac Watts's "When I survey the wondrous cross." The church music reform began as a reaction against the elaborate psalmody of eighteenth-century United States composers such as William Billings and the shape-note folk hymnody that was popular in rural areas of the country. In the estimation of the reformers, the complexity, harmonic "ineptitudes," and often dance-like rhythms of the eighteenth-century composers were both too difficult for congregations to sing and lacked the requisite devotional quality. Folk hymnody was suspect because of the secular background of many of its tunes and its association with shape notes, which, though intended to teach people how to read notation, was seen by the reformers as a stumbling block to a true understanding and performance of music.
Lowell Mason and his slightly older contemporary, Thomas Hastings, were the chief figures among the reformers. In their desire to provide what they considered to be acceptable congregational music they took a two-pronged approach: (1) adapting, arranging, and simplifying melodies from European classical masters such as Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven as hymn tunes, and (2) writing new tunes that were characterized by graceful melodies of limited range, clear harmonies emphasizing the primary chords, and easy rhythms. Mason's HAMBURG is representative of both of these techniques.
When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood.
See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Come and Fill Our Hearts
(c.1991, Les Presses de Taize, admin. GIA Publications)
The hymn “Come and Fill Our Hearts” was written in 1982 by the Taizé community in France. The tune CONFITEMINI DOMINO was composed by Jacques Berthier. The hymn is a prayer of healing and centering.
Jacques Berthier (1923-1994) studied music at the Ecole Cesar Franck in Paris. From 1961 until his death he served as organist at St. Ignace Church, Paris. Although his published works include numerous compositions for organ, voice, and instruments, Berthier is best known as the composer of service music for the Taizé community near Cluny, Burgundy. Influenced by the French liturgist and church musician Joseph Gelineau, Berthier began writing songs for equal voices in 1955 for the services of the then nascent community of twenty brothers at Taizé. As the Taizé community grew, Berthier continued to compose most of the mini-hymns, canons, and various associated instrumental arrangements, which are now universally known as the Taizé repertoire. In the past two decades this repertoire has become widely used in North American church music in both Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions.
Come and fill our hearts with your peace.
You alone, O Lord are holy.
Come and fill our hearts with your peace.
Have mercy on us.
Give Me a Clean Heart
(c.1970, Margaret P. Douroux)
A song that captures the essence of the confessional spirit of Ash Wednesday both in its text and music is Margaret Pleasant Douroux's "Give Me a Clean Heart," inspired by Psalm 51:10. The Faith We Sing contains only the refrain. Dr. Douroux also has written stanzas to this refrain.
A Californian, Dr. Douroux (b. 1941) is a pioneer in the gospel music tradition. "Give Me a Clean Heart" (1970) was her first composition. More than 200 have followed. Dr. Douroux comes from a family that appreciated gospel music. In an interview granted in 2005, she notes that "both my father and mother, Rev. and Mrs. Earl A. Pleasant, are mentioned in the Smithsonian Archives as being pioneers of West Coast Gospel Music. They were my strongest mentors." Her father was a singer who toured with Mahalia Jackson. Following this Mr. Pleasant founded the Mount Moriah Baptist Church near the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Her mother, Olga, took on musical leadership at the church, organized choirs and taught all six children -- five daughters and one son -- to play the piano. Margaret was a shy organist, but took on more choral leadership in the 1960s, eventually succeeding her mentor at the church, Thurston G. Frazier.
When she wrote her first song, "Give Me a Clean Heart," Frazier introduced it at a national gospel song convention. It was composed soon after Margaret's father had died. Even though he had founded Mount Moriah Church, many people had been unkind to the family after his death, wanting them to move out of the manse with no place to go. In her prayers to God, she asked how she might respond to the ungratefulness of the congregation. Dr. Douroux heard God's response: “God said that he would give me a clean heart.”
Dr. Douroux holds a bachelor's degree in music from California State University, Los Angeles, and masters and doctoral degrees in education, working as an educational psychologist in the Los Angeles schools. She has been honored by the McDonald's Corporation with the Golden Circle Award for Lifetime Achievements made to Gospel Music. As the founder and CEO of the non-profit The Heritage Musical Foundation (www.hmrgospel.com), she has taken up the cause of promoting and preserving the African-American gospel music tradition.
I’m not asking for the riches of the land,
I’m not asking for high men to know my name.
Please Lord give me a clean heart, so that I may follow thee.
Give me a clean heart, a clean heart, and I’ll follow thee.
Sometimes I am up and sometimes I am down.
Sometimes I am almost level to the ground.
Please Lord give me a clean heart, so that I may follow thee.
Give me a clean heart, a clean heart, and I’ll follow thee.
Refrain:
Give me a clean heart, so I may serve thee.
Lord fix my heart, so that I may be used by thee.
For I’m not worthy, of all these blessings.
Give me a clean heart, and I’ll follow thee.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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