Bliss Wiant

WIANT, Bliss Mitchell. b. Dalton, Ohio, 1 February 1895; d. Delaware, Ohio, 1 October 1975.  Wiant [Chinese name Fan Tian-xian] was a Methodist Episcopal Church [MEC] missionary from 1923 to 1951. He was an authority on Chinese music, a choral director, composer and arranger, hymnal editor, pastor, and teacher. His widely acclaimed settings of newly written indigenous Chinese Christian hymns to traditional Chinese melodies are an abiding contribution to 20th-century contextualized Chinese Christian hymnody. Ruiwen Chen provides this appraisal:  Wiant’s contributions to the contextualization of Chinese Christian hymns go beyond the work of others, including missionaries, because his music...