James Montgomery ranks right up there with Wesley and Watts as a hymn writer. Our hymnal contains seven of his hymns. Since we are in Advent, I'll just mention 220, Angels from the Realms of Glory
Ellacombe is a village in Devon, England, but it seems as likely to me that the hymn tune ELLACOMBE was named for the Reverend Henry Thomas Ellacombe (1790–1885). Ellacombe devised the method of ringing bells where a hammer is used to strike a motionless bell, instead of rotating the bell 360 degrees so that the internal free-swinging clapper would strike the bell. Apparently the men who rang the complicated bells in English bell towers were abusive of their positions. Each was adept at controlling a single bell. Their services as an expert team were absolutely necessary, and they knew it; many could not be bothered to show up sober, or to lead otherwise Christian lives. The Ellacombe Apparatus for ringing bells had the advantage of requiring only a single human bell-ringer.
This is another hymn that has been edited in modern hymnals for excessive colonialism. A sample verse:
Arabia’s desert ranger to Him shall bow the knee;
The Ethiopian stranger His glory come to see;
With offerings of devotion ships from the isles shall meet,
To pour the wealth of oceans in tribute at His feet.
Hymn:195Send Your Word (Yasushige Imakoma/Shozo Koyama)
Darwall was an amateur musician, unlike most of the composers of our hymn tunes.
May 24th is Wesley Day, although Charles Wesley was born in December. (Wesley Day celebrates the date of the Wesleys' spiritual awakening.) 5/24/2007 was the tercentenary of Wesley's birth. There were celebrations all over England and in other countries, although I don't remember anything special at St. Mark's. I might have just missed it, though.
This hymn is an example of Watts' treatment of the book of Psalms. It is a paraphrase of the second half of Psalm 92, written as if the psalmist were an English Christian living in the 18th century. The hymn was very popular for its missionary zeal, but in modern American hymnals several verses have been excised for excessive colonialism, for example:
There Persia glorious to behold
There India stands in Eastern Gold;
And barbarous nations at his word
Submit and bow and own their Lord.
Hymn:718Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (Charles Wesley/trad. English melody)
Arturo Toscanini said: "In Robert Shaw I have at last found the maestro I have been looking for." Shaw conducted the chorus for Toscanini's 1945 NBC recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Robert Shaw, without a doubt, was the dean of American choral music for over 50 years.
Communion Hymns:184Of the Father's Love Begotten; 694Come, Ye Thankful People Come
Prudentius, the author of hymn 184, was a successful Roman lawyer from Spain who later in life became an ascetic and a vegetarian.
William Croft became organist of Westminster Abbey in 1708. His Musica Sacra (1724) was the first collection of sacred music to be published as a score. The tune ST. ANNE, to which this hymn is usually sung, is his best known composition.
Before Isaac Watts, hymns were written using the Scriptures as the text, most often from the book of Psalms. Watts introduced original poetry to hymn writing. Because David, the author of the Psalms, did not know Jesus, Watts proposed that the Psalms should be "imitated" (i.e. adapted) "in the language of the New Testament." He went so far to leave out nine Psalms from his book, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719), because he felt that they were unfit for Christian usage.
Hymn 117 is a paraphrase of Psalm 90. Originally it had nine verses. John Wesley changed the first line from "Our God" to "O God."
Hymn:719My Lord, What a Morning (African-American Spiritual, arranged and adapted by William Farley Smith)
W. F. Smith arranged and adapted all the spirituals in our hymnal. Raised a Baptist, he has written music for protestant, Catholic and Jewish liturgies. He is a prolific composer and author.
The following quote is from Jet magazine, May 18, 1961:
Negro Organist Composes Liturgy for Jewish Temple
William Farley Smith, 20, of Englewood, N. J., made his debut as a composer of Jewish liturgical music at the Congregation B'Nai Jeshurun. Smith, a Baptist, is a regular organist at the temple, the sixth in its 114-year history. He collaborated on the work with the congregation's cantor, Joseph Posner. The work is in the modern idiom and is sung by the cantor and choir during the 90-minute service.
Crotch was a child prodigy (playing the organ for the King at the age of 3) who sometimes had to be bribed to continue playing. He later admitted to being a spoiled child. He was also an accomplished artist.
Scott was a clergyman in the United Church of Canada, and staunch proponent of the social gospel. This hymn, which calls for justice and peace, is one example.
Often sung at weddings in the UK, which is interesting given the choice of our second hymn (see below).
Charles and Sarah Wesley had eight children, but only one daughter and two sons survived infancy; both of the latter became organists and composers.
Wesley's hymn has been set to many tunes, although BEECHER is the most common. One setting is by William Lloyd Webber, the father of that other, more well-known Lloyd Webber.
A Google search on this hymn reveals that many, many churches, of all denominations, include it on a checklist of approved wedding hymns for couples to choose from when planning their wedding service.
What is it with the wedding hymns? :-) Is there something going on that I don't know about?
Wren is listed 14 times in the United Methodist Hymnal.
Hérold wrote the pirate opera Zampa, which is still produced occasionally. It was produced at the Paris Opéra Comique in 2008. One reviewer said: "Hardly anyone, these days, can sing this kind of stuff, halfway between Rossini and Meyerbeer." Zampa features a marble statue that mysteriously moves. The statue even swims back to the surface of the sea after being thrown to the bottom.
Wikipedia notes that Rutter is much more popular in the U.S. than in the U.K, and says that the Today Show called him "the world's greatest living composer and conductor of choral music."
The war horse of hymns for All Saints Sunday. It was originally sung to the tune SARUM, but Vaughan Williams wrote SINE NOMINE for it in 1906. Our version contains 6 verses, with verse 4 set in four-part harmony. The original hymn is 11 verses (!), with 4, 5, and 6 in harmony. We omit the original verses 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10. We also reverse the order of two verses, 6 and 7 in the original and verses 3 and 4 in our version.
This year All Saints Sunday falls on November 1st, the traditional Feast of All Saints. In many countries, on November 1st or 2nd families visit the graves of their ancestors, bringing presents or flowers.
Bishop William How was offended by Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure, and burned it in his fireplace. Hardy commented that How should have waited until winter instead of wasting firewood.
John H. Hopkins, Jr. is also the author of We Three Kings. He delivered the eulogy at President Grant's funeral.
There isn't a lot of material about Lesbia Scott. This is from Singing The Song:
"Lesbia Lesley Locket was born in Willesden in 1898, and educated at Raven’s Croft School in Sussex. She married John Mortimer Scott, a naval officer, who later became an Anglican priest and served a parish near Dartmoor. Active in amateur theatre and religious drama, Mrs Scott did considerable writing, especially of religious drama. She died in 1986 at Pershore."
She wrote this hymn for her children, which explains why it would fit right in the soundtrack of The Sound of Music. Children who grew up singing this hymn delighted in distorting the lyrics, for example:
"One was a soldier and one was a beast
And one was et by a fierce, wild priest."
Adults love to parody the lyrics, too. You can find some samples at this site.
The last verse was "modernized" in 1940. The original text was:
"You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea"
and now reads
"You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store,
in church, by the sea, in the house next door."
The original verses (so very British) still appear in some Episcopal hymnals.
And if you're interested, the saints included are:
A doctor: St. Luke
A queen: St. Margaret of Scotland or St. Elisabeth of Hungary
A soldier: St. George or St. Alban
A priest: St. Thomas Becket
Slain by a fierce, wild beast: St. Ignatius of Antioch
A shepherdess on the green: St Bernadette (of Lourdes)
The text is atrributed to Pope Innocent VI. William Byrd, Edward Elgar, Franz Liszt, and Camille St. Saëns, among others, have set it to music. Mozart's version (K. 618) remains the best known.
I was raised in the Lutheran Church, and this is the only hymn we ever sang. That's not true, of course, but we sang it a lot. I usually volunteer to carry the cross for this hymn because I can pretty much sing all the lyrics without the need for a hymnal.
Since it has been called "The Battle Hymn of the Reformation," I was more than a little surprised to see it sung from the Catholic hymnal at a service I recently attended. The lyrics in the Catholic version, with the exception of a few lines, were not at all the same as ours. While some Catholics feel that this hymn should not be included in their worship, there seems to be a greater consensus that the tune is too majestic and inspiring to be left out.
Frederick Hedge was a Unitarian minister who had studied music in Germany before attending Harvard Divinity School, where he met and became close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson.
There are over 70 English translations of this hymn. (!)
This hymn was a "smash hit" of its day. It was so popular in 19th century America that Bliss was offered an "absurdly large" sum of money to go to Connecticut and sing only that one hymn.
Bliss is also the author of Almost Persuaded and the tune for It Is Well With My Soul (VILLE DU HAVRE, which we sang on September 20th). See my post for that day for more about Bliss's life, including surviving the horrible Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster.
The title of this hymn was used as the title to a book edited by Richard Mouw and Mark Noll, containing writings about the role of hymns in evangelical Protestant history. Quoting from chapter one, by Mark Noll: "... nothing was so central to the [18th-century] evangelical revival than the singing of new hymns written in praise of the goodness, mercy and grace of God."
Sateren wrote the harmony for this version of ASH GROVE, an old Welsh folk tune originally about a lost love. The tune has been used for all kinds of songs, from politics to sports to sacred music, and has its own web page (see link). For example, the Girl Scouts have a version, which treats not of lost love but of love for nature.
Westendorf was in the forefront of Catholic liturgical music in the 20th century.
Based on the King James text of Isaiah 48:20 : "Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The LORD hath redeemed his servant Jacob."
World War I had a profound effect on Shaw, although he was unable to serve in the Army. The war resulted in his having an intense hatred of Germany, and he took it as his mission to rescue English music from all things German.
One of the first hymns to use imagery from the atomic age. Cannon originally used the tune AUSTRIA; the 1991 Baptist Hymnal sets it to Beethoven (HYMN TO JOY). Most often it is sung to HOLY MANNA, a shape-note tune from The Columbian Harmony.
When Vaughan Williams was a student at the Royal College of Music, his classmates and friends included Leopold Stokowski and Gustav Holst.
Isaac Watts did more than write hymns - his Logic was the standard textbook on that subject at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale for over a hundred years.
Partially based on the same text as Esto Les Digo (Matthew 18:20). The hymn text (United Methodist Hymnal 632) has been attacked as unsuitable for ecumenical services involving Catholics because it "promotes Protestantism."
Friedell wrote this piece while he was the organist and choir director at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City, where he played an Aeolian-Skinner 5-manual organ and directed a choir of 70 paid singers.
All hymnals credit Percy Dearmer with the lyrics to Draw Us In the Spirits's Tether. However, the title of our anthem says "Words by B. R.," whoever that is.
Goethe heard Mendelssohn play when the latter was only seven years old. Goethe had also heard the seven year-old Mozart play, and thought that Mendelssohn (at that age, of course) was far superior.
Mason (1792-1872) composed over 16oo hymn tunes. 71 are still commonly used. His name appears 17 times in the United Methodist Hymnal. It is claimed that he almost single-handedly brought about congregational hymn singing (as opposed to choir only). Everyone knows at least one piece of music by Mason - the tune Mary Had A Little Lamb.
Heber (1783-1826) was the Church of England's Lord Bishop of Calcutta for the last three years of his life. He is the author of Holy, Holy, Holy and many other hymns; hymnary.org lists 151 hymns by Heber.
When your parents give you the name John Sebastian Bach Hodges, you pretty much know where your life's path will lead you. Hodges' father was a English composer. Hodges emigrated to America in 1845, at the age of 15.
John Foley is the director of the Center For Liturgy at St. Louis University. He teaches a class called "Eucharist: Theory and Practice," and has over 200 compositions in print.
We sang another of Gary Smith's compositions, Antiphonal Hosanna, on Palm Sunday (see Music for 4/5).
From Mr. Lange's website: "The harmonic structure is lush and vibrant, tonally based but with colorful non-chord tones... contemplative in nature..."
You can find dozens of performances of this anthem on YouTube. David Sloat recommended the Phillipine Madrigal Choir. This choir has numerous performances of Esto Les Digo available, but this one has the best sound, IMHO. Here it is:
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