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“A little while,” - our Lord shall come. James George Deck* (1807-1884).
This hymn was first published in the Appendix to the 1841 edition of the Brethren book, Hymns for the Poor of the Flock (JJ, p. 3). It was prefaced by ' “A little while, and ye shall see me.” – John xvi. 16.' It had four 6-line stanzas:
“A little while,” – our Lord shall come, And we shall wander here no more;He'll take us to our Father's Home, Where He, for us, has gone before,To dwell with Him, to see his...
A little child the Saviour came. William Robertson, of Monzievaird* (1820-1864).
This hymn for Holy Baptism with its attractive first line was published in the Church of Scotland's Hymns for Public Worship (1861), and subsequently in the Scottish Hymnal (1870). It was also used by the Presbyterian Church of England, and is found in Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), and in Church Praise (1884). In JJ, p. 2, it was reported that it had become more popular in America than in Britain,...
A mighty fortress is our God. Martin Luther* (1483-1546), translated by Frederic Henry Hedge* (1805-1890).
This translation of Luther's version of Psalm 46 ('Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott'*) is the one that is most commonly used in the USA. As expected it is found in Lutheran publications, but it appears in books of all denominations. Hedge's translation, entitled 'Luther's Psalm', was included in the last part ('Supplement') of Hymns for the Church of Christ (Boston, 1853) edited by Hedge...
A type of those bright rays on high. Latin, 15th Century, translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866), and the Compilers of A&M (1861).
This translation of 'Caelestis formam gloriae'* (Neale and JJ use 'Coelestis...'. Frere, 1909, and Frost, 1962, use 'Caelestis') is from The Hymnal Noted Part II (1854), where it was headed 'O Nata Lux de Lumine' incorrectly. The other details on the 1854 page are 'For the Transfiguration' and 'From the Salisbury Hymnal', with a quotation from Philippians...
LVOV, Alexei Fyodorovich. b. 5 June 1798, Reval (now Tallinn), Estonia; d. Kovno (Now Kaunus), Lithuania, 28 December 1870. Lvov was the son of Prince Fyodor Petrovich Lvov, the director of music at the Court Chapel at St Petersburg. He served as an officer in the Imperial army, rising to the rank of General, and becoming an aide-de-camp to the Tsar. He succeeded his father as musical director at St Petersburg in 1837, remaining in post until 1861, when he was forced to retire owing to...
Allchin, Arthur MacDonald. b. Acton, London, 20 April 1930; d. Oxford, 23 December 2010. Donald, as he was always called, was the youngest of four children of Frank MacDonald Allchin, a physician, and Louise Maude, née Wright. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in modern history and proceeded to take a BLitt, published as The Silent Revolution (1958), a history of 19th-century Anglican religious communities which became the standard study of the...
Above the starry spheres. Edward Caswall* (1814-1875).
This translation of 'Iam Christus astra ascenderat' was made by Caswall for his Lyra Catholica (1849). It was placed there for Matins on Whit-Sunday. It was a hymn of nine 4-line stanzas, the last of which was a doxology. The previous eight stanzas were a succinct narrative of the events of the first Whit-Sunday, beginning with the reminder that this came ten days after Ascension Day - 'Above the starry spheres,/ To where He was before,/...
Accept, O Lord, our Alms, though small. Wilson Carlile* (1847-1942).
This was printed by Lady Victoria Carbery* in the Church Hymnal for the Christian Year (1917, retained in the 1920 edition). It was included in the 'Introduction', in a section 'Hymns for the Alms and Oblations'. It was preceded by a quotation from 1 Peter 2: 5: 'Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.' It also referred...
WIDDOP, Accepted. b. Ovenden, West Yorkshire, 1750 (baptized 21 October); d. 9 March, 1801. Widdop was an amateur musician and composer strongly associated with Methodism in the Halifax area of West Yorkshire; he was baptised at Ovenden. Lightwood describes him as 'a cloth worker by trade, and an amateur musician of considerable fame in his day' (1938, p. 59). He seems to have spent his life around Halifax, principally in the small villages of Illingworth and Ovenden.
Many of his tunes are...
TICE, Adam Merrill Longoria. b. Boynton, Pennsylvania, 11 October 1979. Adam Tice spent his growing up years in several states across the USA, ending up in the town of Goshen in northern Indiana. He is a graduate of Goshen College (B.A. in music, 2002), and the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana (now Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, AMBS), with an MA in Christian Formation (2006).
It was at AMBS that he wrote his first hymn text. This began a profound and...
PROCTER, Adelaide Anne. b. London, 30 October 1825; d. London, 2 February 1864. She was the daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, a distinguished literary figure and friend of Charles Dickens. Under the pseudonym 'Mary Berwick', she submitted poems to Dickens's periodicals: 73 of them were published in Household Words and seven in All the Year Round. Her poems were published in Legends and Lyrics (First Series 1858, Second Series 1861). After her death they were published in a single volume, with...
THRUPP, Adelaide ('A.T.'). b. London, 1831; d. Guildford, Surrey, 1908. She was the sister (not the daughter, or the wife, as is sometimes asserted) of Joseph Francis Thrupp*, and she assisted him with the publication of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship (Cambridge, 1853). In this book his hymns appear with the initials 'J.F.T.' and the hymn by which she is remembered, 'Lord, who at Cana's wedding-feast'*, is one of two given the initials 'A.T.' The other was 'O Thou, who didst Thy light...
JUDSON, Adoniram. b. Maldon, Massachusetts, 9 August 1788; d. at sea on the Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal), 12 April 1850. Judson, considered by many as the first American foreign missionary, spent almost forty years in Myanmar (Burma) where he translated the Bible into Burmese, published religious tracts in the indigenous language, completed a Burmese grammar, compiled a Burmese-English dictionary (published posthumously), established Baptist churches in Myanmar, and authored several...
Advent tells us Christ is near. (Arabella) Katherine Hankey* (1834-1911).
According to JJ, p. 483, this was written in 1888 for Sunday School children at St Peter's, Eaton Square, London, then as now a prosperous part of the city (although Hankey organised classes for shop girls). It was printed on a card, with a tune composed by Hankey herself, before being included in many English-speaking hymnbooks on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not a hymn for Advent, in spite of the first line: it is...
Afflicted souls, to Jesus dear. John Fawcett* (1740-1817).
Published in Fawcett's Hymns adapted to the circumstances of Public Worship and Private Devotion (Leeds, 1782). It was headed 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Deut. xxxiii 25.'. It had seven stanzas, each ending with graceful variations on the same line:
Afflicted souls, to Jesus dear,Thy Saviour's gracious promise hear, His faithful word declares to thee, That as thy days, thy strength shall be.
Let not thy heart despond and...
Again the Lord of life and light. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
First published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), where it was entitled 'For Easter-Sunday'. It appeared in Barbauld's Poems (1773), as 'Hymn III', with the same title. It had eleven stanzas.
Many different selections from the eleven stanzas have been made, beginning with William Bengo...
Again the Lord's own day is here. Attributed to Thomas à Kempis* (ca. 1380-1471), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866) and the Compilers of A&M (1861).
This hymn was used in the 'Evening' section for 'Sunday' in the First Edition of A&M. It was based on a translation by Neale in The Hymnal Noted, Part II (1854). The Latin text began 'En dies est dominica'. Frost (1962, p. 149) notes that the translation is of a selection of stanzas (1, 4, 5, 6, 29) of a poem of 29 stanzas...
Agape
Agape: Songs of Hope and Reconciliation, edited by Maggie Hamilton and Päivi Jussila, was published by Oxford University Press in 2003 (the title, pronounced 'A-ga-pay', is a Greek term referring to the highest form of love: in Christianity, the love of God for humankind, and the reciprocal love of humans for God). It contains 110 items and was compiled for the 2003 meeting of the Lutheran World Federation Assembly, the theme of which was 'For the Healing of the World'. Hamilton's preface...
See 'Byzantine hymnody#Akathistos'*
HOMMERDING, Alan Joseph. b. Port Washington, Wisconsin, 19 November 1956. He earned graduate degrees in theology, liturgy and music from St Mary's Seminary in Baltimore and the University of Notre Dame. Additional studies in organ, accompanying and vocal/choral studies were taken at Princeton University, Westminster Choir College and the Peabody Conservatory.
In addition to serving as a church musician and a music advisor for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, Hommerding is Senior...
DALE, Alan Taylor. b. Baddeley Green, near Stoke-on-Trent, 9 April 1902; d. Dartmouth, Devon, 31 January 1979. He was educated at Hanley School, Stoke. He trained as a teacher, and taught for two years before entering Victoria Park College, Manchester, to train for the United Methodist Church ministry. Ordained in 1928, he was a missionary in China (1929-35), followed by Methodist circuits at Skipton, Blackpool North, Sheffield North-East, and Bath. His final post was as a lecturer in religious...
Alas, what hourly dangers rise. Anne Steele* (1717-1778).
From Steele's Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760), where the author was named as 'Theodosia'. It was entitled 'Watchfulness and Prayer, Matt. 26: 41'. The reference is to the verse beginning 'Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation'. It had six stanzas:
Alas, what hourly dangers rise! What snares beset my way! To heaven then let me lift my eyes, And hourly watch and pray.
How oft my mournful thoughts complain, ...
GOODSON, Albert A. b. Los Angeles, October 1933; d. Los Angeles, December 2003. Goodson was brought up in the Pentecostal church. At the age of twelve he joined St Paul Baptist Church where he apparently received his only formal musical training, and was introduced to gospel music by the church's director of music, J. Earle Hines (1916-60) and pianist Gwendolyn Cooper-Lightner (1925-1999), who in 1946 founded the church's Echoes of Eden Choir, and with others established St Paul's as a center...
BRUMLEY, Albert Edward. b. near Spiro, Oklahoma, 29 October 1905; d. Powell, Missouri, 15 November 1977. Brumley was born on a cotton farm. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes: 'Music, both sacred and secular, formed an important part of Brumley's childhood. His parents were firmly committed Campbellite Protestants, [whose worship excluded instruments] but his father was also a noted fiddler, and his mother enjoyed singing parlor songs. Music was integral to the family's weekly church gatherings...
TOZER, Albert Edmonds. b. Little Sutton, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, 13 January 1857; d. Steyning, near Brighton, Sussex, February 1910. He was educated at the City of London School, and the Royal Academy of Music. A brilliant young organist, he was elected FRCO at the age of 19. He was made an ARCM in 1885. He completed a BMus at Durham University and a DPhil at Oxford University.
As a young man Tozer was an organist at two Anglican parishes on the south coast, St Mary Magdalene at St Leonard's...
MIDLANE, Albert. b. Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight, 23 January 1825; d. Newport, Isle of Wight, 27 February 1909. He was educated at Newport, Isle of Wight, and contributed to magazines in his youth under the name 'Little Albert'. He was then employed as an ironmonger's assistant, ultimately going into business for himself as tinsmith and ironmonger. Though he received his religious training in the Congregational church and its Sunday school, in which he became a teacher, he subsequently joined the...
WYTON, Alec (Alexander Francis). b. London, 3 August 1921; d. Danbury, Connecticut, 18 March 2007. After his parents separated, he received his early encouragement from an aunt in Northampton who suggested he learned the piano and organ. When war broke out in 1939, he joined the Royal Corps of Signals but was discharged early owing to a duodenal ulcer. He then went on to the Royal Academy of Music and, in 1943, he became organ scholar at Exeter College, Oxford (BA 1945) where he studied history...
MANZONI, Alessandro. b. Milan, 7 March 1785; d. 22 May 1873. Born into a distinguished family, he was educated at Milan and briefly at the University of Pavia; academically he was undistinguished, but he produced his first poem, 'Il Trionfo della Liberta' as early as 1801. After the death of his father in 1805, he lived for two years with his mother at Auteuil, Paris, where he met French writers and encountered the anti-church ideas of Voltaire. In 1808, however, back in Milan, he married...
CLARK, Alexander. b. near Steubenville, Ohio, 10 March 1834; d. Atlanta, Georgia, 6 July 1879. Clark was a Methodist Episcopal Church minister. He was at some time at Union Chapel, Cincinnati, Ohio. He is referred to as 'DD' in Sacred Songs and Solos, in which two of his hymns appeared:
Heavenly Father, bless me now*
Make room for Jesus! room, sad heart!
He edited The Methodist Reporter, published in Pittsburgh, from 1870 to 1879. Among his several books were The Old Log School House;...
ACKLEY, Alfred Henry. b. Spring Hill, Pennsylvania, 21 January 1887; d. Whittier, California, 3 July 1960. Ackley received his early musical training from his father, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and in New York City to become an accomplished cellist. He graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary, Westminster, Maryland, in 1914, and served Presbyterian churches in Wilkes-Barre and Elmhurst, Pennsylvania, and Escondido, California. Ackley claimed he wrote the...
HAAS, Alfred Burton. b. Shamokin, Pennsylvania, 21 July 1911; d. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 19 July 1987. Haas attended Bucknell University, Lycoming, Pennsylvania (BA, 1933), and Drew Theological School, Madison, New Jersey (BD, 1936; MA 1946 ). In 1938 he was ordained elder in the Central Pennsylvania Conference of the Methodist Church: he served parishes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City. Haas taught hymnody and worship at Drew from 1941-1968, attaining the rank of Associate...
BARRY, Alfred. b. London, 15 January 1826; d. Windsor, 1 April 1910. He was the son of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Sir Charles Barry. He was educated at King's College, London (1841-44) and Trinity College, Cambridge (1844-48; BA 1848, MA 1851). He was briefly a Fellow of Trinity College, and took Holy Orders (deacon 1850, priest 1853). By that time he had become sub-Warden of Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire, an independent school of the Scottish Episcopal Church founded...
FLOWERDEW, Alice. b. 1759; d. Ipswich, Suffolk, 23 September 1830. Her maiden name is unknown (JJ, p. 379). She married Daniel Flowerdew, who for some years held a Government appointment in Jamaica. He died in 1801, and she suffered further distress when her son, Charles Frederic Flowerdew, died on 29 November 1802, aged 21. She opened a school in Islington. She later lived in Bury St Edmunds, where she continued to teach, and Ipswich. She has been variously described as a General Baptist and a...
ROBERTSON, Alison Margaret (née Malloch). b. Glasgow, 22 February 1940. She was the younger twin of the Revd. Jack and Nancy Malloch. In 1948 the family moved to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), when her father became a Church of Scotland missionary principal of the Teacher Training College at Akropong. Her mother ran a baby clinic once a week and Alison, at the age of 10, was made responsible for the small wounds part of the clinic, cleaning and dressing fresh and infected wounds sustained by the...
All beautiful the march of days. Frances Whitmarsh Wile* (1878-1939).
According to Henry Wilder Foote, American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns (Cambridge, Mass., 1959) (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53833/53833-h/53833-h.htm), this was written ca. 1907 in Rochester with the help of her pastor, William Channing Gannett*. It had three stanzas:
All beautiful the march of days, As seasons come and go; The hand that shaped the rose hath wrought The crystal of the snow; Hath sent the hoary...
All hail, adorèd Trinity. Latin, before 11th century, translated by John David Chambers* (1805-1893).
The Latin text of this hymn began 'Ave! Colenda Trinitas'. According to JJ, p. 98, it was in The Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Durham: the Surtees Society, 1851), from the Durham MS of the 11th century. Frost described it as 'One of the Anglo-Saxon hymns for the Trinity office, but it did not find a place in the Norman and later Uses. Its versification is, in parts, not even...
All Nature's works his praise declare. Henry Ware, Jr.* (1794-1843).
This hymn is dated 9 November 1822 (JJ, p. 1233). This was during Ware's time as pastor of the Second Unitarian Church at Boston (later incorporated into First Church: see https://www.uuworld.org/articles/exploring-bostons-churches). It was entitled, with nice Unitarian plainness, 'On opening an Organ':
All nature's works his praise declare To whom they all belong; There is a voice in every star, In every breeze a...
All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine. F. Bland Tucker* (1895-1984).
Written in 1938 on Philippians 2: 5-11. It was written for the tune SINE NOMINE, by Ralph Vaughan Williams*, although set in H40 (for copyright reasons) to ENGELBERG, by Charles Villiers Stanford*. It has been frequently used in subsequent books: it is very popular in Britain, and is found in 100HfT and thus in A&MNS, NEH and A&MCP. A modernized version, to avoid 'thee' (but not wanting 'All praise to you...') is...
All praise to Thee, O Lord. Hyde Wyndham Beadon* (1812-1891).
From The Parish Hymn Book (1863), the book edited by Beadon, Greville Phillimore*, and James Russell Woodford*. It began 'Glory to Thee, O Lord', altered to the present first line, perhaps to avoid confusion with 'Glory to Thee, O Lord'* by Emma Toke*, published a decade earlier in 1852. It has appeared in a number of books, if only because it is one of the few hymns to celebrate the first miracle of Christ at the marriage of Cana...
All prophets hail thee, from of old rejoicing. Thomas Alexander Lacey* (1853-1931).
This is one of the few hymns on the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as related in Luke 2: 22-33. It is a translation of a Latin hymn attributed to Hrabanus Maurus* (ca. 780-856) beginning 'Quod chorus vatum venerandus olim'. It was translated into fluent Sapphic stanzas:
All prophets hail thee, from of old announcing, By the inbreathèd Spirit of the Father, God's Mother, bringing prophecies to...
All things praise thee, Lord most high. George William Conder* (1821-1874).
First published in an Appendix of 1874 to Psalms, Hymns, and Passages of Scripture for Christian Worship (Leeds, 1853), generally known as the 'Leeds Hymn Book', edited by Conder and other Congregationalists, including George Rawson*. The book had been first compiled when Conder was minister of Belgrave Chapel, Leeds, from 1849 to 1864, but it is not known when this hymn was written. It had six stanzas, beginning:
'All...
All to Jesus I surrender. Judson W. Van De Venter* (1855-1939).
Van De Venter was torn between his ambition to be a great artist, and the call to be an evangelist. While supporting himself by teaching art in Pennsylvania, he resisted the encouragement of those who thought he should be an evangelist. The hymn was written 'in memory of the time, when, after a long struggle, I had surrendered and dedicated my life to active Christian service' (Reynolds, 1964, p. 13). The word 'in memory of a time'...
All who believe and are baptized. Thomas Hansen Kingo* (1634-1703), translated by George Alfred Taylor Rygh* (1860-1942).
Kingo's hymn began 'Enhver som tror og bliver døbt', in his Danmarks og Norges Kirkes forordnede Salmebog (1689) (Milgate, p. 158: this hymnal was not approved by the church authorities, but Kingo's hymn was found in the official book that succeeded it, Den forordnede ny Kirke-Psalme-Bog, 1699, 'The authorized hymn book'). It was translated from the Danish by Rygh as 'He...
All ye who seek for sure relief. Latin, probably 18th century, translated by Edward Caswall* (1814-1878).
This is an alternative to 'All ye that seek a comfort sure'*, a variant on Caswall's translation of 'Quicunque certum quaeritis' in his Lyra Catholica (1849). It was set for Vespers and Matins in 'Another Office of the same Feast', referring to 'Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi', the 'Feast of the most sacred heart of Jesus'. It had six stanzas:
All ye who seek a...
All, yes, all I give to Jesus. Jonathan Burtch Atchinson* (1840-1882).
First published in Triumphant Songs No. 2 (Chicago: the Edwin O. Excell Co., 1889), with a tune by Edwin O. Excell* named ESCONDIDO. It was headed 'Dedicated to the “Deaconesses” of America' (Deaconesses were active in several churches and hospitals in the 1880s and 1890s). It had four stanzas:
All, yes, all I give to Jesus, It belongs to Him; All my heart I give to Jesus It belongs to Him; Evermore to be His dwelling,...
Allein Gott in der Höh' sei Ehr. Nikolaus Decius* (ca. 1490-1541).
The first three stanzas were probably written in 1522-23, when Decius was a schoolmaster in Braunschweig. It was published in Joachim Slüter's Eyn gantz schone unde seer nutte gesangk boek (Rostock, 1525), with a fourth stanza by Slüter. It was in Low German (Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied III. pp. 565-6, beginning:
Aleyne Godt yn der hoege sy eere und danck vor syne gnade...
This is the first of two such texts, the...
Alleluia, song of sweetness. Latin, 11th century or earlier, translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This is Neale's translation of 'Alleluya, dulce carmen'*, the hymn used in various rites to mark the pre-season of Lent, normally sung before Septuagesima Sunday, the ninth Sunday before Easter, the third Sunday before Ash Wednesday. It was printed in Neale's Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851), with a preface:
The Latin Church, as is well known, forbade, as a general rule, the use of...
Almighty Father, God of love. Hester Periam Hawkins* (1846-1928).
This hymn was not included in the list of Hawkins' hymns by James Mearns* in Appendix II of JJ (p. 1646). It may have been written after the completion of the Appendix. It is included here because it was the best known of her hymns in America (British books preferred 'Heavenly Father, may thy blessing'*, although the present hymn was in FHB, 1933). The editors would welcome information about the composition and first...
Almighty Father, hear our cry. Edward Henry Bickersteth* (1825-1906).
Written in 1869, this was published in Bickersteth's Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer* (1870). It was then printed in the Second Edition of A&M (1875) in the section 'For Those at Sea'. It was retained in A&M (1904), and in the Standard Edition of 1922, but dropped from A&MR.
Another version, also dated 1869, was published in Bickersteth's The Two Brothers, and other poems (1871), beginning 'Lord...
Almighty Father, who dost give. John Howard Bertram Masterman* (1867-1933).
First published in In Hoc Signo: hymns of war and peace (1914), with music edited by Walford Davies*. It is eminently suitable for war time, but because the sentiments are general, it can be seen as a hymn for various purposes: after the war of 1914-1918 it came to be seen as a hymn for World Peace and Brotherhood (the heading of the section in which it appears in MHB). It could also be used for missions: it appeared in...
Almighty God, Thy word is cast. John Cawood* (1775-1852).
Written in 1816, and first published in Thomas Cotterill*'s suppressed Eighth Edition of his Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship (1819), in five stanzas. It was entitled 'After a Sermon'. It was based on Mark 4: 3-9. It was printed in James Montgomery*'s Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825), and other books, including Godfrey Thring*'s A Church of England Hymn Book (1880), and became widely known.
There are two texts of this...
Almost persuaded now to believe. Philip P. Bliss* (1838-1876)
According to Taylor (1989, p. 7) this was first published in The Charm: A Collection of Sunday School Music (Chicago, 1871). JJ, p. 150, quotes a source to the effect that it was inspired by a sermon from a Revd Brundage, who said, 'He who is almost persuaded is almost saved, but to be almost saved is to be entirely lost.'
The hymn is in three stanzas, sometimes printed with an abundance of quotation marks, which increases the drama....
Alone thou goest forth, O Lord. F. Bland Tucker* (1895-1984).
Written in 1938 and published in H40. It is a free translation of a hymn by Peter Abelard* on the Passion of our Lord, 'Solus ad victimam procedis, Domine'*, found in Abelard's Hymnarius Paraclitensis. Abelard's hymn was written for the nocturnal office on Good Friday at the Convent of the Paraclete where Heloise was abbess. In H82 it is found in the 'Holy Week' section, set to BANGOR, an 18th-century psalm tune. It has been...
Altar Hymnal, The (1884/1885).
The Altar Hymnal was a production of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. It was edited by Claudia Frances Hernaman*, Elizabeth Harcourt Mitchell, and Walter Plimpton. The music editor was Arthur Henry Brown*. His name appeared on the title page together with that of Thomas Thellusson Carter (rector of Clewer, Berkshire, and the biographer of John Armstrong*), who provided a brief introduction. That introduction left the reader in no doubt about what...
HUSBERG, Amanda. b. Chicago, 7 December 1940; d. New York City, 15 February 2021. Amanda Husberg graduated from Concordia Teacher's College (Seward, Nebraska, B.S., 1962) where she studied education, and organ performance with Jan Bender*. Subsequently, she completed her study in early childhood education from Hunter College (New York City, M.S., 1971).
From July 1964 onwards she was the Director of Music at St. John the Evangelist Lutheran Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Concurrent with her...
An image of that heavenly light. Latin, 15th Century, translated by Richard Ellis Roberts* (1879-1963).
This is the translation of the Latin hymn, 'Caelestis formam gloriae'* used by EH in preference to the one by John Mason Neale*, 'A type of those bright rays on high'*, which formed the base text for the hymn in the A&M tradition, 'O wondrous type, O vision fair'*. It was the first of four hymns on the Transfiguration in EH, which paid more attention to the Feast of the Transfiguration...
DAVISSON, Ananias. b. Shenandoah County, Virginia, 2 February 1780; d. Rockingham County Virginia, 21 October 1857. Davisson is best known as the compiler of the fasola tunebooks Kentucky Harmony (Harrisonburg, Virginia, five editions), and A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (Harrisonburg, Virginia, three editions).
Little is known about Davisson prior to 1816. His successes beginning that year as a printer of tunebooks suggest that he may have been apprenticed to a printer. Only slightly...
And am I born to die. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
From Hymns for Children (1763), where it had six DCM stanzas. All were reprinted, with minor changes, by John Wesley* in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), in spite of (or because of) their uncompromising severity (they are found in the section entitled 'Describing Death', the first of the four Advent themes, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell). This may be seen in the first three stanzas:
And am I born...
And am I only born to die. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
This hymn is closely related to 'And am I born to die'* in Charles Wesley's Hymns for Children (Bristol, 1763). It is found immediately after it in John Wesley*'s A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780). Much of what is said about that hymn and its suitability for children applies also to the present one.
It had six 6-line stanzas. The child is encouraged to think about life after death, and the possibility...
And now the wants are told, that brought. William Bright* (1824-1901).
First published in Bright's Hymns and Other Poems (1866), in six stanzas. It was almost immediately used in the Appendix (1868) to the First Edition of A&M (1861), where it had a doxology. Beginning with Mark 9: 36, the story of Christ setting a child 'in the midst of them' [the disciples], it portrays very exactly a child's approach to the wonder and mystery of God, although it is a hymn for adults also. Stanza 6,...
And now this holy day. Edward Harland* (1810-1890).
Published in the Supplement (1876) to Harland's Church Psalter and Hymnal (1855). It was included in the Supplement (1889) to the Second Edition of A&M, and thus in A&MS, after which it was omitted from A&MR. It is a hymn for Sunday evening, designated 'For the Young' in both books: its simplicity is appealing, although it expresses an idea of a kind of Sunday that has disappeared, and one that was probably never very popular with...
And now, my soul, another year. Simon Browne* (1680-1732).
This hymn was found in a number of British books in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a shortened form of a dramatic hymn by Browne, from Volume 1 of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in Three Books, designed as a Supplement to Dr Watts (1720). It was entitled 'New Year's Day'. The original text is dramatic and revealing:
And now, my soul, another year Of my short life is past: I cannot long continue here, And this may be...
CROUCH, Andraé Edward. b. San Francisco, California, 1 July 1942; d. Los Angeles, California, 8 January 2015. Andraé Crouch began performing as a teenager in his church, directed a choir at a Teen Challenge drug rehabilitation center, and in 1960 formed a singing group, the COGICS, for his Church of God in Christ denomination (Holiness/Pentecostal). He studied at the L.I.F.E. Bible College and Valley Junior College in Los Angeles where in 1965 he founded the 'Andraé Crouch and the Disciples'...
TEICH, Andreas Hans. b. Krefeld, Germany, 5 October 1960. A parish pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Teich studied at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania (AB, 1982), Christ Seminary-Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Illinois (MDiv, 1986). He was ordained in 1986. His pastorates at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Bellevue, Kentucky (1986-1990), and Messiah Lutheran Church, Bay City, Michigan (1994- ), are noted for employing the rich chorale tradition as well as...
LAW, Andrew. b. Milford, Connecticut, 21 March 1749; d. Cheshire, Connecticut, 13 July 1821. Law, a grandson of Jonathan Law (1674-1750), Governor of the Colony of Connecticut (1741-1750), was a tunebook compiler, clergyman, and composer. His Select Harmony: containing in a plain and concise manner, the rules of singing, together with a collection of psalm tunes, hymns and anthems (Cheshire, Connecticut, 1779) became a major influence among many subsequent collections used by singing masters...
ANDREW of Crete, St. b. ca. 660; d. ca. 732. Andrew was the oldest representative of kanon* writers who distinguished himself as both poet and orator. A native of Damascus, St Andrew became archbishop of Gortyna in Crete, ca.712, where it is believed he wrote his most famous hymn, the Great Kanon. This vast cycle, sung in sections on the first four days of Lent and in its entirety on the fifth Thursday of Lent, is characterised by the fusion of praise of the Divinity with passages of confession...
PRATT, Andrew Edward. b. Paignton, Devon, 28 December 1948. He was educated at Barking Regional College of Technology, London, where he read Zoology, and the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he obtained an M.Sc. in Marine Biology. He became a teacher, but then decided to train for the Methodist ministry, studying at Queen's College, Birmingham. (1979-82). He has served as a Methodist minister in circuits in Cheshire and Lancashire (Northwich; Nantwich; Leigh and Hindley; Orrell...
REED, Andrew. b. London, 27 November 1787; d. London, 25 February 1862. He was the son of a watchmaker, who was also a lay preacher. He became a watchmaker himself, but sold his tools and entered Hackney College in 1807 to train for the Congregational ministry. He was ordained in 1811 to a chapel at New Road, East London. He built a new chapel called Wycliffe in Commercial Road, Whitechapel, and became minister of the congregation there in 1831; he retired in November 1861, after thirty years...
Angels lament, behold your God. Charles Coffin* (1676-1749), translated by John Chandler* (1806-1876).
The text by Coffin was in the Paris Breviary, 1736, and in Hymni Sacri Auctor Carolo Coffin (1736). It began 'Lugete, pacis Angeli', and was set for Friday Vespers. It proved attractive to translators, including Isaac Williams*, William John Blew*, Robert Campbell*, John David Chambers*, and David Thomas Morgan* (JJ, pp. 701-2). The compilers of the First Edition of A&M chose Chandler's,...
Angelus ad virginem. Latin, probably 13th Century, author unknown, possibly Philip the Chancellor* (d. 1236; see under Goliards*).
This carol is best discussed in two sections: the medieval and the modern.
The Medieval Carol
This was sung by Nicholas, the student in Chaucer's 'The Miller's Tale' (Nicholas is a very unpleasant character, whose seduction of his landlord's wife is a grotesque parody of the angel's visit to the Virgin Mary). The carol is first recorded in a fourteenth-century...
The Psalms of David have been recited in a musical form since they were written, the word 'psalm' deriving from the Greek word for 'a song sung to a harp'. In temple worship, the psalms would have been recited by a solo cantor with a congregational refrain. This form developed into simple melodies or tones that characterise plainsong, which itself was the musical form for psalmody adopted in the early and medieval Church. This was especially so in the monastic foundations which observed the...
[This article considers congregational song in the Church of England (later, The Anglican Church of Canada) in that part of British North America which became known as Canada. It does not deal with hymnody in Newfoundland, a separate British colony until 1949, when it became a Canadian province.]
Systematic British settlement in Canada began in 1763, after France ceded sovereignty to Britain. During the 18th century, the singing repertoire and practices of the Church of England in Canada...
Liturgical use in early Anglo-Saxon England
No complete hymnal survives from Anglo-Saxon England before the late 10th century. A list given by Thomas of Elmham (early 15th cent.) of the contents of a hymnal purportedly sent to St Augustine of Canterbury by Gregory the Great* seems to suggest a document of considerable antiquity (i.e. possibly authentically Gregorian or at least pre-900 AD) but we cannot be sure of its provenance. We are on firmer ground, however, with two 8th-century...
TAYLOR, Ann and Jane. Ann, b. Islington, London, 30 January 1782, d. Nottingham, 20 December 1866, married name Ann Taylor Gilbert; Jane, b. Islington, 23 September 1783, d. Ongar, Essex, 13 April 1824.
After Isaac Watts* and Charles Wesley*, Ann and Jane Taylor were the most important of the early hymn writers for children. Their Hymns for Infant Minds was first published in 1810 and was a commercial success in Britain and America (by the 1860s, it had gone into nearly 50 editions in America,...
GRIFFITHS, Ann. B. Llanfihangel, Montgomeryshire, April 1776; d. Llanfihangel, August 1805. Ann Thomas was brought up on the farm of Dolwar Fach, Llanfihangel, the daughter of the devout Thomas family who worshipped at the local parish church and who prayed regularly together. She took a full part in local life, and is said to have been frivolous in her youth, much enamoured of dancing, and ready to mock the Methodists. She was only 18 when her mother died and she took over the running of the...
NITSCHMANN, Anna, b. 24 November 1715; d. 21 May 1760; Johann, b. 25 September 1712; d. 30 June 1783. Born at Kunewald, near Fulneck, Moravia; the family moved to Herrnhut when they were children in 1725. Anna was appointed Unity-Elder, with responsibility for the unmarried women of the Herrnhut community. With her friend Anna Dober*, she founded the 'Jungfrauenbund' for them. Johann studied theology at the University of Halle and became private secretary to Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf*. Anna...
DOBER, Anna (née Schindler). b. Kunewald, near Fulneck, Moravia, 9 April 1713; d. Marienborn, near Büdingen, Hesse, 12 December 1739. She joined the Moravian community at Herrnhut in 1725, where she assisted Anna Nitschmann* (also born at Kunewald) in founding a young women's movement, the 'Jungfrauenbund'. In 1737 she married Johann Leonhard Dober*, later to be a Moravian bishop. She helped him in his missionary work at Amsterdam; she died aged 26 at Marienborn.
According to JJ, stanzas 4 and...
HOPPE, Anna Bernardine Dorothy. b. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 7 May 1889; d. Milwaukee, 2 August 1941. Hoppe, a Lutheran Wisconsin Synod member, penned around 600 original hymns and chorale translations that remained uncollected and unpublished until 75 years after her death. She was born to German-Lutheran immigrants Albert and Emilie Hoppe. Baptized and confirmed by pastor Johann Bading of St John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, she alone of her five siblings attended the parochial school there,...
BARBAULD, Anna Letitia (née Aikin). b. Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, 20 June 1743; d. Stoke Newington, London, 9 March 1825. At Kibworth her father was a Presbyterian minister teaching at the dissenting academy (her maternal grandfather, John Jennings, had taught Philip Doddridge* there). In 1753 her father moved to the celebrated Warrington Academy, where she thrived in the cultural and intellectual freedom and began to write, publishing (with her brother John) Poems (1773) and...
COUSIN, Anne Ross (née Cundell). b. Hull, Yorkshire, 27 April 1824; d. Edinburgh, 6 December 1906. The daughter of a Scottish army surgeon, she moved to Leith, near Edinburgh, as a small child. In 1847 she married William Cousin, who became the minister of the Free Church of Scotland at Irvine, Ayrshire, and later Free Church minister of Melrose, Roxburghshire. When at Irvine, she wrote her best known hymn, 'The sands of time are sinking'*. She published a collection of poems, Immanuel's Land...
Another Sabbath ended. T. Vincent Tymms* (1842-1921).
According to JJ, p. 1190, this was one of the hymns by Tymms printed in the 1880 Supplement to the Baptist Psalms and Hymns of 1858, and in the Baptist Psalms and Hymns for School and Home (n.d.). It was included in the Baptist Church Hymnal (1900), preceded by a quotation: 'The shadows of the evening are stretched out – Jeremiah vi. 4.' It had four graceful stanzas, expressing the ideal of a Sunday that has now disappeared from British...
Another six days' work is done. Joseph Stennett* (1663-1713).
This hymn appeared in fourteen 4-line stanzas in The Works of the Late Reverend and Learned Mr. Joseph Stennett (1732). With alterations, it appeared in a greatly shortened form in several collections, notably the collection by John Ash* and Caleb Evans*, A Collection of Hymns adapted to Public Worship (Bristol, 1769; see Ash and Evans's A Collection of Hymns*), in six stanzas, entitled 'Hymn on the Sabbath'. It crossed the Atlantic...
ANSELM. b. Aosta, Italy, 1033; d. 21 April 1109. Anselm studied under Lanfranc at the Norman abbey of Bec where he became a monk in 1060, prior in 1063, and abbot in 1078. He was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. A philosopher and theologian, he is famous for formulating the ontological argument for the existence of God: nothing greater than God can be imagined and reality consists of more than what is imagined, therefore God exists in reality. 'Quid commisisti, dulcissime puer'*,...
MURRAY, Anthony Gregory (monastic name) OSB. b. Fulham, London, 27 February 1905; d. 19 January 1992. He was educated at Westminster Cathedral Choir School (1914-20) and St Benedict's Priory School, Ealing (1920-22). He entered Downside Abbey as a monk in 1922, and read History at Cambridge University (1926-29). He was organist and choirmaster at Downside from 1929 to 1941. He was parish priest at Ealing, (1941-46), Hindley, near Wigan, (1948-52), and Stratton on the Fosse (Downside)...
PETTI, Anthony Gaetano Raphael. b. Islington, London, 12 February 1932; d. Calgary, Canada, 13 January 1985. He was educated at St Michael's College, Hitchin, Hertfordshire (1941-45) and St Ignatius' College, London (1945-50). After National Service he read English at University College, London (BA 1955, MA 1957), teaching at the College from 1960 to 1969. He was Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada, from 1969 until his early and sudden death.
Petti was a specialist in medieval...
This is a medieval term for a liturgical book containing antiphons. The term first appears in library catalogies from the 8th and 9th centuries, as well as in the titles of some manuscripts from that era. In the middle ages, an antiphoner might contain antiphons for the Mass (that is, introits and communions, perhaps together with other Mass proper chants) or for the divine office. Because of potential confusion between these two sorts of books, collections of Mass proper chants are usually...
CHARTERIS, Archibald Hamilton. b. Wamphray, Dumfiesshire, Scotland, 13 December 1835; d. Edinburgh, 24 April 1908. He was educated at Wamphray, and at the University of Edinburgh (MA, 1852). He became minister of New Abbey, south of Dumfries, and of the Park Church, Glasgow, built in 1858, and now sadly demolished. In those years he wrote The Life of the Rev. James Robertson, formerly Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History at Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1863). He gave speeches and preached...
DUBA, Arlo Dean. b. Platte, Brule County, South Dakota, 12 November 1929; d. Gunnison, Colorado, 27 June 2023. Duba was raised in a Bohemian Presbyterian farming family whose Hussite/Czech forebearers settled in the Dakotas in the 1880s. He attended the University of Dubuque, where he met his wife, Doreen. He majored in music and religion (BA 1952), and Princeton Theological Seminary (BD 1955, PhD 1960). His dissertation title was 'The Principles of Theological Language in the Writings of...
Arm of the Lord, awake, awake (Shrubsole). William Shrubsole (II)* (1759-1829).
According to JJ, William Shrubsole (II) was a Director and one of the Secretaries of the London Missionary Society, founded in 1795. In the same year this hymn appeared in Missionary Hymns (JJ, p. 1056). It was included in John Dobell*'s New Selection of Seven Hundred Evangelical Hymns (1810), with the title 'Zion's Increase prayed for…...Isaiah li. 9.':
Arm of the Lord, awake! awake! Put on Thy strength, the...
THOMAS, (Henry) Arnold. b. Clifton, Bristol, 13 June 1848; d. Sneyd Park, Bristol, 28 June 1924. The son of the minister of Highbury Chapel, Bristol (Congregational), he was educated at Mill Hill School, University College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He assisted his father at Highbury Chapel before training for the Congregational ministry at New College, London. He was ordained to pastorates at Burntash, Lewisham, London (1873-74) and Ealing (1874-76); but 'it was fore-ordained...
PATTEN, Arthur Bardwell. b. Bowdoinham, Maine, 26 March 1864; d. Claremont, California, 10 May 1952. He was educated at Colby University, Waterville, Maine (now Colby College, to indicate its status as an old-established Liberal Arts College). He graduated AB in 1890, and went on to Bangor Theological Seminary (graduated 1893). He became a minister in the Congregational Church, serving pastorates at Everett, Massachusetts (1895-97), South Hadley, Mass. (1897-1905), Sant Rosa, California...
GOOK, Arthur Charles. b. London, 11 June 1883; d. London, 18 June 1959. Gook was the son of an estate agent, who would not allow him to take up a scholarship to a university. After working briefly in his father's business, and for a London publisher, he trained as a homeopathic practitioner at the London Homeopathic Hospital. He was converted at a Bible Class, and joined the Open Brethren (OBs: see Brethren hymnody, British*). With his wife Florence, he went to Iceland in 1905 to take over a...
CLYDE, Arthur G. b. Bradford, Pennsylvania, 28 December 1940. A prominent United Church of Christ (UCC) musician and editor of The New Century Hymnal (Cleveland, 1995), Clyde attended Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania (BA, in Sociology, 1963), with additional studies at Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University, Philadelphia (1963-64, 75-77). He was an English language teacher in Japan under the missions program of the Lutheran Church in America (1965-1968), taught music...
MESSITER, Arthur Henry. b. Frome, Somerset, England, 1 April 1834; d. Manhattan, New York, 2 July 1916. Messiter is remembered for his career as organist and choirmaster of Trinity Church in New York City; for one of the music editions of the Episcopal Hymnal prior to the first authorized music edition; and for the hymn tune MARION.
Although the date of Messiter's birth is sometimes shown as 12 April 1834, an official record shows 1 April 1834 for his birth and 2 May 1834 for his baptism. ...
JONES, Arthur Morris. b. 1899; d. 1980. He was a missionary and musicologist, educated at Keble College, Oxford, and Wells Theological College. He took Holy Orders (deacon 1922, priest 1923) and served curacies at Ashford, Kent (1922-24) and St Michael and All Angels, Maidstone, Kent (1924-28). In 1929 he became a missionary in what was then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. He took up a post as Warden of St Mark's Teachers' Training College, under the auspices of the Universities' Mission to...
As when the weary traveller gains. John Newton* (1725-1807).
From Olney Hymns (1779), Book III, 'On the Rise, Progress, Changes, and Comforts of the Spiritual Life'. It is found in Section IV ('Comfort') of Book III as hymn 58, entitled 'Home in view'. The text in 1779 had six stanzas, as follows:
As when the weary travell'r gains The height of some o'erlooking hill; His heart revives, if cross the plains He eyes his home, tho' distant still.
While he surveys the much-lov'd spot, He...
NETTLETON, Asahel. b. North Killingworth, Connecticut, 21 April 1783; d, East Windsor,Connecticut, 16 May 1844. Nettleton was an itinerant revivalist of the conservative (Calvinistic) wing of the Congregational Church, and compiler of Village Hymns for Social Worship* (Hartford, Connecticut, 1824). He was converted when a teenager. Following the death of his father, he managed the family's farm and finances, and taught school. A local Presbyterian minister prepared him for entering Yale College...
Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM)
The Association of Lutheran Church Musicians nurtures and equips musicians to serve and lead the church's song. Music is a vital expression of Lutheran worship. By sharing the knowledge, experience, and passion that honor our heritage and inspire our future, ALCM nurtures and equips those who lead music in worship.
Approximately 140 church musicians from across the United States and Canada responded to an invitation to meet at Lutheran...
At thy feet, O Christ, we lay. William Bright* (1824-1901).
First published in the Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church (October 1867), and then in the Second Edition of Bright's Hymns and Other Poems (1874). It became widely known after its printing in the Second Edition of A&M (1875). It is a morning hymn, meditating upon human weakness, but its simplicity of line, and the rhyming couplets, also make it suitable for children. It has been frequently...
At Thy feet, our God and Father. James Drummond Burns* (1823-1864).
According to JJ, p. 1551, this was first published in The Family Treasury, presumably a Christian periodical, in 1861 (Gordon Bell notes 'July'). It later appeared in the Presbyterian Church of England's Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), and in James Hamilton's Memoir and Remains of the Rev James D. Burns (1869). The text in 1869 was entitled 'New Year's Hymn', and was preceded by '“Thou crownest the year with thy...
DE VERE, Aubrey (Thomas). b. Curragh Chase, Co. Limerick, Ireland, 10 January 1814; d. Curragh Chase, 21 January 1902. Born into the landed gentry (his mother was a Spring-Rice), he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (1832- ), after which he travelled widely and succeeded in meeting many of the remarkable people of his time, such as William Wordsworth*, John Henry Newman*, and Alfred Tennyson*. As a result of his travels in Europe, he published two early books, The Waldenses, and Other...
MIEIR, Audrey Mae (neé Wagner). b. Leechburg, Pennsylvania, 12 May 1916; d. Irvine, California, 5 November 1996. Audrey Wagner was educated at the L.I.F.E. Bible College (Meridian, Idaho). As a young woman, she moved to California where she was influenced by Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944), founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. She married Charles Brooks Mieir (1911-1996), and was ordained to the Gospel ministry of the Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1937.
She...
CRULL, August. b. Rostock, Mecklenburg, Germany, 27 January 1845; d. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 17 February 1923. August Crull was a German-American Lutheran theologian and educator who played an important role in 19th-century American Lutheranism as a hymnal editor and hymn translator. As a hymnal editor, he helped compile and edit the first English-language hymnals of the Missouri Synod branch of American Lutheranism, thus shaping its hymnic tradition as it began to transition from German to...
SPANGENBERG, August Gottlieb. b. Klettenberg, near Nordhausen, 15 July 1704; d. Berthelsdorf, near Herrnhut, 18 September 1792. He was a student at the University of Jena, first of law and then of theology. He worked at the University of Halle, but was deprived of his posts in the Theology Faculty and as Superintendent of the Orphanage schools because of his association with separatist churches. He joined the Moravians in 1733, where his talents were soon put to good use: he was the leader of...
FRANCKE, August Hermann (I). b. Lübeck, 22 March 1663; d. Halle, 8 June 1727. He was educated at the Universities of Erfurt, Kiel, and Leipzig, graduating from Leipzig in 1685. Two years later, at Lüneberg, he had a religious experience which caused him to call Lüneberg his spiritual birthplace, and which turned him towards Pietism. He became a disciple of the founder of Pietism, P.J. Spener*, who had instituted meetings for prayer, Bible study and devotion. Francke was more combative than...
KJELLSTRAND, August W. b. Skoefde, Vastergötland, Sweden, 10 February 1864; d. 29 October 1930. His family emigrated to the USA in 1870, when August was a child. He was closely associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod of North America: he graduated from Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, in 1885. He was appointed to Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas, to teach Latin in 1886. After a further period of study, he returned to Bethany in 1893.
He graduated from Augustana...
The term 'Augustinian canon regular' is used to refer to the clergy of a wide range of religious establishments in the Middle Ages. From the late 11th century onwards the Rule of St Augustine of Hippo* was adopted widely by congregations of clergy who wished to live communally in the manner of the Apostles. Houses of canons subscribing to St Augustine's Rule were founded across the whole of Europe, covering the continent from Poland to Spain and from Scandinavia to Italy (Dickinson, 1950, p....
NEWMAN, Augustus Sherman. b. Putnam County [?], New York, 21 July 1848; d. New York City, 11 December 1928. Augustus Sherman Newman was a businessman, avocational musician, collector of hymnals and hymnological materials, and a founder in 1922 of The Hymn Society (now the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada*).
The eldest child of Allen G. and Sarah Church Tompkins Newman, Augustus completed his basic education in New York. He then toured Europe with his younger brother, Allen,...
CHRISTIANSEN, Avis Burgeson. b. Chicago, 11 October 1895; d. 14 January 1985. She was a member of the Moody Church in Chicago, and married Ernest C. Christiansen, vice-president of the Moody Bible Institute. Her numerous hymns, the earliest in collaboration with Daniel B. Towner*, appeared in Tabernacle Praises (Chicago, 1916). They are characteristic of early 20th-century Gospel hymnody, with a concentration on the love of Jesus and the hope of heaven. She also wrote under pseudonyms: Avis...
Awake, my soul! lift up thine eyes. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
First published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), entitled 'The Conflict'. It had six stanzas:
Awake, my soul, lift up thine eyes;See where thy foes against thee rise,In long array, a numerous host;Awake my soul, or thou art lost.
Here giant danger threat'ning standsMustering his pale terrific...
Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve. Philip Doddridge* (1702-1751).
This was hymn CCXCVI in Doddridge's Hymns Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures (1755). This was headed 'Pressing on in the Christian Race. Phil. iii. 12-14.' It was a variant on the common 'Awake, my soul' theme', distinguished from other examples by its exhortation to zeal and vigour:
Awake, my Soul, stretch ev'ry Nerve And press with Vigour on: A heav'nly Race demands thy Zeal, And an immortal Crown.
While...
Awake, O sleeper, rise from death. F. Bland Tucker* (1895-1984).
Written originally as an anthem text for David N. Johnson, published by Augsburg Fortress Press (Minneapolis, 1980), this was revised and made metrically stable for H82. It is based on phrases from Ephesians chapters 3,4, and 5, beginning with Ephesians 5: 14 ('Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light'), itself 'a very ancient Christian hymn, probably' (Tucker, quoted in Young, 1993, p....
Away with our fears/ Our troubles and tears. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
From Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father. By the Reverend Mr. John and Charles Wesley (Bristol, 1746), where it was Hymn XXXII, the last in the book. It had five 8-line stanzas:
Away with our Fears, Our Troubles and Tears! The Spirit is come, The Witness of Jesus Return'd to hs Home: The Pledge of our Lord To his Heaven restor'd, Is sent from the Sky, And tells us our...
Away with our sorrow and fear. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
Funeral Hymns (1744), a small book of 24 pages, contained 16 hymns. It was dated by JJ, p. 1259, as 1744, but by the modern editors of A Collection of Hymns (1780) as 1746 (Hildebrandt and Beckerlegge, 1983; no copy dated 1744 has been found). The text in 1746 was as follows:
Away with our Sorrow and Fear! We soon shall recover our Home; The City of Saints shall appear, The Day of Eternity come; From Earth we shall quickly...
BALASIOS. b. ca. first quarter 17th century; d. before 1700. The priest Balasios, who held the posts of protasekretes (1672) and nomophylax (1680) of the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, came from a Peloponnesian family. He studied Byzantine music with Germanos of Neai Patrai*. Balasios was active during the second half of the 17th century: the earliest mention is in the manuscript Panteleimon 1008 (dated before 1660), where he calls himself domestikos. His version of the...
Baptists in England were divided into two main groupings until the end of the 19th century: the General Baptists, who were Arminian in theology, and the Particular Baptists, who were Calvinist. These groupings reflected different historical origins, and different theologies and practices, including attitudes to congregational singing. Most churches of both groups formed the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (now the Baptist Union of Great Britain — BUGB) in the 19th century, though a...
Baptist hymnody, USA
17th and 18th Centuries
Baptist beginnings in the American colonies occurred with the establishment of churches at Providence (1639) and Newport (1644), Rhode Island. By the end of the 17th century there were 24 churches, all but one of them located in New England or the middle colonies.
These early congregations were principally formed by British immigrants and their song practices generally reflected those of Baptists in the Mother Country (see Baptist hymnody, British*)....
NOEL, The Hon. Baptist Wriothesley. b. Edinburgh, 10 July 1799; d. Stanmore, Middlesex, 19 January 1873. Born into a noble family (see Burke's Peerage, 1939, p. 1055; the name 'Baptist' was common in the family), he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (MA 1821). He studied law, and entered Lincoln's Inn, but against the wishes of his family he became an Anglican priest, curate of Cossington, Leicestershire, and then minister of a proprietary chapel in London (St...
HAMM, Barbara Elizabeth. b. Sterling, Colorado, 25 September 1943. Barbara Hamm began piano study as a young girl, learning to improvise on gospel hymns in a small Baptist congregation in the Midwestern United States. She gained further experience while playing for a small church during her college study in Eastern Tennessee. This early involvement in worship led to a lifetime of music ministry.
A United Church of Christ (UCC) church musician, composer, and hymn writer, Barbara Hamm received...
MANLY, Basil [Junior]. b. Edgefield County, South Carolina, 19 December 1825; d. 31 January 1892. He was the son of Basil Manly, a Baptist minister, and Sarah Murray Rudolph Manly. His father became pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston—the most prominent Baptist pulpit in the Deep South—and left that position to become the second president of the University of Alabama. The senior Manly promulgated a biblical defense of slavery, led in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention, and...
The Bay Psalm Book (BPB), or—to use its actual title—The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre ([Boston], 1640), is one of the most famous books ever printed in what is now the United States. Its press run was only 1700 copies. The dozen or so that still survive are almost beyond price today. Their value rests chiefly on the BPB's standing as the first book written and printed in English-speaking North America, and as a symbol of the country's beginnings. Much research...
Be still, for the presence of the Lord. David J. Evans* (1957- ).
This was written in 1985, when Evans was involved in leading worship in what he himself describes as 'new' churches (Companion to Church Hymnal, Fifth Edition, 2005, p. 458). It was sung at Spring Harvest occasions, and published in Let's Praise 1 (1988). It became hugely successful, and has appeared in many books, such as Worship Songs Ancient & Modern (1992), with the first line changed to 'Be still, for the Spirit of the...
Beams of heaven as I go ('Some Day'). Charles Albert Tindley* (1851-1933).
'Some Day' is an evocative and emotional title which connects with other hymns, such as 'We shall overcome'* of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (a development of Tindley's 'I shall overcome someday'), and with many 'By and by'* hymns, including Tindley's 'We'll understand it better by and by'*. Early printings, such as the one in Soul Echoes (Philadelphia, 1909) mark the hymn as 'copyright, 1906'. The title is...
Beautiful Savior. German hymn, 17th century, translated by Joseph A. Seiss* (1823-1904).
In The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) this is the opening line of the translation of 'Schönster Herr Jesu'* from a Roman Catholic Münster Gesangbuch of 1677. Seiss, the translator, was a prominent Lutheran minister and prolific author. His translation was published in The Sunday School Book for the Use of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations (Philadelphia, 1873). It had four stanzas, the last of which returns to...
Before the world's foundation. Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926- ).
This hymn was written in 1998. Like many of Dudley-Smith's hymns, it was his response to a commission. The Methodist Publishing House, which traced its history back to the time of John Wesley*, had moved from London to Peterborough in 1988. Its Chief Executive, Brian Thornton, planned a Service of Thanksgiving to mark ten years since the move, and Dudley-Smith responded to a request for a hymn to be sung to mark the occasion (2003,...
Begone unbelief, my Saviour is near. John Newton* (1725-1807).
First published in Olney Hymns (1779), Book III, 'On the Rise, Progress, Changes, and Comforts of the Spiritual Life'. It was headed 'I will trust and not be afraid' and had seven stanzas in a combination of iambic and anapaestic metre reminiscent of Charles Wesley*. It has been particularly valued by Methodists: all seven stanzas appeared in The Primitive Methodist Hymnal (1887, 1889). It featured in several denominational...
Begone my worldly cares, away. Susanna Harrison* (1752-1784).
This hymn that looks forward to Sunday was Hymn V in Songs of the Night (1780). It was entitled 'Saturday Night'. It is an original meditation on the holy joys of a religious Sunday. It had six stanzas:
Begone my worldly cares, away! Nor dare to tempt my sight;Let me begin th'ensuing day Before I end this night.
Yes, let the work of prayer and praise Employ my heart and tongue; Begin my soul! - Thy sabbath days Can never be...
Behold a Stranger at the door. Joseph Grigg* (ca. 1720-1768).
From Grigg's Four Hymns on Divine Subjects; Wherein the Patience and Love of our divine Saviour is displayed (1765), where it was a hymn of eleven 4-line stanzas:
Behold a Stranger at the door! He gently knocks, has knocked before, Has waited long, is waiting still; You treat no other friend so ill.
But will He prove a friend indeed? He will; the very Friend you need; The Friend of sinners--yes 'tis He, With garments dyed on...
Behold the great Creator makes. Thomas Pestel* (1586-1667).
First published in Pestel's Sermons and Devotions, Old and New (1659), where it forms verses from 'A Psalm for Christmass day morning'. This begins:
Fairest of morning Lights appear, Thou blest and gaudy day,On whom was born our Saviour dear, Make haste and come away.
The hymn begins at verse 5 of this poem, and in its usual form continues to the end (verse 9). It was included in EH, set to the 15th-century tune THIS ENDRIS NYGHT,...
Behold the Lamb of God. Matthew Bridges* (1800-1894).
From Bridges's Hymns of the Heart, for the use of Catholics (1848), where it was entitled 'Ecce Agnus Dei' (many of the hymns in that collection had Latin titles). It had seven 7-line stanzas, based on John 1: 29. Because, as JJ pointed out (p.129), the hymn is rarely printed in this form, the original text is printed here:
Behold the Lamb! Oh! Thou for sinners slain, - Let it not be in vain, That Thou hast died: Thee for my Saviour let...
Behold we come, dear Lord, to Thee. John Austin* (1613-1669).
First published in Austin's Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (Paris, 1668) in seven 4-line stanzas, where it was the first hymn in 'The Office for Sunday', appointed for Matins on Sunday. John Wesley* used stanzas 1-6 in his first hymnbook, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown, 1737), omitting the final stanza. Austin's original text was:
Behold we come, dear Lord, to Thee, And bow before Thy throne;We come to...
Beloved, “it is well !”. George Washington Doane* (1799-1859).
In Songs by the Way: the poetical writings of the Right Rev. George Washington Doane, DD., LL.D., arranged and edited by his son, William Crosswell Doane (Third Edition, Albany, 1875) this hymn is dated 'March 2, 1833' (JJ has 'Mar. 12', in error, p. 304). It was entitled 'To my wife'. The text was as follows:
Beloved, “It is well! - ” God's ways are always right; And love is o'er them all, Though far above our sight.
...
BEDDOME, Benjamin. b. Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, 23 January 1717; d. Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, 3 September 1795. He was the son of a Baptist minister. He intended to become a doctor, and was apprenticed to a Bristol surgeon; but he moved to London and became a member of the Prescott Street Baptist Church in 1739. At that church he was called to the ministry, and in 1740 he moved to Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire. He remained there as Baptist pastor for the remainder of...
CRAWFORD, Benjamin Franklin. b. Madison County, Ohio, 12 May 1881; d. Delaware, Ohio, 20 June 1976. Christened after the great American philosopher, Crawford taught school before attending Ohio Wesleyan University (BA, 1906); Boston University (STB, 1909); Dennison University (1917-18); and the University of Pittsburgh (PhD, 1937). Crawford's dissertation, 'Changing Conceptions and Motivations of Religion as Revealed in One Hundred Years of Methodist Hymnology, 1836-1935', was a study of the...
FRANCIS, Benjamin. b. Wales, 1734; d. Horsley, Gloucestershire, 14 December 1799. Francis was a Welsh speaker, who wrote hymns in Welsh and English, and edited a Welsh hymnbook (Aleluia: neu Hymnau perthynol I addoliad cyhoeddus, Caerfyrddin, 1774). JJ, p. 386, lists five hymns in Welsh that were in use in 1892. He trained at the Baptist College, Bristol, and served as a minister at Sodbury (Old Sodbury and Chipping Sodbury), Gloucestershire, and then, from 1757 to 1799, at Horsley, near...
KEACH, Benjamin. b. Stoke Hammond, near Leighton Buzzard, Buckinghamshire, 29 February 1640; d. London, 18 July 1704. He was apprenticed to a tailor. His early reading and experience inclined him towards Calvinism and adult baptism, and by 1658 he was preaching and ministering to a Baptist congregation at Winslow, Buckinghamshire. In 1664 he published The Child's Instructor, a book which contained not only the basic educational information (reading, writing, arithmetic) but also material...
RHODES, Benjamin. b. Mexborough, Yorkshire, 1743, date unknown; d. Margate, Kent, 13 October 1815. He was the son of a schoolmaster, who gave him a good education. At the age of 11 he was much influenced by hearing George Whitefield* preach, and in 1766 he became one of 'Mr Wesley's preachers', serving until his death at Margate. In the obituary in the Minutes of the Methodist Conference he was described as 'a man of great simplicity and integrity of mind; he was warmly and invariably attached...
WINCHESTER, Benjamin Severance. b. Bridport, Vermont, 20 February 1868; d. Danbury, Connecticut, 29 April 1955. He was a pastor, educator, and administrator. His parents were Warren Weaver Winchester (1823–1889), a minister, and Catherine Mary Severance Winchester (1821–1915). He married Pearl Adair Gunn (1874–1971) in 1897, and they had five children, Margaret, Katharine, Pauline, Alice, and John Henry.
Winchester earned the BA degree from Williams College in 1889, after which he taught...
WAUGH, Benjamin. b. Settle, Yorkshire, 20 February 1839; d. Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, 11 March 1908. He left school at 14, and was apprenticed to a linen draper in Southport; but at 23 he entered Airedale College, Bradford, to train for the Congregational ministry (1862-65). He served at Newbury, Berkshire (1865-66), Greenwich, London (1866-85), and New Southgate, Middlesex (1885-87). While at Greenwich he became interested in the welfare of children, and in 1887 he resigned from the full-time...
ACKLEY, Bentley D. b. Bradford, Pennsylvania, 27 September 1872; d. Winona Lake, Indiana, 3 September 1958. Rising to prominence as pianist for the Billy Sunday and Homer A. Rodeheaver* revival meetings, B. D. Ackley became a prolific composer of gospel songs and editor of gospel hymnals. He was born into a family of musicians in Bradford, Pennsylvania, including his younger brother Alfred Ackley*, who also became a gospel song composer. Their father, Stanley Ackley, served as a Methodist...
FARRELL, Bernadette. b. Altofts, West Yorkshire, 1957. Farrell was educated at King's College London and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She quickly made her mark as one of the founder members of the St Thomas More Group*. She has worked as diocesan music advisor for Southwark and Westminster and as a workshop presenter both in the UK and in the USA. Her ministry flows in to social action and reflects her strong commitment to justice and peace. In addition to her work with the St...
BARTON, Bernard. b. Carlisle, 31 January 1784; d. Woodbridge, Suffolk, 19 February 1849. Born into a Quaker family, he was the son of a manufacturer. His mother died a few days after he was born, and his father married again, moving to London and then Hertford. Bernard was sent to a Quaker school at Ipswich, where he learned the principles of business and trade. In 1806 he moved to Woodbridge, Suffolk, where he was a partner in a coal and coke business. He married in 1807, but his wife died in...
HUIJBERS, Bernard . b. Rotterdam, 24 July 1922; d. Espeilhac, France, 15 April 2003. Huijbers studied under Ernest Mulder during his Jesuit course of training, graduating as a schoolmaster in 1960 and serving (in the tradition of many continental liturgical musicians) as school master and master of music at the St Ignatius College, Amsterdam, until 1969. More importantly he became associated with the Dominicuskerk where he collaborated with the librettist Huub Oosterhuis*. He left the Jesuits...
KYAMANYWA, Bernard. b. Kagera Region, Tanganyika (now Tanzania); 10 May 1938. A teacher, Lutheran pastor, and hymnwriter, Kyamanywa studied to be a schoolteacher at Kigarama Teacher's College (Bukoba, Tanzania) where he received his basic musical training. He continued his study at Lutheran Theological College (now Makumira University College) in Arusha (Diploma in Theology, 1968). He became known for his exceptional mastery of Hebrew, a skill that earned him the position as a representative of...
MANNING, Bernard Lord. b. Caistor, Lincolnshire, 31 December 1892; d. Cambridge, 8 December 1941. The 'Lord' in Manning's name was a given name at his Baptism, not a peerage. He was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist, George Manning, who later became a Congregational minister. His son also became a member of the Congregational Church.
Manning was educated at Caistor Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge. He became a bye-Fellow at Magdalene College (1916-1918) and was elected a Fellow of...
BERNARD of Clairvaux. b. Fontaines-lez-Dijon, Côte-d'Or, ca. 1090 ; d. 1153. He was born, probably in 1090, at the castle of the son of Tescelin le Saur, lord of Fontaine, vassal of the duke of Burgundy, and of Aleth de Montbard. He studied with the canons of Saint-Vorles at Châtillon-sur-Seine. In 1112, Bernard, accompanied by thirty followers, entered Cîteaux Abbey (founded in 1098 by Robert de Molesme); he took vows one year later. In 1115, at the request of Abbot Stephen Harding, Bernard...
BERNARD of Cluny. Dates unknown, 12th century. Little is known of Bernard's life. He is sometimes referred to as 'Bernard of Morlaix' (for example by John Mason Neale*). Neale believed that Bernard had been born in Brittany of English parents, but this is not certain. He entered the monastery at Cluny, and was a monk there under Peter the Venerable*, abbot from 1122 to 1157. He dedicated his great poem, De Contemptu Mundi, to 'Peter his abbot'. It is a remarkable work of 2966 lines, written in...
HOWARD, Beverly Ann. b. New Kensington, Pennsylvania, 22 February 1951. A professor in church music, researcher in hymnology, journal editor, member of hymnal committees, church musician, and organist, Howard received degrees from University of Oklahoma in organ performance (BM, 1973, MM, 1974) and the University of North Texas in organ performance, music theory, and harpsichord (DMA, 1986). She served as organist for forty years in two congregations in Riverside, California, First Christian...
Gaither, Bill (William James). b. Alexandria, Indiana, 28 March 1936. Gaither was one of four children of the marriage of George W. (1913-2005) and Lela (née Hartwell) (1914-2001). The farming family attended the Church of God in Alexandria, a restoration group with Wesleyan holiness roots headquartered in Anderson, Indiana, (not related to Pentecostal denominations with the same name). Early on Gaither studied piano and organ, 'performing wherever he could in recitals and as an accompanist'...
TAMBLYN, Bill. b. Birmingham, 5 December 1941. He was educated at University College, Durham, during which time he began to study plainchant with Fr Laurence Hollis at Ushaw College and converted to Roman Catholicism. On leaving university, he became, first, cantor and then for ten years, director of music at Our Lady of Grace and St Edward, Chiswick, West London. Tamblyn edited Church Music until 1974, and during the late 1960s he travelled with John Michael East (director of the Church Music...
Blest are they, the poor in spirit. David R. Haas* (1957-).
Blest are they, the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blest are they, full of sorrow; they shall be consoled.
Rejoice and be glad!Blessed are you, holy are you.Rejoice and be glad!Yours is the kingdom of God.
© 1986 GIA Publications, Inc. www.giamusic.com. Used by permission.
This paraphrase of Matthew 5:3-16, 'The Beatitudes', maintains the two-part structure of scripture in each blessing—(1) 'Blest are they, the poor...
Blest be the dear uniting love. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in eight stanzas in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), where it was entitled 'At Parting':
Blest be the dear, Uniting Love That will not let us part:Our Bodies may far off remove, We still are join'd in heart.
Join'd in One Spirit to our Head, Where He appoints we go,And still in Jesu's Footsteps tread, And do His Work below.
O let us ever walk in Him, And Nothing know beside,Nothing desire, Nothing esteem But...
Blest is the man whose softening heart. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
This text is taken from the hymn beginning 'Behold, where breathing love divine'*, first published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), where it was entitled 'Christian Charity'. It had eight stanzas. The present hymn starts at stanza 3. It was published in Barbauld's Poems (1773) as 'Hymn IV'...
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...
Gillman, Robert (Bob). b. West Ham, London, 16 June 1946. Bob Gillman received his education in the Borough of West Ham, including the local Catholic Junior School followed by South West Ham Technical School, finishing his education at Abbs Cross Technical School in Hornchurch. Retired now, his career included performing, composing, and pursuing his interest in steam-driven trains while managing a printing company. After passing the qualifying exams, Gillman worked for the London Underground...
HURD, Bob (Robert L.). b. Lakewood, Ohio; August 9, 1950. Bob Hurd is a Catholic composer, teacher, liturgist, and author who is known for his many English-language and bilingual compositions in Spanish and English. He studied at St John's Seminary College (Camarillo, California; BA 1973) and De Paul University (Chicago; MA 1976; PhD 1980). Hurd has served in several academic and pastoral settings including Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles), the Franciscan School of Theology (Berkeley,...
Bonaventura da Bagnoregio (Giovanni di Fidanza) b. Bagnoregio, Italy, ca. 1217; d. Lyons, France, 14 July 1274. The rise of St Bonaventura from young scholar to prominent theologian and mystic, minister general of the Order of Friars Minor, prelate, and advisor of popes is one of the remarkable stories of the Middle Ages. There is no contemporary source of biographical information about Bonaventura. The earliest are a 15th-century biography by Mariano of Florence and a Chronicle of the...
The Book of Praise (1862)
This influential anthology of hymns was the work of Roundell Palmer*, a distinguished politician and man of letters. Its full title was The Book of Praise from the best English Hymn Writers. It was published by Macmillan in London and Cambridge in 1862. The frontispiece showed a picture of David with his harp, to emphasise the continuity of tradition between the great psalmist and contemporary hymn writers. The book was very successful, and there were many further...
See 'I was there to hear your borning cry'*.
DRAPER, Bourne Hall. b. Cumnor, near Oxford, 1775; d. Southampton, 12 October 1843. He was born into a Church of England family that was too poor to send him for training as an ordinand. He worked as a printer's apprentice at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. He became a Baptist, and when his apprenticeship was ended, he went to study (1802-04) at the Baptist Academy, Bristol, under John Ryland* (Junior, 1753-1825). Ordained in 1804, he became pastor of a Baptist Church at Chipping Norton, and then...
Break, day of God, O break. Henry Burton* (1840-1930).
According to Telford, annotating the 1904 Wesleyan Methodist Hymn Book, this was written on Christmas Eve 1900 at Blundellsands, near Liverpool: stanza 1 was written on a railway bridge, the remainder at Burton's home (Telford, 1906, p. 165). It was later printed in Burton's Songs of the Highway (1924). It had four stanzas:
Break, day of God, O break, Sweet light of heavenly skies! I all for thee forsake, And from my dead self rise: O...
BROWN, Brenton. b. Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 1 July 1973. Raised in the southern suburbs of Cape Town, Brown attended South African College Schools, studied law at the University of Cape Town, and then received a Rhodes Scholarship to study PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at the University of Oxford (1996-98), where he also received a one-year Postgraduate Diploma in Theology (1998-99).
Brown's involvement in worship leadership began during his time at the University of Cape Town,...
The early Brethren emphasized the unity of believers: 'one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren' (Matthew: 23:8). While not all Brethren have practised this truth, it remains a basic principle. They began in about 1825 in Dublin, whence they spread to Plymouth, and established the first assembly. When members went out preaching, people called them 'brethren from Plymouth'. Brethren believe in the two views of the church that they find in scripture, namely the universal church -...
This is the title given to a book containing all the material necessary for performing the Divine Office — prayers, chants, and readings. The readings are usually abbreviated, hence the name. Breviaries first appeared in the 11th century, and contained so much material that they were often divided into summer and winter volumes. For a detailed introduction to the contents of Breviaries see Tolhurst (1942).
Breviaries were useful for monks and clerics who were not able to attend the office hours...
FOLEY, (William) Brian. b. Waterloo, Liverpool, 28 November 1919; d. Crosby, Liverpool, 11 October 2000. He was educated at St Mary's Irish Christian Brothers' School at Crosby, Lancashire, and at Upholland College, near Wigan, where he trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood. He was ordained in 1945. His parish ministry was in Liverpool for ten years; Bootle for eleven; Birkdale for five; and eventually, from 1971, in Clayton Green, Chorley, Lancashire. He died at Nazarene House,...
HOARE, Brian Richard. b. Upminster, Essex, 9 December 1935. Hoare was educated at Southwell Minster Grammar School, at Westminster College, London, and at Richmond College, University of London. After teaching Religious Education at Calverton, Nottinghamshire, he became Secretary of the Colleges of Education Christian Union (Inter-Varsity Fellowship) in London (1962-68). He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1971, and was chaplain at Hunmanby Hall School, Filey, Yorkshire. He then served...
Brightly beams our Father's mercy. Philip P. Bliss* (1838-1876).
First published in The Charm, a collection of Sunday School music (Cincinnati, 1871), with the heading 'Let the Lower Lights be Burning'. Like a number of Gospel hymns, this was based on an anecdote (cf. 'Ho! my comrades, see the signal'*). In this case it was told and moralised by Dwight L. Moody* and versified by Bliss. It concerned a ship attempting to make the harbor at Cleveland during a storm on Lake Erie:
'Are you sure...
Brother, hast thou wandered far. James Freeman Clarke* (1810-1888).
This hymn appeared in Service Book: for the use of the Church of the Disciples (1844), and then in The Disciples' Hymn Book (Boston, 1844). This hymn was credited as 'Anonymous'. It is not clear why the authorship should have been so designated, when a much more polemical hymn such as 'For all thy gifts we bless thee, Lord'* was clearly attributed to Clarke. The present hymn remained his best known hymn for many years. It was...
Built on the rock the church doth stand. Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig* (1783-1872), translated by Carl Døving* (1867-1937).
First published in Grundtvig's Sangvärk til den Danske Kirke (1837), and later revised and abbreviated to the normal length of seven 7-line stanzas. The first line was 'Kirken den er et gammelt Hus' ('The church which is a strong house'). It is based on Matthew 16: 18, 'upon this rock I will build my church'. The hymn goes on to locate the church in the hearts and...
By all your saints still striving. F. Bland Tucker* (1895-1984) and Jerry D. Godwin (1944-).
This is a modern version of 'From all Thy saints in warfare'*, written by Tucker and revised by Godwin for H82. In addition to using the 'you' form, it has been described as 'an edited version of the Tucker revision that reflected concern for language that was both nonmilitaristic and inclusive, yet remained faithful to the lives of the saints as the Church has received them' (The H82 Companion).
Like...
'By and by'
The phrase 'by and by', meaning 'in a little while' or 'at some time in the future' has been common in American English parlance since the 19th century. In spite of its simplicity, it is a haunting phrase, much more powerful than any alternatives such as the two above.
'By and by' is the title given to an African American spiritual of unknown origin. It was printed in Folk Song of the American Negro (Nashville, Tennessee: Fisk University, 1907), an account written and edited by...
See also 'Byzantine rite'*, 'Greek hymnody'*, 'Rite of Constantinople'*, 'Rite of Jerusalem'*, 'Greek hymns, archaeology'*.
This is a highly sophisticated and powerful literary tradition of religious poetry intended for the liturgical services of the Eastern Orthodox Church and for private, devotional purposes. Profoundly doctrinal, Byzantine hymnody mirrored the major developments in Christology and Trinitarian theology throughout the first millennium of Christianity. At the same time, it was...
The hymnody composed within the Byzantine rite is essentially a continuation of Hagiopolite hymnody (Rite of Jerusalem*), but the liturgical framework is no longer the Palestinian rite but the new rite resulting from the fusion of the Palestinian and the Constantinopolitan rites. This fusion, whose result is usually called the 'Byzantine rite', took place from the 7th century onwards in the patriarchate of Constantinople, thereafter spreading to other regions, for instance Southern Italy...
MILES, C. (Charles) Austin. b. Lakehurst, New Jersey, 7 January 1868; d. Pitman, New Jersey, 10 March 1946. Educated at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and the University of Pennsylvania, Miles ended his pharmaceutical career in 1892 and turned to writing gospel music. His first song 'List, 'tis Jesus' voice' was accepted by the Hall-Mack Publishing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which led to his appointment as editor and manager, a post he continued after that company's merger in...
Woolston, C. Herbert. b. Camden, New Jersey, 7 April 1856; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 20 May 1927.A pastor, gospel song writer, and sleight-of-hand magician, Clarence Herbert Woolston claimed that he had 'addressed many more than 1,000,000 children' (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1927, p. 4).
The son of Isaiah S. and Sarah B. Woolston, Herbert attended public schools in Camden, New Jersey, and the South Jersey Institute at Bridgeton. He entered the ministry under the influence of evangelist...
HAWN, (Charles) Michael. b. Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 22 September 1948. An eminent multi-cultural/global hymnologist, singer, teacher, and author, his scholarly articles and books on global music and worship, cross-cultural worship, and enlivening congregational song are premier resources. Hawn is noted for his engaging, hands-on style of teaching, the mentorship of former students, many of whom are now an international group of scholars, church musicians, ministers, professors, teachers, song...
DOUGLAS, Charles Winfred. b. Oswego, New York, 15 Feb 1867; d. Santa Rosa, California, 18 Jan 1944. Douglas was raised as a Presbyterian. His first contact with the Episcopal Church came in 1888 as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral, Syracuse, New York, while a student at Syracuse University (BM, 1901). He attended St. Andrew's Divinity School, Syracuse; and Matthews Hall, Denver, Colorado. He was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church 1893, priest 1899, serving as a minor Canon of St John's...
Caelestis formam gloriae. Latin, 15th Century, author unknown.
According to Frere (1909, p. 353) this hymn was 'one of those anciently sung at Salisbury and elsewhere for the Transfiguration.' He then goes on to say that 'when that festival was brought into common use at the end of the XVth century many new hymns were written for it, and this among the number.' JJ gives its provenance as being found in a Sarum Breviary (Venice, 1495). It is of unknown authorship. It began:
Caelestis formam...
EVANS, Caleb. b. Bristol, 12 November 1737; d. 9 August 1791. Evans lived in Bristol for almost all of his life. His father, Hugh Evans, was pastor at Broadmead Baptist Church and President of the Bristol Baptist Academy run by the church. After training at the Mile End Academy in London, Caleb was baptised at Little Wild Street Baptist Church, and called to ministry in 1757, becoming associate minister with Josiah Thompson at Unicorn Yard Baptist church in London. In 1759 he was called to join...
LAUFER, Calvin Weiss. b. Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania, 6 April 1874; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 20 September 1938. Calvin Weiss Laufer was a minister, editor, writer of hymn texts and tunes, and a founder of The Hymn Society (now The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada*). The eldest child of Nathan Laufer, a farmer and miller, and Angelina Weiss Laufer, he was baptized at Zion German Reformed Church in Brodheadsville. His parents settled in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood in...
Camp Meeting Hymns and Songs, USA
Since the publication of George Pullen Jackson*'s groundbreaking and provocative White Spirituals from the Southern Uplands (Chapel Hill, 1933), a considerable body of hymnological and musicological literature has accumulated on the folk hymnody of early America. In much of that secondary literature it is presupposed that a key component of this hymnic corpus is the camp-meeting 'chorus'. This sub-genre is typically constructed from wandering rhyme pairs or the...
Cantate Domino (1924-1980). The phrase 'Cantate Domino' is from Psalm 96: 1, 'Sing to the Lord a new song'. Its opening Latin words were used as an extra-territorial title by the World's Student Christian Federation for a succession of books published during the 20th century for Christian students from all countries. The editions were as follows:
1. Geneva: World Student Christian Federation (1924)
No date, but given as 1924 in the Second Edition. Many translations are dated 1924. The...
Cantemos al Señor. Carlos Rosas* (1939-2020).
This is Rosas' best known hymn. It was composed for 'Rosas del Tepeyac: misa en honor de Nuetra Señora de Guadalupe', a setting of the Mass found in Díez Canciones Para la Misa (San Antonio, 1976). It was originally entitled '¡Aleluya!'. Tepeyac is the hill where Juan Diego (1474-1548) is said to have had his vision of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, in December 1531. The Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City was constructed on this site....
The Canterbury Hymnal was a type of New Hymnal (see Medieval hymns and hymnals*) that was apparently introduced at Canterbury during the late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon monastic reform movement called the Benedictine Reform (see 'Rule of Benedict'*). It was one of two types of monastic hymnal known to have been in use in England after the Benedictine Reform, the other being the Winchester Hymnal*. All information about the Canterbury Hymnal must be deduced from the hymnals themselves, since other...
BONNER, Carey. b. Southwark, London, 1 May 1859; d. Muswell Hill, London, 16 June 1938. Born in London, the son of a Baptist minister, who gave him his Christian name in admiration of the great Baptist missionary, William Carey (1761-1834). After working in London for a publisher, Bonner trained for the Baptist ministry at Rawdon Baptist College, Leeds, and was ordained in 1884. He was minister at Oakfield Union Church, Sale, Cheshire (1884-95), and at Portland Chapel, Southampton (1895-1900)....
GARVE, Carl Bernhard. b. Jeinsen near Hannover, 24 January 1763; d. 21 June 1841. He was educated at a school of the Moravian Brotherhood, becoming a teacher in a secondary school at Niesky (1784) and a lecturer in the theological college of the Brotherhood (1789). There he was introduced to the idealist and romantic spirit, which saw the influence of the Enlightenment as pernicious. He was transferred to work in the archives of the Unitas Fratrum in 1797. He became a preacher in Amsterdam...
DØVING, Carl. b. Norddalen, Sunnmøre, Norway, 1 March 1867; d. Chicago, Illinois, 2 October 1937. Døving left Norway as a young man and lived in South Africa (1883-90), where he taught at a mission school, the Schreuder Mission in Natal, founded by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder (1817-1882). Døving emigrated to the USA in 1890 and attended Luther College, Decorah, Iowa (AB, 1893) and Luther Seminary of the Norwegian Synod, St Paul, Minnesota (CT [Candidatus theologiae], 1896). He was a...
PRICE, Carl Fowler. b. New Brunswick, New Jersey, 16 May 1881; d. New York City, 12 April 1948. Pioneering hymnologist, historian, author, prominent layperson in The Methodist Episcopal Church, Price attended Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (BA music, 1902; MA, 1932), and worked as a general insurance broker in New York City from 1902 to 1946. He served as secretary of The National Board of the Epworth League, and historian of the Methodist Historical Society.
Price was a founder...
SCHALK, Carl Flentge. b. Des Plaines, Illinois, 26 September 1929; d. River Forest, Illinois, 24 January 2021. Schalk attended Concordia Teachers' College (now Concordia University) in River Forest, Illinois (BS, 1952), the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York (MM, 1958) and Concordia Theological Seminary in St Louis, Missouri (MA, 1965).
After serving at Zion Lutheran Church in Wausau, Wisconsin (1952-1958), Schalk was a music director for the International Lutheran Hour (1958-1965),...
ROSAS, Carlos. b. Linares, Nuevo León, Mexico, 4 November 1939; d. San Antonio, Texas, 12 February 2020. Catholic hymn writer, composer, church musician, and lecturer, and son of Anastacio Rosas and Isabel Delgado, he was the tenth of twelve children. He and his wife María Teresa de León (1940-2011), a citizen of the United States, were married on December 26, 1965. He resided in San Antonio, Texas, near his five children, ten grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Rosas's compositions...
YOUNG, Carlton Raymond ('Sam'). b. Hamilton, Ohio, 25 April 1926; d. Nashville, Tennessee, 21 May 2023. He was the son of J. Otis Young , a pastor, and Mary Leibrook, an elementary school teacher. Following his mother's death he was raised by maternal grand parents, who started his piano lessons at age six. He attended Fairfield High School in Butler County, Ohio, where music was a requirement not an elective, and where he played brass instruments and string bass. He studied at Cincinnati...
The Carmelites began as a group of hermits in the area of Mount Carmel known as the wadi 'ain es-siah at the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century. Singing hymns necessarily played a minimal role in the liturgical life of the original Carmelites, since as hermits they did not chant the Divine Office together. The rule or way of life they received from Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem 1206-1214, made it clear that they were to come together to celebrate Mass daily but that each...
OWENS, Carol. b. El Reno, Oklahoma, 30 October 1931. She was educated at San Jose State College in California. Her husband Jimmy* (they married in 1954) was a jazz band arranger who directed music in several churches in southern California. Beginning in the 'Jesus Movement' (see Christian popular music, USA*), the Owens were active in writing contemporary Christian musicals, performing and recording in various places in California, and doing musical missions for the Church of the Way in Los...
Carol, brothers, carol. William Augustus Muhlenberg* (1796-1877).
Written in 1840 for the boys of St Paul's College, Flushing, Long Island, the College that Muhlenberg had founded as the Flushing Institute in 1828. It was published in Muhlenberg's later collection, I Would not Live Alway, and Other Pieces in Verse by the same Author (New York, 1860), printed for the benefit of St Luke's Hospital. It received wider notice when it was printed in Christ in Song (New York, 1869), edited by Philip...
GILLETTE, Carolyn Winfrey. b. Harrisonburg, Virginia, 28 May 1961. Hymn writer and ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She was raised, baptized, and confirmed in the United Methodist Church; she earned a bachelor's degree in religion from Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania before going on to receive her M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary (1985). She was ordained in 1986. Gillette has served at churches in New Jersey and Delaware, and as a hospital and...
Cast thy bread upon the waters (Anon).
This is a hymn with the same first line, and in the same metre, as 'Cast thy bread upon the waters'* by Phebe Ann Hanaford*. It is based, like hers, on Ecclesiastes 11: 1, but it is so different from her hymn that it requires a separate entry. It is found in many revival hymnals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Gospel Hymns 5 and 6 Combined (1892) and in editions of Sacred Songs and Solos, where (in both books) the tune is attributed to...
TAYLOR, Cecily. b. Coulsdon, Surrey, 25 March 1930. She was evacuated during the war, and enjoyed what she calls a 'considerably varied' primary school career, attending six schools by the age of twelve. She worshipped in the local Anglican Church, but returned after the war to her home, where she was introduced to a Congregational youth group by a friend. At the age of 17 she joined the church and remained in membership for 40 years. There also she met her husband, and was involved in church...
GABARÁIN, Cesáreo. b. Hernani, Gipúzkoa, Basque Country, Spain, 16 May 1936; d. Antzuola, Spain, 30 April 1991. Monseñor Cesáreo Gabaráin was one of the best-known composers of Spanish liturgical music following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). He was inspired by the feelings and actions of the humble people he met during his ministry. His hymns were recorded on thirty-seven albums (the last completed posthumously). He is the only Roman Catholic Church composer to receive...
Change my heart, O God. Eddie Espinosa* (1953– ).
Written in 1982, this is is Eddie Espinosa's best-known song. Espinosa tells the song's story:
The year was 1982. I had been a Christian since 1969, but I saw a lot of things in my life that needed to be discarded. I had slowly become very complacent. I acknowledged my complacency, and I prayed to the Lord, 'The only way that I can follow you is for you to change my appetite, the things that draw me away. You must change my heart! . ....
Christian charismatic communities and churches are extremely diverse in their theology and ecclesiology. This analysis will be mainly focused on material emanating from John Wimber*'s Vineyard Churches, the 'Toronto Blessing' movement, and the like. They have been chosen because of their pre-eminent status in contemporary Charismatic Renewal: their songs have affected styles and concepts in worship that have touched virtually every denomination in every corner of the globe. Wimber, indeed,...
DE CHENEZ, Charitie Lees (née Smith; also Charitie Lees Bancroft). b. Bloomfield, Merrion, Dublin, 21 June 1841; d. (?) Oakland, California, USA, 1923. The daughter of a Church of Ireland rector, Sidney Smith, she lived at home at Aghalurcher, County Fermanagh, and in Tattyreagh, County Tyrone, where her father held the living from 1867 onwards. She married Arthur E. Bancroft in 1869; after his death she married again, and is sometimes known by her second married name of De Chenez (sometimes...
CONVERSE, Charles Crozat. b. Warren, Massachusetts, 7 October 1832; d. Highwood, New Jersey, 18 October 1918. He was educated at Elmira Free Academy, Chemung County, New York State, and showed early promise as a musician. He played the organ at the Broadway Tabernacle Church, and taught languages and music, earning enough to enable him to study music in Leipzig, Germany, from 1855 onwards. There he met Lizst and Spohr before returning to the USA to study law. He graduated from Albany Law...
MUDIE, Charles Edward. b. Chelsea, London, 18 October 1818; d. Hampstead, London, 28 October 1890. Mudie followed in his father's footsteps as a bookseller. He established his own shop in Bloomsbury in 1840, and for a time was also in business as a publisher. In 1842 he founded the subscription library for which he is chiefly remembered. At its peak this had over 25,000 subscribers, with branches in several parts of London, as well as Birmingham and Manchester. The library exercised a great...
SPURGEON, Charles Haddon. b. Kelvedon, Essex, 19 June 1834; d. Menton, France, 31 January 1892. He was the elder son of a clerk to a coal merchant who was also a Baptist lay preacher and who later became an independent minister. Charles went to school in Colchester and later spent a few months at an agricultural college. He joined the Baptist Church on 3 May 1850 and in spite of his extreme youth almost immediately began his preaching ministry. After short period in teaching, he became a...
GABRIEL, Charles Hutchinson. b. Wilton, Iowa, 18 August 1856; d. Hollywood, California, 14 September 1932. Following in his father's footsteps, Charles Gabriel became a singing school teacher at the age of 16, and after 1887 served as music director in the Grace Methodist Church in San Francisco. He settled in Chicago, the center for evangelical and revivalist publishing, in 1892, where he devoted the rest of his life to writing, composing, editing, and publishing. A list of his works includes...
HUTCHINS, Charles Lewis. b. Concord, New Hampshire, 5 August 1838; d. Concord, Massachusetts, 17 August 1920. Hutchins, an Episcopal priest, was editor of several music editions of 19th-century Episcopal hymnals and related materials. He was a son of George Hutchins (1797-1868) and Sarah Rolfe Tucker (1801-1868). Both parents were born to well-established New England families. Of particular note is Sarah's grandfather, the Rev Dr John Tucker (1719-1792), described in Shipton's New England...
ALEXANDER, Charles McCallon. b. Meadow, Tennessee, 24 October 1867; d. Birmingham, England, 13 October 1920. He was the son of John D. Alexander, a well-known musical leader, and Martha McCallon. A singing evangelist in the style of Ira D. Sankey*, young Alexander was influenced by his family's singing Gospel hymns around the fireside and by his mother's reading Dwight L. Moody*'s sermons to the family each night. Alexander attended Maryville Preparatory School and College, Maryville, Tennessee...
PARKIN, Charles. b. Felling on Tyne, England, 25 December 1884; d. Portland, Maine, 3 March 1981. Charles Parkin studied at Oxford University and served in the British Army during World War I. Following the War, he was secretary of the British Poetry Society. In 1922, Parkin moved to the United States and was ordained a minister in the Maine Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. From 1950 to 1952, Parkin was the superintendent of the Portland District of the Maine Conference, and then...
KRAUTH, Charles Porterfield. b. Martinsburg, Virginia, 17 March 1823; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2 January 1883. The son of a Lutheran minister, Charles Philip Krauth, Charles Porterfield Krauth was educated at Pennsylvania College (later Gettysburg College), of which his father was the first President, and at Gettysburg Theological Seminary, graduating in 1841. He served Lutheran churches in Canton, Baltimore (1841-42), the Second English Lutheran Church, Baltimore (1843-47); Winchester,...
ROBERTSON, Charles. b. Springburn, Glasgow, 22 October 1940. He was educated at The Orphan Homes of Scotland Primary School (Quarrier's), Bridge of Weir; Camphill Senior Secondary School, Paisley; and New College, University of Edinburgh (MA). After studying divinity at New College, he was licensed to preach on 22 April 1964, and ordained and inducted to Kiltearn Parish Church, near Dingwall, Ross-shire, on 21 October 1965. He married Alison Robertson* in 1965. In June 1978 he was translated...
ROGERS, Charles. b. Dunino, near Anstruther, Fife, 18 April 1825; d. Edinburgh, 18 September 1890. The son of a minister of the Church of Scotland, he was educated at the parish school and the University of St Andrews (1839-1843), followed by training for the ministry. He was licensed to preach in 1846, and served as an assistant minister and as a 'missionary' to churches affected by the Great Schism of 1843 (Dunfermline North, 1849-50, Carnoustie, 1851-52). He moved to Bridge of Allan, near...
NUTTER, Charles Sumner. b. Tuftonboro, New Hampshire, 19 September 1842; d. Melrose, Massachusetts, 2 August 1928. Charles Nutter and Wilber Fisk Tillett* (1854-1936) wrote The Hymns and Hymn Writers of The Church, an Annotated Edition of The Methodist Hymnal (New York and Cincinnati: The Methodist Book Concern, 1911). Nutter was an avid collector of hymnological materials, and his collection together with that of Frank Metcalf (1765-1945) total more than 2500 volumes, comprising the core of...
ROBINSON, Charles Seymour. b. Bennington, Vermont, 31 March 1829; d. New York, 1 February 1899. The son of General Henry Robinson (1778-1854) and Martha P. Haynes (1800-1857), Robinson studied theology at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Union Seminary, New York City, and graduated from Princeton Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Following his ordination in 1855, he served as pastor of Park Presbyterian Church, Troy, New York. In 1858 he married Harriet Read Church (1835-1895),...
WESLEY, Charles. b. Epworth, Lincolnshire, 18 December 1707; d. London, 29 March 1788. He was youngest son and 16th/17th child (though calculations vary) of Samuel Wesley (I)* and the redoubtable Susanna, and younger brother to John*. From Westminster School (1716-26), first as King's Scholar and finally Captain of the school, he gained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford (BA 1730, MA 1733). He became leader (in John's absence as their father's curate) of a small group known as the 'Holy...
FRY, Charles William. b. Alderbury, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, 30 May 1838; d. Polmont, near Falkirk, Scotland, 24 August 1882. He was the son of a bricklayer. He was registered at birth as 'William Charles', but married as 'Charles William'. At the age of 17 he was converted at a Sunday evening prayer meeting at the Wesleyan chapel in Alderbury. He became a Wesleyan local preacher, but he was also a considerable musician, playing various instruments, including the cornet, which he played in a...
Throughout the centuries the cherubikon ('Οἱ τὰ χερουβίμ'; 'Hoi ta cherubim'), also called the 'mystical hymn', has been set to music by a great number of composers, because its text as well as its theme is particularly well suited for choral music. The cherubikon was first mentioned by the historian Georgios Kedrenos (11th-12th century), who states that it was sung during mass from 573/74 onwards. Kedrenos goes on to tell that it was emperor Iustinos II (565-578) who decreed that the...
Chetham's Psalmody
The title of this important collection was The Book of Psalmody. It was first published at Sheffield in 1718 by John Chetham or Cheetham (1665 – baptized 4 February -1746), subsequently master of the Clerk's School, Skipton, Yorkshire, and curate of Skipton, 1741-46. Further editions followed in 1722, 1724 and 1731, with many successors. It has been described as 'the most important country collection [of psalm settings] of all' (Temperley, 1979, p. 181). Each edition during...
BOWATER, Christopher Alan (Chris). b. 1947. Bowater is a British songwriter and pastor. Between 1978 and 2006 he had published some 51 songs through Sovereign Lifestyle Music, Kingsway and Thankyou Music. Many of these have featured in various editions of series such as Mission Praise* and Songs of Fellowship*, as well as in denominational hymnals. Among his most popular and enduring songs are 'Faithful God' (1985) and 'Jesus shall take the highest honour' (1998). He has also published new...
Christ is coming! Let creation. John Ross Macduff* (1818-1895).
Based on Revelation 22: 20, this Advent hymn is from Macduff's Altar Stones (1853), published when he was minister of St Madoes, Perthshire (Barkley, 1979, p. 141). It became Macduff's best known hymn. It had four stanzas:
Christ is coming! Let creation From her groans and travail cease; Let the glorious proclamation Hope restore and faith increase: Christ is coming! Come, Thou blessèd Prince of Peace.
Earth can now but...
Christ is our light! The bright and morning star. Leith Fisher* (1941-2009).
This hymn was written for the first Sunday after the Epiphany, which also marks the Baptism of Christ. It was written while Fisher was minister of the Old Parish Church of Falkirk (1979-90). On being invited back to Falkirk from his new parish of Wellington in Glasgow (1990-2006) to conduct a wedding, the author added a third stanza, based on the wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-11). The first stanza refers to 'the bright...
Christ, when for us you were baptized. F. Bland Tucker* (1895-1984).
Written in 1973 at the request of an Australian theology student at Trinity College, Melbourne, Dirk van Dissel. It is interesting to note that at the same time van Dissel was writing to Fred Pratt Green*, the British Methodist hymn writer, with a similar request. He was asking these two great hymn writers for a hymn on the Baptism of Christ for the forthcoming Australian Hymn Book (WOV, 1977). However, neither hymn was used...
DAVID, Christian. b. Senftleben (Zenklava), Moravia, 17 February 1691; d. 3 February 1751. He was brought up as a Catholic, learning the trade of a carpenter (ca. 1713). He came to know the Bible well, and discussed its contents with the Jews. Intending to become a Protestant, he sought out the Lutherans in Hungary, in Leipzig and finally in Prussia. Working as a kitchen-boy, he took part in the operations to regain Stralsund. In Berlin he converted to the Protestant faith. In 1717 at Görlitz,...
GREGOR, Christian. b. Dirsdorf, Silesia, 1 January 1723; d. Berthelsdorf, Herrnhut, 6 November 1801. Born the son of a humble peasant farmer, he associated with the Brethren at Herrnhut from 1742, serving as organist. In 1748 he moved to Herrnhaag as director of music, and in 1749 to Zeist, returning to Herrnhut in 1753. From 1764 he was a member of the directing board of the Unitas Fratrum and was given the task of editing a hymnal which would collect and preserve what was valuable of the vast...
BATEMAN, Christian Henry. b. Wyke, Yorkshire, England, 9 August 1813; d. Carlisle, Cumberland, 27 July 1889. Bateman was the son of John Frederick Bateman (1772–1851), a mostly unsuccessful inventor, and Mary Agnes Bateman (née La Trobe) (1772–1848), and the fourth of six siblings (his older brother, the eminent civil engineer John Frederick La Trobe Bateman (1810–1889), was - unlike his father - one of the most successful innovators of his era, supervising reservoirs and waterworks in Ireland...
LATROBE, Christian Ignatius. b. Fulneck, near Leeds, 12 Feb 1758; d. Fairfield, near Manchester, 6 May 1836. Christian was the son of Benjamin Latrobe, one of the leaders of the Moravian Church in England. He was educated at the Moravian Church's schools in Niesky and Barby, Germany (1771-84), where he studied theology and also taught for five years. He was ordained a minister in the Moravian Church and became secretary of the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, the missionary branch...
The Christian Social Union, and its hymns
The Christian Social Union was founded in 1889. However, its concerns had been exercising thoughtful church people, and many others, throughout the 19th century: movements such as those of the Chartists in the 1840s, and the writings of such thinkers as Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) and Charles Kingsley* provided a background to the practical experience of clergy such as Percy Dearmer* in the East End of London. The Salvation Army was founded...
Christians, if your hearts be warm. John Leland* (1754–1841).
Leland probably composed this hymn in 1788, and it appeared in print two years later in Richard Broaddus and Andrew Broaddus, Collection of Sacred Ballads (unpaged, Caroline Co, Virginia, 1790). The first page scan in Hymnary.org is from Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the use of religious assemblies and private Christians (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1794), where it was headed 'Admonition to Christian Duties':
Christians,...
WILLCOCK, Christopher John. b. Sydney, 8 February 1947. He attended De La Salle College, Armidale (1960-63), then studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, becoming an Associate in Music in theory and piano. At the University of Sydney he completed a BMus with honours in composition (1974), and took a BD at the Melbourne College of Divinity, followed by a Master's degree in Sacramental Theology at the Catholic Institute, Paris (1982). He then completed doctoral studies in liturgical and...
WALKER, Christopher Dixon Harvey. b. London, 9 June 1947. Walker became a chorister at Bristol Cathedral and later studied composition at Bristol University and Trent Park College. On leaving university he became director of music at the (then newly opened) Roman Catholic Cathedral at Clifton in Bristol. He met members of (and subsequently joined) the St Thomas More Group* before emigrating to the USA in 1990, where he became a lecturer at Mount Saint Mary College and director of music at St...
CHRYSANTHOS of Madyta. b. Thrace, ca. 1770; d. 1846. Chrysanthos is said to have been a well-educated man of the church compared to the standards of his time; he knew Latin and French as well as European and Arabian music (he played the flute and the Persian ney). He studied Byzantine music with Petros Byzantios* among others.
Chrysanthos was appointed archimandrite (superior abbot), and as such was also responsible for musical education. He became aware that the complicated notational system...
CHRYSAPHES the Younger b. 1620/25?; d. ca. 1682?. Little is known for certain about the life of Chrysaphes the Younger, who helped Byzantine music to flourish under Ottoman rule. Born in Constantinople, he is mentioned as protopsaltes of the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in April 1655 and he seems to have worked there until at least 1665: in manuscript Patriarchal Library Hierosol. 4 (dated 1655) Chrysaphes is mentioned by name and described as protopsaltes; in the manuscript Patmos 930 (dated...
The Church Army Mission Hymn Book. This was published in Britain ca. 1960 (no date is given, and there is no indication in the very brief preface). It was a successor to Hymns for the Church Army (ca. 1894), edited by Wilson Carlile*, the army's founder, and Hymns and Choruses of the Church Army (n.d., but ca. 1910, and frequently reprinted).
The front cover was embossed with the Church Army shield, a crown and crossed swords, and the words 'Fight the good fight'. The book contained 133 hymns,...
Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland came into existence from the mid-1830s as congregations were formed, usually breaking away from Scotch Baptist churches. They were influenced by the ideas of Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), son of an Anti-Burgher Seceder Presbyterian minister in Ireland, Thomas, who emigrated to the USA in 1807. The Campbells became two of the four main leaders of the movement in the USA, from which three distinct 20th-century groups derive: Churches of Christ,...
The Churches of Christ in the United States trace their beginnings to 1906 when they became generally recognized as a distinct Christian group of congregations. These congregations were previously associated with the Restoration Movement, also known as the Stone-Campbell Movement (Foster, p. 1779; see Disciples of Christ hymnody*). Because there are no national administrative offices, boards, publishing houses, or conferences, it is difficult to refer to them as a 'denomination'. Indeed, there...
CHURMUZIOS CHARTOPHYLAX (Churmuzios the Archivist). b. ca. 1770; d. 1840. Born on the island of Chalkis, Churmuzios studied Byzantine music with Georgios of Crete*, Petros Byzantios* and Iakobos Peloponnesios* (Protopsaltes), but was also acquainted with Arabian-Persian music. From 1792 onwards Churmuzios seems to have been working as a musician, although he did not have a musical post within the patriarchal church, instead being employed as a chartophylax (archivist). Churmuzios sang in...
The Cistercian movement, originating at the beginning of the 12th century, was founded on the desire to return to the rule of St Benedict (see Rule of Benedict*), which gave instructions for the chanting of Ambrosian hymns during the Offices of Nocturn, Lauds and Vespers. Cistercian brothers went to Milan to seek out St Ambrose*'s compositions, returning with a list of hymns. However, because of additions made during the intervening centuries, the Cistercians adopted a mixture of more recent...
MARTIN, Civilla Durfee (née Holden). b. Jordan, Nova Scotia, 21 August 1866; d. Atlanta, Georgia, 9 March 1948. Civilla Durfee was a village schoolteacher with some musical training. She wrote some gospel songs with her husband, Walter Stillman Martin (1862-1935), formerly a Baptist minister but later an itinerant evangelist, teacher, and pastor for the Disciples of Christ, based in Atlanta. She is best known for two very comforting gospel songs: 'Be not dismayed whate'er betide'* ('God will...
Clare Taylor. b. probably early 18th century, date unknown; d. February 1778. Her hymns were published by Daniel Sedgwick* in a small volume containing the hymns of John Ryland*, Clare Taylor, and Samuel Crossman*. The title of the Taylor section was Hymns composed chiefly on The Atonement of Christ, and Redemption Through His Blood (1765). This was followed by two quotations: 'The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1. 7', and another from the first stanza of Hymn...
McAFEE, Cleland Boyd. b. Ashley, Missouri, 25 September 1866; d. Jaffrey, New Hampshire, 4 February 1944. Educated at Park College in Parkville, Missouri (founded in 1875 by his father) (BA, 1884; MA, 1888) and Union Theological Seminary in New York City (dipl. 1888), Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (PhD, 1892). McAfee returned to Park College, served the campus church as Presbyterian preacher and led its choir while he taught philosophy there (1888-1901). Later, he was pastor of First...
GALE, Clement Rowland. b. Kew, Surrey, England, January 1860, d. New York City, 10 May 1934. Gale was a founding member of the American Guild of Organists* (1896), a member of the music faculty of General Theological Seminary in New York, and composer of several hymn tunes.
Several published accounts give Gale's date of birth as 12 March 1862, but official records show that he was born in January 1860 to William Frederick Gale (b. 1823?) and Elizabeth Gale (b. 1824?) and was baptized at St...
Clichtoveus. b. Nieuwport, Flanders, 1572; d. Chartres, France, 22 September 1543.
During the Renaissance it was common for learned authors to Latinize their names (cf. Andreas Gryphius*, Paul Speratus*). Judocus Clichtoveus Neoportuensis, usually referred to as 'Clichtoveus' was the name for Josse van Clichtove, educated at Leuven (Louvain) and Paris. He became Librarian of the Sorbonne before moving back to Flanders in 1519 with Louis Guillard, Bishop of Tournai. He later moved with Guillard...
BARROWS, Clifford Burton. b. Ceres, California, 6 April 1923; d. Charlotte, North Carolina, 15 November 2016. 'Cliff' Barrows, longtime music and program director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, majored in sacred music at Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina (BA, 1944), and in 1944 was ordained by a Baptist congregation in his hometown of Ceres, California.
After serving as assistant pastor at Temple Baptist Church in St Paul, Minnesota for one year, he joined the...
A manuscript or section of a manuscript containing prayers ('collects') for the Divine Office in the western Roman Catholic liturgy.
Come and taste, along with me. John Leland* (1754–1841).
This hymn was entitled 'The Christian's Consolation'. It was probably first published in 1801, in at least three collections: Richard Allen*, A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs: from various authors (Philadelphia: T. L. Plowman, 1801); Richard Allen, A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (Philadelphia: John Ormrod, 1801); and Josiah Goddard, A New and Beautiful Collection of Select Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Walpole, New...
Come into my heart, blessed Jesus ('Into my heart'). Harry D. Clarke* (1889–1957).
This hymn began as a short chorus, composed in 1924; Clarke expanded the chorus into a gospel hymn with four stanzas in 1927. The earliest publication is unclear, but the refrain without the stanzas appears in Homer A. Rodeheaver*'s Praise and Worship Hymns (Chicago, 1927), with the subtitle 'My Prayer', an inscription occasionally used in later publications. The entire hymn was included in several...
Come see the place where Jesus lay. James Montgomery* (1771-1854).
In JJ, p. 251, there is precise information about this hymn. It was written for 'The Seventh Anniversary of the Sheffield and Attercliffe Missionary Union in aid of the London Missionary Society', and was first sung in Howard Street Independent Chapel, Sheffield on Easter Sunday, April 2nd, 1820. In leaflet form, it was signed 'J.M.'
It was included in Montgomery's The Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825) and, with minor...
Come with us, O blessed Jesus. John Henry Hopkins, Jr.* (1820-1891).
First published in the Second Edition, enlarged, of Hopkins's Carols, Hymns, and Songs (New York, 1872). It was entitled 'Retrocessional for Christmas Day'; it provides a fine conclusion to a service on that day.
After having been neglected for many years, the first stanza of this hymn was printed in H40, with a tune by Johann Schop*, sometimes called WERDE MUNTER, after the hymn by Johann Rist*, 'Werde munter, mein Gemüte'*,...
Come, all harmonious Tongues. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
From Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), Book II, 'Composed on Divine Subjects, Conformable to the Word of God'. It was Hymn 84, entitled 'The Same' (as the previous hymn, 'The Passion and Exaltation of Christ'). The text in 1707 was in eight Short Metre stanzas:
Come, all harmonious Tongues, Your noblest Music bring;'Tis Christ the Everlasting God, And Christ the Man we sing.
Tell how he took our Flesh To take away our Guilt, Sing...
Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
First published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), from Book II, 'Composed on Divine Subjects, Conformable to the Word of God'. It was entitled 'Breathing after the Holy Spirit; or, Fervency of Devotion desir'd'. It had five 4-line stanzas:
Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, With all thy quickning Powers, Kindle a Flame of sacred Love In these cold Hearts of ours.
Look, how we grovel here below, And hug these trifling Toys; Our...
Come, join the dance of Trinity. Richard Leach* (1953- ).
This is Richard Leach's most published hymn. The author states that he desires to write hymn texts that are 'biblically and theologically accurate and sound' (Leach, 2007, p. 7). He accomplishes this goal in in this this by engaging the singer in an imaginative, multi-sensory celebration of the Trinity.
Leach notes that 'Dancing has a very long association with the Trinity, going back to the eighth-century theologians who used the word...
Come, let us join with faithful souls. William George Tarrant* (1853-1928).
Written in 1915, and published in the Congregational Hymnary (1916). It was one of four hymns by Tarrant in the revised Fellowship Hymn Book (1933). It remained in use in Unitarian churches (Hymns of Worship, 1927, Hymns of Worship Revised , 1962) and it remains in HFF (1991), though not in HFL (which prints only two hymns by Tarrant). It had six stanzas:
Come, let us join with faithful souls Our song of faith to...
Come, let us sing the song of songs. James Montgomery* (1771-1854).
This was written for the Sheffield Sunday School Whitsun Festival, May 1841. It was later published in Montgomery's Original Hymns (1853), where it was Hymn LXXXIX, entitled 'The Song of Songs'. The title comes from The Song of Solomon, which opens with the words 'The song of songs, which is Solomon's.' Montgomery daringly takes the phrase and uses it to mean 'the song that is the song of all songs' (cf. 'the Holy of Holies')....
Come, pure hearts, in sweetest measures. Latin, translated by Robert Campbell* (1814-1868).
First published in Campbell's Hymns and Anthems for Use in the Holy Services of the Church within the United Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane (Edinburgh, 1850), where it was entitled 'Commemoration of Evangelists'. It was a translation of three stanzas from two anonymous Sequences of the 12th century, 'Iucundare, plebs fidelis'*, and 'Plausu chorus laetabundo'* (altered by Clichtoveus*: see...
Come, said Jesus' sacred voice. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1742-1825).
From Barbauld's Poems (1792). It was headed 'Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' (from part of Matthew 11: 28). It had five stanzas:
Come, said Jesus' sacred voice, Come and make my paths your choice: I will guide you to your home; Weary pilgrim, hither come!
Thou who houseless, sole, forlorn, Long hast borne the proud world's scorn, Long hast roamed the barren waste, Weary pilgrim,...
Come, sound his praise abroad. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
This is Watts's Short Metre paraphrase of Psalm 95 in The Psalms of David imitated in the language of the New Testament, and apply'd to the Christian State and Worship (1719). It was entitled 'Psalm XCV. Short Metre. A Psalm before Sermon.' Watts also wrote a CM and an LM version. The customary text in hymnals is one of three or four stanzas, corresponding to verses 1-7 of the Psalm. In 1719 the stanzas were as follows:
Come sound his...
Come, though we can truly sing. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is one of five hymns by Murray, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by the English Universalist James Relly* and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth...
Congregational Christian Church and United Church of Christ hymnody, USA
The United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed by a 1957 merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Church, and has a present membership of 1.1 million with 5100 churches in the United States. The diversity of theology among local congregations is great, from liberal to conservative and all points in between, with individual congregations enjoying 'local church autonomy'—a remnant of the...
Congregational Church hymnody in Britain
The term 'Congregational hymnody' is significant for all churches and liturgical traditions where the congregation takes an active and full part in the singing of hymns (contrasted with those places or occasions where the hymns are the province of a specialised choir or the practice of a religious community). This article, however, is limited to an account of hymnody in churches of the Congregational order in England and Wales, during a period beginning...
The Consultation on Common Texts (CCT) is a North American ecumenical consultation which produces English-language liturgical texts and lectionaries. Members of CCT include representatives from over twenty church bodies across North America. The CCT was responsible for compiling the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) and, as a member body of the international group English Language Liturgical Consultation* (ELLC), helped to produce Praying Together (a collection of common liturgical texts).
The...
MATHER, Cotton. b. Boston, Massachusetts, 12 February 1663; d. Boston, Massachusetts, 13 February 1728. Mather, one of the leading Puritan ministers of the American colonies, was instrumental in introducing the hymns of Isaac Watts* to North America. He was born into one of the prominent Puritan families of Colonial America. His father, Increase Mather (1639-1723), was minister of the prestigious Old North Church in Boston, and president of Harvard College (now Harvard University) from 1692...
Cowley Carol Book. This was a two-part collection of Christmas carols edited by George Ratcliffe Woodward*. The 'First Series' (1901, revised 1902) consisted of 39 carols, many already published. The Second Edition (1902) had 65 items. The 'Second Series' was delayed by the First World War, and appeared in 1919, with a further 37 carols. Charles Wood* co-edited this second volume. The origin of the title lies in a request for a carol book from the Church of St John, Cowley, Oxford, home of the...
Creating God, your fingers trace. Jeffery Rowthorn* (1934- ).
This is a metrical version of Psalm 148, 'Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights above.' It was written in 1974 and submitted in 1979 for a competition set by the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada* to find 'New Psalms for Today'. It was printed in The Hymn (April 1979).
It has four stanzas, beginning 'Creating God...', 'Sustaining God...', 'Redeeming God...' and 'Indwelling God...'. It was printed in...
Crown of Jesus (1862) was a major publication during the years of the expansion of the Roman Catholic church in Britain following Catholic Emancipation, the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill in 1829, and the growth in numbers following immigration from Ireland and the converts from the Oxford Movement*. Library catalogues give the names of the editors as R.R. Suffield and C.F.R. Palmer. Its full title was Crown of Jesus: a complete Catholic manual of devotion, doctrine, and instruction....
CRUCIGER (CREUTZIGER), Elisabeth (née von Meseritz). b. Meseritz, Pomerania (now Międzyrzecze, Poland), ca. 1500; d. Wittenberg, 2 May 1535. From a noble Catholic family, she was sent to be educated at a Premonstratensian convent, where she studied Latin and Biblical Studies. She became a nun, but under the influence of Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558, Luther's 'Doktor Pomeranus', the Lutheran apostle to Pomerania), she left the convent in 1521. She married Caspar Cruciger/Creutziger, a pupil...
Customary
Customaries are texts that describe or prescribe liturgical uses in a monastery, along with information on the daily life of the community as well as the duties of the monastic officers. They supplement the regulations set forth in the Rule of Benedict*. Whereas the Rule is a set of guidelines to be applied in principle to any Benedictine community, customaries offer much more detail on the liturgy and reflect the way of life in a particular house; moreover, they were written not...
HAMBLY, Cyril Grey. b. Cardiff, 6 January 1931; d. Shrewsbury, 4 December 1999. He was educated at the University of Wales (where he studied music), and trained for the Methodist ministry at Hartley Victoria College, Manchester. He was ordained in 1954, and held appointments in a number of circuits, principally in Wales and East Anglia. He was a contributor to Partners in Praise (1979) and published A Hymn for the Lectionary (1981), a collection of 70 hymns written by him to accompany the...
TRUEBLOOD, David Elton. b. Pleasantville, Marion County, Iowa, 12 December 1900; d. Meadowood Retirement Community, near Lansdale, Pennsylvania, 20 December 1994. Some records indicate that Elton was born 'near Indianola', but he writes that 'On rare occasions we drove sixteen miles to either Indianola or Knoxville…' (While It Is Day, p. 10). Other records state that he was born at the family farm (near Waveland, in Warren County); he himself, however, states that he was born at Pleasantville...
LUNDY, Michael (monastic name: Damian) FSC. b. Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, 21 March 1944; d. Oxford, 9 December 1996. The son of a master baker, he was educated at West Vale Catholic Primary School, then at the De Salle (Christian Brothers) Grammar School, Sheffield. He joined the De Salle Religious Order in 1960, and trained at St Cassian's Juniorate, Kintbury, Berkshire; then at Inglewood Novitiate, and at various establishments in Germany and France. He then read English at Magdalene...
BAYLEY, Daniel. b. Rowley, Massachusetts, 27 June 1729; d. Newburyport, Massachusetts, 29 February 1792. Bayley was a compiler and publisher of tunebooks. While active, possibly as clerk and possibly as a chorister, in St. Paul's Anglican (Episcopal after the Revolution) Church in Newburyport, as well as a printer, potter, and shopkeeper, he became one of the most productive early publishers of American church music. His tunebooks are of particular interest for reasons of 'piracy' – prior to...
DANIEL BEN JUDAH. (fourteenth century). Daniel ben Judah is thought to have been a Roman dayan (or dayyan, a rabbi and judge) who composed the Yigdal, a metrical paraphrase of the thirteen articles of Jewish faith drawn up by Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1130-1205). The Yigdal is known to Christians through a further paraphrase by Thomas Olivers*, with its first phrase 'The God of Abraham praise'*, often sung to LEONI.
Little is known about Daniel ben Judah. Indeed, it appears that only...
IVERSON, Daniel. b. Brunswick, Georgia, 26 September 1890; d. Asheville, North Carolina, 3 January 1977. Iverson studied at the University of Georgia, the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Columbia Theological Seminary in New York City, and the University of South Carolina. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1914, he initially served congregations in Georgia and North and South Carolina, and then founded and pastored the Shenandoah Presbyterian Church in Miami, Florida (1927-51). An...
MALGAS, Daniel. b. Eastern Cape, South Africa, ca.1853; d. Fort Beaufort, South Africa, March 1936. Malgas was an ordained Anglican priest, whose career was based in the eastern part of the Cape Colony near Kwa Maqoma (formerly Fort Beaufort). An official record of his exact birth date has not been found. It is possible that his birth was not registered because his parents converted to Christianity when Malgas was in his late teens. He began formal education in 1872 at St Luke's Mission....
MARCH, Daniel. b. Milbury, Massachusetts, 21 July 1816; d. Woburn, Massachusetts, 2 March 1909. March was educated at Amherst College (1834-36), and Yale University (BA, 1840). After serving as principal of Fairfield Academy in Connecticut, he returned to Yale for his theological studies. He was ordained into the Presbyterian ministry in 1845, but later changed to Congregationalism, and served churches in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and twice in Woburn, Massachusetts (1856-64,...
NILES, Daniel Thambyrajah. b. Jaffna, north Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) 4 May 1908; d. 17 July 1970. He was born into a Tamil Christian family: his grandfather was a Methodist minister, and his father was a lawyer. He studied law, but then chose to become a Methodist minister; he was ordained in 1936. As a young district evangelist, he was a delegate to the International Missionary Council Tambaram Conference of 1938; he then became YMCA evangelism secretary in Geneva (1939-40), before returning to...
Dark, dark indeed, the grave would be. William Gaskell* (1805-1884).
This comforting hymn was published in James Martineau*'s Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840, many editions). It was entitled 'The light of the Gospel on the tomb.' It had four stanzas:
Dark, dark indeed the grave would be, Had we no light, O God, from thee; If all we saw were all we knew, Or hope from reason only grew.
But fearless now we rest in faith, A holy life makes happy death,'Tis but a change ordained by...
ZSCHECH, Darlene Joyce. b. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 8 September 1965. She was given an early training in music and dance as a child at Brisbane. By the age of ten she was performing on and hosting segments of a children's weekly television programme, and went on to record commercials for a number of international companies and form backing choirs for touring singers. During her teenage years she led various gospel bands in Brisbane, then with her husband Mark joined a youth band which...
Das Kreuz ist aufgerichtet. Kurt Ihlenfeld* (1901-1972).
This was the product of two 'Kirchentags', one at Cologne in 1965, the other at Hannover in 1967. It was first published in an experimental book, Werkbuch Gottesdienst. Texte – Modelle –Bericht (Wuppertal, 1967), and then in Liederheft. Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag (Hannover, 1967). It was included by Dieter Trautwein* in Der Frieden ist unter uns. Neue Geistliche Lieder vom Evangelischen Kirchentag (Regensburg, 1967). It has echoes...
Bjorlin, David Donald. b. Duluth, Minnesota, 8 March 1984. David Bjorlin is a minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church, a liturgy professor, and a hymn writer. He is the son of Dean and Marijo Bjorlin, one of four children. He was raised in Hermantown, near Duluth, where he graduated from high school. His musical interests began as a part of a children's choir, Hermantown (now Lake Superior) Youth Chorus, and were honed as a violinist in his Pentecostal church's orchestra and as a piano and...
CHERWIEN, David Mark. b. West Union, Iowa, 1 July 1957. Cherwien, organist, conductor and composer, studied at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, (BM 1979) and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (MM 1995, DMA 2001). Additional studies in conducting, composition and organ were taken at the Berliner Kirchenmusikschule, Spandau, Germany. He has held positions as organist at the American Church (LCA) in Berlin; director of music at the First Lutheran Church of Richmond Beach (ELCA) Shoreline,...
David J. Evans ('Dave'), b. Dartford, Kent, 1957. As a child he lived in Winchester; he was educated at the University of Southampton (BSc). He is a music teacher who has been involved in leading contemporary worship in a number of 'new' churches. He has written many worship songs; by far the best known is 'Be still, for the Presence of the Lord'*.
JRW
Further Reading
Christopher Idle, Exploring Praise! Volume 2: the authors and composers (Darlington: Praise Trust, 2007).
JENKINS, David. b. Trecastle, Breconshire, 30 December 1848; d. Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, 10 December 1915. He began life as an apprentice to a tailor. His talent for music enabled him to study under Joseph Parry* at Aberystwyth, 1874-78, and he became (from 1882) successively instructor, lecturer, and finally Professor of Music at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He was precentor of the English Presbyterian Church in Aberystwyth, and noted as a choral conductor. With David Emlyn...
RITCHIE, David Lakie. b. Kingsmuir, Angus, Scotland, 15 September 1864; d. Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 14 December 1951. He was educated at Forfar Academy and at the University of Edinburgh. He was ordained to ministry in the Congregational Church in Scotland, with a pastorate at Dunfermline (1890-96) and then in England at St James's Congregational Church, Newcastle upon Tyne (1896-1903). He was Principal of Nottingham Theological Institute from 1903 to 1919; and, after a year in Montreal as...
WILLIAMS, David McKinley. b. Caernarvonshire, Wales, 20 February 1887; d. Oakland, California, 13 March 1978. One of the most dynamic 20th-century leaders of American church music, he is often identified with the music of St Bartholomew's Church in New York City, where he was organist and choirmaster from 1920 to 1947. Williams served on the Joint Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church and the Joint Commission on Revision of the Hymnal (H40). He composed hymn tunes and descants,...
David's Companion (1808). James Evans*, a British Methodist who arrived in New York City in 1806, compiled and published David's Companion Being a Choice Selection of Hymn and Psalm tunes being adapted to the words and measures of the Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book containing a variety of tunes to all the metres that are now in use in the different churches: with many new tunes principally from Dr. Miller, Leach and other composers (New York, 1808). The title page dedicates the volume to 'the Rev....
Day of Arising. Susan Palo Cherwien* (1953– )
This hymn was commissioned for the 1996 annual assembly of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The opening line recalls Christ's encounter with those traveling on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13–35) on the afternoon of Easter Day. Carl P. Daw, Jr.* comments:
Because our liturgical calendar has traditionally separated the reading of this story from the other Resurrection narratives, we usually do not hear about...
Deus tuorum militum. Latin, probably 6th century.
This hymn was included in the Canterbury Hymnal* and the Winchester Hymnal*. In Milfull (1996, pp. 397-9) it was the second of two hymns commemorating an individual martyr. Following 'Ymnus de Uno Martyre', beginning 'Martyr Dei, qui unicum', was this 'Item Hymnus', beginning:
Deus, tuorum militumSors & corona, premium,Laudes canentes martyrisAbsolve nexu criminis.
('God, the portion and crown, the prize of your soldiers, absolve [those...
The Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion or New Devotion) was a movement of religious revival that started in what is now the Netherlands in the late 14th century. Its main characteristics were an inward-looking piety, asceticism and the fostering of the virtuous life. Its instigator was Geert Grote (1340-1384). After having started an ecclesiastical career, a period of severe illness led to a process of inner conversion (1372). After several years of retreat he re-entered public life in 1379,...
Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot. Martin Luther* (1483-1546).
Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied III.15, prints this in twelve stanzas, with the title 'Die zehen gebot Gottes, auff den thon, in gottes namen faren wir'. It was published in Eyn Enchiridion (Erfurt, 1524) and in Wittenberg in 1524 by Johann Walter* in Geystliche gesangk Buchlein, where it was the first hymn (Jenny, pp. 149-53). In 1533 it was number 11 in the Wittenberger Gemeindegesangbuch as 'Die Zehen gepot Gottes lange'...
PHOTEINOS (MORAITĒS), Dionysios. b. Achaias, Palaias Patras, Peloponnesios, Greece, 1777; d. Wallachia, 10 October 1821. He studied Byzantine music with his father Athanasios (personal physician of the sultan Abdul Hamit and Domestikos of the Great Church of Constantinople), and then at the Patriarchal School in Constantinople as apprentice of Iakobos Peloponnesios* (Protopsaltes) and Petros Byzantios Fygas (d. 1808). In 1797 he attended the Imperial Academy in Bucharest. He was a tambour,...
Do no sinful action. Cecil Frances Alexander* (1818-1895).
From Alexander's Hymns for Little Children (1848). It was Hymn V, on the first promise in the catechism, to 'renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the lusts of the flesh' (following the promise made by the godparents at Baptism). It had seven stanzas:
Do no sinful action, Speak no angry word; Ye belong to Jesus, Children of the Lord.
Christ is kind and gentle, Christ is pure and...
The Dominican order was founded by Domingo de Guzman (St. Dominic, ca. 1170-1221), a Spanish priest who emphasised humility and preaching the Gospel in his attempts to persuade Cathar heretics to return to the Roman Catholic church. He gained papal approval in 1216 to found a new order, the Ordo Praedicatorum, based on the rule of St Augustine* and emphasising the importance of preaching and confession. Medieval Dominicans were mendicant preachers and missionaries, often studying theology at...
POTTER, Ethel Olive Doreen (née Cousins). b. Panama, 1925; d. Geneva, 24 June 1980. She was a Jamaican citizen, born in Panama, but growing up in Jamaica, where she studied piano and violin at school. She moved to England and trained as a teacher of music at St Katherine's College, Liverpool. In 1957, she gained her Licentiate of Music degree at Trinity College, London, and was violinist for a number of orchestras.
She married Philip Potter, the General Secretary of the World Council of...
GALBRAITH, David Douglas. b. Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire, 22 June 1940. Douglas Galbraith was educated at the High School of Dundee: he was organist in his local church while still at school. He went on to the University of St Andrews (MA 1961, BD 1964). As a student he had the opportunity of being seasonal musician at Iona Abbey, which was a formative experience in terms both of liturgy and music. He became a member of the Iona Community* in 1964. Following ordination as a minister in...
Draw the circle wide. Gordon S. Light* (1944- ).
Inclusive language for humankind and for God was a strong current in the tide of liturgical renewal among mainstream Canadian churches in the 1980s and 1990s. Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and United Churches responded to the call for new congregational song with collections that included not only strophic hymns new and revised, but also songs in many genres and languages from writers and composers around the globe. How seriously the hymnal...
Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ. Jakob Ebert* (1549-1614).
This hymn is found in EG in three stanzas in the 'Schöpfung, Frieden, Gerechtigkeit' section (EG 422). As the first line, 'Thou Prince of Peace, Lord Jesus Christ' suggests, it belongs in the 'Frieden' ('peace') part of this section. It is found in Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied III. 413, with the title 'Um Frieden zu bitten' ('To plead for peace'), one of only two hymns by Ebert in DDK. It was printed in Geistliche deutsche...
BUCHANAN, Dugald (Dughall Bochanan). b. Ardoch, Balquhidder, Perthshire, 1716; d. Ardoch, 2 July 1768. His diarydescribed his early manhood as a period of recklessness and ungodliness, profanity and vice (it is possible that he took the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor (d. 1734), who lived at Balquhidder, as an example). He had some education in Stirling and Edinburgh, and worked for a time as an itinerant carpenter. During the 1740s he is believed to have spent some time at Glasgow at the Divinity...
McNEIL (sometimes McNeill), Duncan. b. Glasgow, 15 February 1877; d. Glasgow, 28 January 1933. McNeil was a travelling Scottish evangelist, based in Glasgow. He continued to live there, apart from a visit to the USA in 1927-30, where he was associated with Kimball Avenue United Evangelical Church, Chicago (1928-30).
McNeil published Duncan McNeil's Hymn Book (London and Glasgow: Pickering and Inglis, n.d., but dated 1923 in British Library Catalogue). It is said to include 'Song Testimonies'...
Eat this bread. Robert Batastini* (1942– ) and Jacques Berthier* (1923–1994).
John 6:35, one of the 'I AM' sayings of Jesus, provides the basis for the text of 'Eat this bread': 'Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”' (NIV):
Eat this bread, drink this cup, come to me and never be hungry.Eat this bread, drink this cup, trust in me and you will not thirst.
©1984 Ateliers et Presses de Taizé,...
SEARS, Edmund Hamilton. b. Sandisfield, Massachusetts, 6 April 1810; d. Weston, Mass., 16 January 1876. Sears was educated at Union College in Schenectady, New York (1834), and Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge (MA 1837). He was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1839, but believed in the divinity of Christ, and had an interest in Swedenborgianism. He served churches in Wayland, Lancaster, and Weston, all in Massachusetts.
Among his many very successful books were Regeneration (1854, Ninth...
DARLING, Edward Flewett. b. Cork, Republic of Ireland, 24 July 1933. Edward Darling was educated at Cork Grammar School, Midleton College, Co. Cork, and St John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey. Following further study at Trinity College, Dublin (where he graduated and qualified for ordination in the Divinity School), he took Holy Orders (deacon, 1956, priest 1957), serving two curacies: at St Luke's, Belfast (1956-59) and St John's, Orangefield, Belfast (1959-62). He was appointed first...
DENNY, (Sir) Edward. b. Dublin, 2 Oct 1796; d. London, 13 June 1889. He was the son of an Irish baronet, succeeding to the title in 1831. He was the owner of Tralee Castle, and of much of the county of Kerry, where he was an absentee landlord (living in London for most of his life) but a charitable and sympathetic one. In old age he remembered that he was converted by reading a novel about a Jesuit priest, Father Clement, by Grace Kennedy (Edinburgh, 1823), but he became a member of the...
HODGES, Edward. b. Bristol, England, 20 July 1796; d. Clifton, Bristol, 1 September 1867. Hodges was an organist, composer, and father of Faustina H. Hodges* and John Sebastian Bach Hodges*. Many hymnals include Edward Hodges's tune HYMN TO JOY, arranged from a melody in the finale of Beethoven's 9th symphony [Opus 125, 1824] as the setting for Henry van Dyke*'s 'Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee'*.
Edward's father, Archelaus Hodges (1767-1811), and mother, Elizabeth (Stephens) Hodges...
SHILLITO, Edward. b. Hull, 4 July 1872; d. Buckhurst Hill, Essex, 1 March 1948. He was educated at Silcoates School, Wakefield, Yorkshire (founded as the Northern Congregational School), and Owens College, Manchester (later the University of Manchester). He trained for the Congregational ministry at Mansfield College, Oxford, and was ordained as an assistant at Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester (1896). He subsequently served at Tunbridge Wells (1898-1901), Brighton (1901-06), Harlesden,...
BLAXILL, (Edwin) Alec. b. Colchester, Essex, 16 March 1873; d. Colchester, 25 June 1953. He was educated at the Grammar School (later the Royal Grammar School) at Colchester, and lived all his life in the town. After leaving school he worked in the family business, which included a builders' merchants (which still exists). He was a member of Lion Walk Congregational Church at Hythe ( part of Colchester), and a teacher, and later Superintendent of the Sunday School there. He was elected to the...
CHAPIN, Edwin Hubbell. b. Union Village, New York, 29 December 1814; d. Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts, 26 December 1880. Chapin was a Universalist minister, author, orator, social reformer, and writer of hymns. With John Greenleaf Adams (1810-1897) he compiled Hymns for Christian Devotion.
Edwin Chapin was a descendant of Samuel Chapin (1598-1675), born in Devon, England, who became a prominent settler at Springfield, Massachusetts. Among other descendants of Samuel Chapin were hymn tune...
Effata is the title of a Catholic hymn book for young people published at Passau, Germany, in 1990, sub-titled 'Neue religiöse Lieder für Gottesdienst' ('New songs for Sunday worship'). The title is explained as 'öffne dich', open thyself, probably best rendered in English as 'open up!' Continuing the metaphor, it encourages young people to have open minds to meet with God and other people.
Its structure is strikingly traditional. It is within the context of the normal Sunday service that these...
Ein neues Lied wir haben an. Martin Luther* (1483-1546).
This was Luther's first hymn, written in 1523. It was entitled 'Eyn new lied von den sween Merterern Christi, zu Brussel von den Sophisten zu Louen verbrant'. It had twelve stanzas (Wackernagel III. 3-4). It was first published in ten stanzas in Eyn Enchiridion (Erfurt, 1524); stanzas 9 and 10 were added in Geystliche gesangk Buchlein (Wittenberg, 1524). In stanza 2 the 'Merterern Christi' were named as Johannes [Esch] and Heinrich...
Eine Heerde und ein Hirt. Friedrich Adolf Krummacher* (1767-1845).
According to James Mearns* in JJ, p. 634, this is from the Third Edition of Das Christfest (1821). Das Christfest was the second Festbüchlein, the series of publications in which Krummacher interspersed narrative, reflections and hymns. It had six 6-line stanzas, each ending with the line 'Jesus hält, was Er verspricht' ('Jesus holds – or keeps – what he promised'). The 'Heerde' in line 1 is sometimes spelt 'Herde' ('flock')....
Elias Collection, Cambridge, UK
The Elias Library of Hymnology consists of just over 3,500 volumes on hymnology, mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries, but with some dating back to the 16th century. It is held at Westminster College, Cambridge.
The Library is primarily the collection of Edward Alfred Elias. Born in Liverpool in 1875, he lived in West Kirby in the Wirral throughout his life; and though little more is known about him, he was a lifelong collector of hymnological works and...
SMITH, Elizabeth Joyce. b. Stawell, Victoria, Australia, 27 February 1956. The daughter of Churches of Christ parents, she was educated at Euroa High School and Monash and Melbourne Universities (1974-78); Trinity College Theological School (the Anglican member of Melbourne's United Faculty of Theology), where she took a BD (1986); and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. There she completed her PhD in 1995; it was published as Bearing Fruit in Due Season: Feminist Hermeneutics...
BEVAN, (Emma) Frances (née Shuttleworth). b. Oxford, 25 September 1827; d. Cannes, France, 15 March 1909. Born at Oxford, the daughter of the Warden of New College, the anti-Tractarian Philip Shuttleworth, who became Bishop of Chichester in 1840. She married Robert Bevan, a banker, in 1856. She subsequently became a member of the Plymouth Brethren. She referred to herself as 'Frances Bevan' or 'F.B.'.
She published many books on religious topics, including Service of Song in the House of the...
The English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC) is an international and ecumenical working group formed of representatives from regional and national English-language liturgical groups. These representatives meet every two years. Current member groups include the Association of Irish Liturgists, the Australian Consultation on Liturgy, the Consultation on Common Texts* (CCT), the Joint Liturgical Group of Great Britain, and the Joint Liturgical Group New Zealand.
The ELLC was officially...
EPHREM the Syrian (Syriac: AFREM). b. Nisibis, ca. 306; d. Edessa, 9 June 373. Ephrem was born at Nisibis (today Nusaybin). He received his religious instruction in Nisibis, where he was also appointed to work as a teacher (malfanā) and he was possibly ordained as a deacon as well. In 363, when Roman-ruled Nisibis was handed over to the Persians, he fled together with a part of the Christian community to Amid (today Diyarbakır) and later to Edessa (today Sanlıurfa). Ephrem spent the rest of his...
Episcopal Church Hymnody, USA
The Introduction is by Raymond F. Glover. The historical survey is by Robin Knowles Wallace.
Introduction
Among the vast number of persons who came as settlers beginning in 1607 to what is now known as the United States of America were many who brought with them a pattern of worship consistent with the liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer, the singing of metrical Psalms from the 'Old Version'* of Thomas Sternhold* and John Hopkins*, perhaps a few hymns of human...
WERNER, Eric. b. Lundenburg, (Břeclav), 40 miles north of Vienna, Austria-Hungary, 1 August 1901; d. New York City, 28 July 1988. Werner was a distinguished and controversial musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and liturgiologist whose life-long goal, as stated in his The Sacred Bridge (Werner 2:x-xii), was to correct the errors and misrepresentations of European scholars, especially of those who were anti-Semitic. Werner's parents (his father was a scholar of Greek) nurtured him in classical...
DODGSHUN, Ernest James. b. Leeds, 8 March 1876; d. St Briavels, Gloucestershire, 24 August 1944. He was educated at Silcoates School, Wakefield, founded for the children of nonconformist clergy; and then at St John's College, Cambridge. Although brought up in a Congregationalist family, he joined the Society of Friends in 1908. He gave up work as a businessman and became closely associated with the National Adult School Union (cf. George Currie Martin*), of which he became Secretary (1924-44)....
MERRINGTON, Ernest Northcroft. b. Newcastle, New South Wales, 27 August 1876; d. 26 March 1953. He was educated at Sydney Boys' School and the University of Sydney (MA in Philosophy, 1903, by which time he had completed his theological training and had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister, 1902). After a period in Edinburgh, he undertook further study at Harvard (PhD, 1905).
He held parish appointments in New South Wales and Queensland, while lecturing in philosophy at the University of...
CARPENTER, (Joseph) Estlin. b. Ripley, Surrey, 5 October 1844; d. Oxford, 2 June 1927. He was born into a distinguished Unitarian family: his grandfather, Lant Carpenter, was a noted Unitarian minister and schoolmaster, who taught James Martineau*, who in turn taught Estlin ('Joseph' was usually dropped). The family moved to Hampstead, north London, and Estlin was educated at University College School, London, and the University of London, where he read mental and moral philosophy. He trained...
Lauluraamat Piiskoplikule Metodistikirikule Eestis (Tallinn, 1926; The Estonian Methodist Episcopal Hymnal). The Estonian Methodist Episcopal hymnal (cited as ESMEH 1926), like its Lithuanian and Latvian counterparts (see 'Lithuanian Methodist hymnody'* and 'Latvian Methodist hymnody'*), was strongly dependent on the Gesangbuch der Bischöflichen Methodisten Kirche in Deutschland und der Schweiz ('Hymnbook of the German and Swiss Methodist Episcopal Church', Bremen, 1896, cited as GBMK 1896). It...
This account of Ethiopian Hymnody is in two parts: Traditional Hymnody (Ralph Lee); New Songs (Lila Balisky)
Traditional Ethiopian Liturgical Music
Of all the ecclesiastical arts liturgical singing is the most important and jealously guarded in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition. No external influences are permitted and the purity of the original tradition is uncompromisingly protected. Music creates the atmosphere of worship: Orthodox believers often comment on the spiritual quality and...
The Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-Book (ELHB 1912) was the first, official English-language hymnal of the Missouri Synod branch of American Lutheranism. It was published at a time when the Missouri Synod was slowly, and reluctantly, making the transition from German to English in its worship forms and ecclesial culture. As such, ELHB 1912 assisted in a far-reaching transformation of this immigrant, Lutheran church body by bringing a large portion of its German hymnody into English, while at the...
TUCKER, Francis Bland. b. Norfolk, Virginia, 6 January 1895; d. Savannah, Georgia, 1 January 1984. The son of an Episcopalian Church bishop, he was educated at school in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (BA 1914). After service with the Medical Corps in World War I, he trained for the priesthood at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria (BD, 1920, h. c. DD, 1942). He was ordained (deacon 1918, priest 1920), serving parishes at Brunswick County, Virginia...
Father! Thy wonders do not singly stand. Jones Very* (1813-1880).
The first eight lines of this hymn come from Very's Essays and Poems (1839), a volume that was published with the encouragement of Ralph Waldo Emerson*. It was entitled 'The Spirit Land', and was a poem of fourteen lines, one of a series of poems in that form and in that metre:
Father! Thy wonders do not singly stand, Nor far removed where feet have seldom strayed; Around us ever lies the enchanted land In marvels rich to thine...
Father, behold us here. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is the third of five hymns, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster, pp....
Father, to Thee we look in all our sorrow. Frederick Lucian Hosmer* (1840- 1929).
According to JJ, p. 1650, this was written in 1881 to mark the death of a member of Hosmer's congregation. This must have been during his pastorate at Cleveland, Ohio (1878-92). It was published in The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, First Series (Boston, 1885), edited by Hosmer with William Channing Gannett*. It had four stanzas:
Father, we look to Thee in all our sorrow, Thou art the fountain whence our...
Father, we thank thee who hast planted. F. Bland Tucker* (1895-1984).
Written in 1939, and published in H40, this hymn has been published throughout the world. It is a paraphrase of the Didache*, consisting of the supposed teaching of the twelve apostles: it provides 'rules for baptism, fasting, prayer, visiting teachers and apostles, and the Lord's Supper, and containing the fine prayers which F. Bland Tucker has effectively paraphrased' (Young, 1993, p 332).
Stanza 1 corresponds to 10: 2 of...
HODGES, Faustina Hasse. b. Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England, 7 August 1823; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 4 February 1895. Daughter of Edward Hodges* and sister of John Sebastian Bach Hodges*, Faustina Hodges was a composer of church music, including hymn tunes, as well as secular songs.
Named after opera singer Faustina Bordoni (1697-1781) and her husband, the composer Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783), Faustina Hodges was baptized 5 September 1823 in the Moravian Church, East Tytherton, about...
PAGURA, Federico José. b. Arroyo Secco, Santa Fe, Argentina, 9 February, 1923; d. Rosario, Santa Fe, 6 June 2016.
Life and Ministry
In the second half of the 20th century Federico Pagura was among the most notable leaders of the church in South America and one of the leading authors and translators of congregational hymnody from this continent. Not only was he a pillar of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Argentina; he was also a resilient and compelling voice for human rights (derechos...
Fellowship of American Baptist Musicians
The Fellowship of American Baptist Musicians (FABM) is a volunteer organization for church musicians with denominational affiliation to the American Baptist Churches, USA. The Fellowship was officially formed in February 1964 when Dr Jet Turner and several other interested persons met in Cincinnati, Ohio with Dr Kenneth L. Cober*, who was at that time Executive Director for the Division of Christian Education for the American Baptist Convention. At that...
The Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts (now the Fellowship of Worship Artists)
The Fellowship is in part the successor to the National Fellowship of Methodist Musicians (NaFOMM), whose founding in the mid 1950s was prompted by that denomination's educational leaders' and curriculum editors' articulation of the theological discrepancies and inadequacies, the pedagogical practices of children's choir directors, and the texts of songs in the denomination's Sunday school...
FILOTHEI the Hieromonk. b. Wallachia, ca. 1640; d. ca. 1720. A Romanian interpreter, translator and author of Byzantine hymns and liturgical texts, Filothei studied Byzantine music with priest Teodosie from the Metropolitan Church of Wallachia. He spent a few years in the monasteries on Mount Athos, improving his knowledge of Byzantine music and the Greek and Medieval Slavonic languages. He returned to Wallachia before 1700 and is known as a hieromonk (a monk who has also been ordained as a...
Flor y Canto (flower and song) is a hymnal that represents the diversity of Latino/a cultures in the United States. Published by Oregon Catholic Press in four editions (1989, 2001, 2011, 2023), the title indicates the symbolism of flower and song found in Aztec culture and the experiences of indigenous peoples in Hispanic cultures. Unlike earlier Spanish-language Protestant hymnals, this Catholic publication includes a limited number of hymns in Spanish translation from traditional Western...
For all thy gifts we praise thee, Lord. James Freeman Clarke* (1810-1888).
Published in Service Book: for the use of the Church of the Disciples of Christ (1844), and then in The Disciples' Hymn Book (Boston, 1844), where it was entitled 'Feast of the Reformation'. The word 'Feast' in the title suggests that Clarke was attempting to create a new Feast Day, in opposition to the traditional calendar of Saints' Days and other days in the church calendar. It had eight stanzas, and was given as by...
For everyone born, a place at the table. Shirley Erena Murray* (1931-2020).
This was written in 1996 from Murray's involvement in the work of Amnesty International, and the liberal theology of her husband, John Stewart Murray*, in his church at Wellington, New Zealand. It has its origins in the 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights' of the United Nations (December 1948), which stated that 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights', and that 'Everyone has the right to...
Fortem virili pectore. Silvio Antoniano* (1540-1603), translated by various hands.
This was from the revision of the Roman Breviary, commissioned by Pope Clement VIII, and published in Venice in 1603, the year of Antoniano's death. It was included by John Henry Newman* in Hymni Ecclesiae (1838), for the many virtuous women, who were neither virgins nor martyrs ('Commune Sanctae Martyris Tantum, et nec Virginis nec Martyris') as a hymn for Vespers. It was translated by Edward Caswall* and...
Fountain of mercy, God of love. Alice Flowerdew* (1759-1830).
This is from the Third Edition of Flowerdew's Poems, on Moral and Religious Subjects (1811). It was entitled 'Harvest Hymn', and is of some interest as preceding the general establishment of Harvest Festival services. It had six stanzas:
Fountain of mercy, God of love!
How rich Thy bounties are!
The rolling seasons, as they move,
Proclaim Thy constant care.
When, in the bosom of the earth,
The sower hid the grain,
...
WILE, Frances Whitmarsh. b. Bristol Centre, New York, 2 December 1878; d. Rochester, New York, 31 July 1939 (places and dates from Henry Wilder Foote, American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns, compiled for the Hymn Society of America, Cambridge, Mass., 1959), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53833/53833-h/53833-h.htm). She was an active member of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, of which William Channing Gannett* was the pastor from 1889 to 1908. According to Ronander and Porter (1966,...
XAVIER, Francis. b. Xavier, Navarre, Spain, 7 April 1506; d. Shang Chuan, near China, 3 December 1552. He was born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta in a new castle ('Xavier' in the Basque language) belonging to his aristocratic family in the kingdom of Navarre: the kingdom was invaded and divided during his youth, and the castle was reduced in size by the order of Cardinal Cisneros (see 'Spanish hymnody'*). He was educated at the Collège Sainte Barbe in Paris (1525- ), where he met Ignatius...
Franciscan Hymns and Hymnals
Since the foundation of their order in 1209 or 1210, the contribution of Franciscan writers to western Christianity has been immense, particularly in the areas of theology, preaching, and hymn composition. Since their hymns address both the needs of liturgy and their vocation as preachers, Franciscan writing reflects the ambitions of learned society and the varied tastes of vernacular culture. Their major contributions include a reform in the 13th century of the...
HEDGE, Frederic Henry. b. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 12 December 1805; d. 21 August 1890. He was the son of Levi Hedge, Professor of German at Harvard, and his wife Mary Kneeland. Frederic, their only child, was sent to Germany at the age of thirteen to be educated, in the company of George Bancroft (1800-1891, later to become a distinguished statesman and diplomat). He was a pupil at the Gymnasium of Ilfeld (Hannover) and of Schulpforta (Saxony). Returning to the USA in 1823 he entered Harvard,...
HOSMER, Frederick Lucian. b. Framingham, Massachusetts, 16 October 1840; d. Berkeley, California, 7 June 1929. Following graduation from Harvard (BA, 1862) he served for two years as headmaster of Houghton School, Bolton, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard Divinity School (BD 1869), and in the same year he was ordained into the Unitarian ministry. He served the First Congregational Church at Northboro, Massachusetts (1870-72), and the Second Congregational Church, Quincy, Illinois (1872-77);...
FOSTER, Frederick William. b. Bradford, Yorkshire, 1 August 1760; d.Ockbrook, near Derby, 12 April 1835. Foster was a Moravian, educated at Fulneck, near Leeds at the Settlement there, and then at the Moravian Settlement at Barby, Germany. He became a minister in the Moravian Church, and was made a Bishop in 1818. He compiled a Supplement (1808) to A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren (1801), edited by John Swertner*, re-titled Liturgy and Hymns for...
Friends of the English Liturgy was founded in Chicago in 1963 in the midst of the Second Vatican Council. Dennis J. Fitzpatrick (nda) began the firm to sell his own 'Demonstration Mass in English'. Within a few years he had signed a contract with songwriter Ray Repp and published Hymnal for Young Christians, subtitled 'A supplement to adult Hymnals', and one of the first hymnals intended for guitar accompaniment. The music of Repp and many other composers in the collection became widely...
From out the cloud of amber light. Cecil Frances Alexander* (1818-1895).
This hymn for St Mark's Day (25 April) was written by Alexander for the Second Edition of A&M (1875). It draws upon the traditional association of St Mark with a winged lion. It had five stanzas:
From out the cloud of amber light, Borne on the whirlwind of the north, Four living creatures wing'd and bright Before the Prophet's eye came forth.
The Voice of God was in the Four Beneath that awful crystal mist, And...
Gadsby's Hymns
William Gadsby* (1773-1844) is famous for his Selection of Hymns for Public Worship (Manchester, 1814), which he published in the same year as a collection of his own work, The Nazarene's Songs: being a Composition of Original Hymns by William Gadsby (Manchester, 1814). Edition after edition followed, with enlargements and supplements (1838, 1844, 1850, 1854, and thereafter) and it is still in print. These were words-only books: tune books, Companion Tunes to Gadsby's hymn book,...
BLACK, George Alexander. b. Toronto, 8 May 1931; d. Paris, France, 1 July 2003. He was professor of French Language and Literature, Latin, Liturgy and Church Music at Huron College, University of Western Ontario at London, Ontario; and a Canadian liturgist, hymnist, organist and choral director. George Black served as organist and choir director at several Toronto churches before he moved to London, ON, where he continued leading congregational music while teaching at Huron College. As Director...
GEORGIOS of Crete. d. ca. 1815. Unlike many post-Byzantine composers, Georgios of Crete did not work as lampadarios or protopsaltes at the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople. Instead, he worked exclusively as a musician and composer. He studied music with Meletios Sinaïtes, Petros Peloponnesios*, Petros Byzantios* and Iakobos Peloponnesios*. Later, he worked as a teacher in Constantinople, on the island of Chios, and in Chania on Crete (where he is buried). His many pupils...
LATTY, Geraldine. b. 1963. Latty is a British songwriter and performer of West Indian descent. Her diverse religious background includes time spent in Pentecostal, Methodist and Baptist churches. A music graduate of Bath University, she taught music in a Catholic school in Bristol for twelve years. She has also taught a range of music courses at the London School of Theology and Dordt University, Iowa. She has released six solo albums of her own music and has also featured prominently in...
GERMANOS of Constantinople (the Confessor), St (or Germanus). b. Constantinople, ca. 655; d. Platonium, before 754. He was the son of a patrikios. In 669, after his father's execution by the Byzantine emperor, Germanos was made a eunuch and enrolled in the clergy of Hagia Sophia. He quickly established a reputation as an expert in theology. He became bishop of Cyzicus (ca. 706) and patriarch of Constantinople in 715.
Germanos opposed various heresies; in 730, under pressure from Emperor Leo...
GERMANOS of Neai Patrai. b. Tyrnavo/Thessalia, ca.1625; d. ca. 1685. Germanos was born in and studied Byzantine music in Constantinople with Georgios Rhaidestinos and Chrysaphes the Younger*, although in many sources he is mentioned as a contemporary of the latter. In ca. 1665 he was appointed metropolitan of Neai Patrai (today Ypati in the district of Phthiotida) by patriarch Dionysios III. In 1683 he seems to have resigned from this post and gone to live in Wallachia.
There are five known...
HANCOCK, Gerre. b. Lubbock, Texas, 21 February 1934; d. Austin, Texas, 21 January 2012. He was an organist, professor, choir trainer, and composer, known especially for his book Improvising: How to Master the Art, which is largely based on hymn tunes.
His father, Edward Ervin Hancock (1902-1965) was Lubbock County Superintendent of Schools, and his mother, Flake (née Steger) Hancock, was a pianist for several churches. Gerre began playing the piano at age four and took lessons from his mother....
TICKLE, Gilbert Young. b. Maryport, Cumberland (now Cumbria), 30 June 1819; d. Liverpool, 21 April 1888. Tickle was the greatest hymn-writer among Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland. He was born in Maryport, the thirteenth in a family of sixteen, and after education in a dame's school, finishing with a master, he was apprenticed to a draper in Carlisle at the age of 14. Brought up in a hyper-Calvinist Scotch Baptist family, he became a Sunday School teacher in the Independent...
Give to the winds thy fears. Paul Gerhardt* (1607-1676), translated by John Wesley* (1703-1791).
This is a free translation of part of Gerhardt's 'Befiehl du deine Wege'*, beginning at stanza 9 of Wesley's text. It is a companion piece to 'Commit thou all thy griefs'*. The two hymns are sometimes printed separately, and sometimes as two parts of the same hymn, as in HP. They were not included in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), but appeared in the...
Global hymnody
'Global' is often used interchangeably with world, ethnic, international, or multicultural music. 'Third-World music' may be used occasionally, but is inaccurate and carries vestiges of colonialism. 'Global hymnody', however, also presents some difficulties. The first relates to perspective: What hymnody is global and what hymnody is not? Though Christian song has been transmitted across language groups and cultures since the apostolic era, the first wave of global song in recent...
Glosses
The Latin hymns of the Divine Office are cited in works on grammar and metrics throughout the Middle Ages. The study of hymns at several different levels of Latin-language education apparently led their texts to be annotated with glosses. Although the majority of the extant glosses are interlinear, some comprise more extended commentary and were thus written in the margins of medieval hymnals. Hymn glosses are preserved in Latin, Old English, Old High German, and Old Irish. Vernacular...
God weeps. Shirley Erena Murray* (1931–2020).
Shirley Erena Murray explores the profound and complex reality of God's Incarnation in this hymn. She describes the context for the composition in her collection, Every Day in Your Spirit (1996), where it was first published: 'God Weeps (1994). A protest at violence, including child abuse and the battering of women, as well as violence on a world scale' (Murray, 1996, n.p.).
As is common with Murray's texts, she sets the structure and tone in the...
God who hast caused to be written thy word for our learning. T. Herbert O'Driscoll* (1928 - ).
Herbert O'Driscoll recast the Collect, Epistle (Romans 15:4-13) and Gospel (Luke 21:25-33) from the Book of Common Prayer into language of the mid 20th century for worship on the second Sunday of Advent. The new hymn would fit in congregational worship with the vocabulary and structure of recent translations of the Bible and of Anglican liturgy. The 'thy' in the first line has been changed to 'your'...
God, who art the Lord of Harvest (Prayer for a Labor Force). D. Elton Trueblood* (1900-1994).
This hymn is also known by its title, 'Prayer for a Labor Force'. For more than eleven years, Trueblood wrote a monthly column entitled 'Plain Speech' for Quaker Life. In the column 'Hymns for Today', (April 1968, vol/series 8, issue 4, p. 118), he notes that 'The period when Quakers refused to sing ended a hundred years ago… It must have been hard for our ancestors to neglect “And when they had...
SADOH, Godwin. b. Lagos State, Nigeria, 28 March 1965. An Anglican organist, composer, hymn writer, church musician, and professor of music, Godwin Sadoh received certificates in piano, theory, and general musicianship from the Royal School of Music, London (1982-1986), and degrees in piano and composition from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria (BA, 1988); in African ethnomusicology from University of Pittsburgh (MA, 1998), in organ performance and church music from University of...
Goode's Psalms
An Entire New Version of the Book of Psalms. William Goode* (1762-1816).
This collection was published in 1811, with a Second Edition in 1813 and a Third in 1816. It was presumably given the 'Entire New' title to distinguish it from the 1696 'New Version' by Nahum Tate* and Nicholas Brady*, and from other predecessors such as Isaac Watts* and James Merrick*: in the Preface, Goode said that Watts' The Psalms of David, 1719, was 'simple and elegant', but that it professed to be...
LIGHT, Gordon Stanley. b. Claresholm, Alberta, 7 May 1944. A bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada, Gordon Light was born into a military family. He has lived in Alberta and in various places in Canada. Studies at Carleton University (Ottawa) (BA, 1965), then at Trinity College (Toronto) (STB, 1969) led to ordination as deacon and priest in the Anglican Church in 1969. In 2001, he was consecrated as bishop for the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior of British Columbia. Light worked in...
Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6 Complete (1894) (New York: Biglow & Main Company; and Cincinnati: John Church & Company): Gospel Hymns and Sacred Solos by P. P. Bliss and Ira D. Sankey as used by them in Gospel Meetings [No. 1] (1875), No. 2 (1876), No. 3 (1878), No. 4 (1883), No. 5 (1887), No. 6 (1891), Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6 Complete (1894).
Beginning with the first Great Awakening ca.1730-60 (see Great Awakenings, USA*), the colonies, and subsequently the USA, have periodically...
Gospel Music Association (GMA). This is an industry organization created in 1964 and based in Nashville, Tennessee. It promotes the commercial interests and mass-media products of mostly English-speaking, North American, Protestant musicians and those making up the industry that supports them. That industry is centered around Nashville and includes persons employed by electronic mass-media companies such as record companies and radio and television stations; producers; concert promoters;...
The gospel song or gospel hymn is a genre of Christian worship-song that developed in revivals held in Great Britain and the USA, 1865-74. Its primary antecedents were camp meeting songs which joined personal witness and freedom of expression. and the widely popular Sunday school song. Start-up music publishers (see Publishing and publishers, USA*), exploited the product of pittance-paid, albeit talented songwriters and composers, and banded with organizers, preachers and song leaders of white...
Gracious Power, the world pervading. William Johnson Fox* (1786-1864).
First published in Fox's Hymns and Anthems (1841), in six 3-line stanzas. It is a characteristic Unitarian hymn, addressing God as the 'Gracious Power' that gives wisdom, light and love, and is the soul of thought and feeling:
Gracious Power, the world pervading,Blessing all, and none upbraiding, We are met to worship thee.
Not in formal adorations,Nor with servile depredations, But in spirit true and free.
By thy...
KENDRICK, Graham Andrew. b. Blisworth, Northamptonshire, 2 August 1950. He was the son of a Baptist minister; the family later moved to Essex and London. He started composing songs at 15 years of age, having taught himself to play the piano. In response to the Church's lack of connection with youth culture during the 1960s, he formed an early interest in the use of rock and folk music for outreach and evangelism.
He trained as an English/Ceramics teacher at Avery Hill College, Kent, but...
The term 'Greek hymnody' within Christianity has both a contemporary and an historical sense. First, it signifies the hymnody of the present Byzantine liturgical rite, contained in the official liturgical hymnbooks. The Byzantine or Eastern Roman empire ended in 1453, but the Byzantine rite contined to be practised in post-Byzantine times, both by Orthodox and eventually by Catholic Uniate churches, as it still is. Second, Greek hymnody incorporates all hymnody used in any of several historical...
This article includes the tradition of Egypt/Alexandria. See also 'Greek hymnody'*.
Introduction
Christian papyrology enables us to study many of the non-biblical liturgical songs of the early Greek Church, which were previously known only through translations, particularly in the Georgian, Armenian or Coptic traditions (which are difficult to date), through fragments in late Greek compilations, or through literary works of dubious authorship or uncertain liturgical use. These papyrological...
As far as we can judge from the few remaining pieces of evidence (such as the famous 'Phos hilaron'*) and from some late testimonies (Saint Augustine*, Egeria's pilgrimage, comments by abbot Pembo, the Life of Auxentios), the earliest forms of Christian hymnody in Greek were written in rhythmic prose, were based on patterns of parallelism and antithesis (like the biblical psalms and canticles) and were sung responsorially. It is generally assumed that the earliest hymns, such as troparia and...
GREGORIOS PROTOPSALTES b. 1777/78?; d. 23 December 1821. Gregorios is said to have been born on the day of Petros Peloponnesios*'s death, and to have taught himself to sing and speak Armenian. His father sent him to the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai so as to be instructed in Greek grammar and music. Later on Gregorios was taught Byzantine music by Iakobos Peloponnesios*, Georgios of Crete* and Petros Byzantios* as well as Arabian-Persian music by the Ottoman composer Ismail Dede...
GREGORY of Nazianzen. b. Nazianzen, ca. 329; d. Nazianzen, 25 January 389. His father was bishop of Nazianzen, and Gregory was born on the family estate. He studied at Caesarea, Alexandria, and Athens, where he studied rhetoric in the 350s. He became a monk, but returned home, where he was ordained by his father in 362. For the next decade, he assisted his father. In 372 a new administrative division of Cappadocia led to the establishment of a new see at Sasima. Against his will, Gregory's...
GREGORY the Great. b. probably in Rome, ca. 540; d. Rome, 12 March 604. Born into a noble Roman family, Gregory was well educated. He became a monk in Rome, having founded a monastery there as well as six in Sicily. Gregory was sent to Constantinople with a diplomatic mission where he remained as 'apocrisiarius' ('ambassador'), and became very popular, from 579 to 585. He was recalled to Rome, and was elected Pope Gregory I in 590. Gregory is said to have seen Anglo-Saxon children in the slave...
NAREKATSI, Grigor (St Gregory of Narek), b. ca. 951; d. 1003. Grigor Narekatsi is the author of Matean voghbergut'ean ('Book of Lamentations'), the most recognised work in Armenian literature. This is a book of devotion and spiritual consolation second only to the Bible. Mischa Kudian, in his foreword to his English translation of the first 25 elegies from Matean voghbergut'ean calls Narekatsi 'the most outstanding figure in the whole of Armenian literature', and he deserves to be known as one...
Hail glorious angels, heirs of light. John Austin* (1613-1669).
First published in Austin's Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (Paris, 1668), in the section 'Office of the Saints', where it was prescribed in 'Lauds for Saints'. It is a selection from a hymn of eleven 4-line stanzas, beginning with two not used in modern books:
Wake all my hopes, lift up your eys, And crown your heads with mirth· See how they shine beyond the skys, Who once dwelt on our earth.
Peace busy thoughts,...
Hail, glorious Saint Patrick, dear Saint of our isle. Sister Agnes, 19th century.
Published in Henri Friedrich Hemy*'s Easy Hymn Tunes with the words in full, adapted for Catholic Schools (1851), where it attributed to Sister Agnes, 'of the Convent of Charleville, Co. Cork'. This was the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, founded in 1831. The hymn appeared in Suffield and Palmer's Crown of Jesus (1862), and in many later books, including Albert Edmonds Tozer*'s Catholic Hymns: original and...
Hark, 'tis the Saviour of Mankind. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is the last of five hymns, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Sons, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly* and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster,...
FRIEDELL, Harold William. b. Jamaica, Queens, New York, 11 May 1905; d. Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 17 February 1958. Friedell was an organist, choirmaster, teacher, and composer of over 100 choral, organ and instrumental works. A 'Profile' in the Hudson Dispatch (New York), 16 September 1936, compared Friedell's anthems, in 'artistic temperament to the school of English composers who are writing a new chapter in the music on the ancient “modes” as opposed to the schools which are...
McKEEVER, Harriet Burn. b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 August 1807; d. Chester, Pennsylvania, 7 February 1886 or 1887. A member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, McKeever taught for 36 years in a girls' school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was also a successful author of novels, mainly on religious themes and for young women, several of which are still available in digital/printed form. An example is Edith's Ministry (Philadelphia, 1860), which traces the life of the eldest daughter...
COOPERSMITH, Harry. b. Russia, 2 December 1902; d. Santa Barbara, California, 31 December 1975. Coopersmith was a pioneer in the dissemination of Jewish music in America. The hymn tune YISRAEL V'ORAITA (TORAH SONG)*, introduced by Coopersmith, is one of the most widely sung Jewish melodies published in Christian hymnals.
Harry Coopersmith immigrated with his parents, Max Coopersmith (1868? - ?) and Pauline (Liptzen) Coopersmith (1878? - ?) in 1911, and settled in New York, where Harry...
He who by a mother's love. George MacDonald* (1824-1905).
This two-stanza poem appeared in MacDonald's 'Organ Songs', in his Works of Fancy and Imagination (1871), and then in his Poetical Works (1893). It was entitled 'Christmas Meditation':
He who by a mother's love Made the wandering world his own, Every year comes from above, Comes the parted to atone, Binding Earth to the Father's throne.
Nay, thou comest every day! No, thou never didst depart! Never hour hast been away! Always...
Although the concept of 'hymnody' has been applied to Hebrew sacred poetry in modern times, the specifics of this phenomenon in Jewish culture differ in many aspects from the sacred poetry of other monotheistic religions. Hebrew sacred hymns are generically known as piyyutim (liturgical or religious poems; sing. piyyut, from the Greek poesis). These are lyrical compositions intended to embellish obligatory prayers and paraliturgical or religious events, communal or private, in Jewish life. In...
SUSO (or Seusse), Heinrich. b. Constance, Swabia, 21 March ca. 1295-1300; d. Ulm, 25 January 1366. Born of a noble family (von Berg) he took his name from his devout mother (Sus or Süs). At the age of 13 he entered a Dominican convent at Constance, and then studied theology under Meister Eckhart, and perhaps John Tauler*, at Cologne (1324-27). From 1329 to 1334 he was a lektor at Constance; in 1343 he was made a prior, probably at Diessenhofen. He was then a prior at Ulm, where he lived until...
LAUFENBURG, Heinrich von. b. Laufenburg, Aargau, Switzerland, ca. 1390; d. Strasbourg, ca. 1460. He is named after his birthplace, a town on the Rhine, now on the border with Germany: in JJ he is listed as 'Heinrich of Laufenburg' (p. 507; Catherine Winkworth* uses 'Henry of Loufenburg', and Wackernagel 'Heinrich von Loufenberg'). In JJ James Mearns* noted that he was first heard of as Dean of the Collegiate Church of St Maurice at Zofingen, Aargau. He later became a Dean at Freiburg, Baden,...
Heloise (other names not known) b. 1090–97; d. 16 May 1163/4. She was the daughter of Herenade, who may have been a scion of the Montmorency family (as possibly was Heloise's father) in the region of Paris. Up to about 1116 she was educated at the convent of Argenteuil where she later returned as a nun after her affair with Abelard*, the birth of their son, and Abelard's castration after their clandestine marriage (1117-18) to which she was a most unwilling partner. Their separation after these...
FRY, Henrietta Joan. b. Bristol, 6 December 1799; d. Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, 1860. She was the daughter of Joseph Storrs Fry, a wealthy chocolate maker, and a Quaker, part of the celebrated 'Fry's Chocolate' dynasty.
She was a fine linguist. She published translations from the hymns of Johann Kaspar Lavater* with the title The Pastors' Legacy; or Devotional Fragments from the German of Lavater (Bristol and London, 1842). She noted that they were taken from Hundert Sentenzen von Seligen...
HAYN, Henriette Luise von. b. 22 May 1724; d. 27 August 1782. Born at Idstein, Nassau, she became a member of the Moravian community at Herrnhaag. She taught in the girls' school there, and at Grosshennersdorf. From 1751 to 1766 she taught at Herrnhut; from 1766 until her death she cared for the invalid sisters of the community. JJ described her as 'a gifted hymn-writer' (p. 499), and noted that over 40 of her hymns were in the Moravian Brüder Gesang Buch (1778), but annotated one hymn only....
BANCROFT, Henry Hugh. b. Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, 29 February 1904; d. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 11 September 1988. A student of E. P. Guthrie and J. S. Robson at Grimsby, Bancroft took his FRCO in 1925 and served as organist and choir director at Old Clee Parish Church for four years before emigrating to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1929 to begin his Canadian career at St Matthew's Anglican Church. He completed an external BMus at Durham in 1936. During 1936-37 he served at the Church of the...
CUTLER, Henry Stephen. b. Boston, Massachusetts, 13 October 1825; d. Swampscott, Massachusetts, 5 December 1902. Cutler was an organist, choirmaster, and composer, known especially for his hymn tune, ALL SAINTS (also called ALL SAINTS NEW). The place of Cutler's death is sometimes given as Boston; however, he died at home in Swampscott, about 12 miles north of the city. Cutler's parents were Roland Cutler (1798-1873) and Martha Richardson Cutler (1803-?) (see Josiah Adams, The Genealogy of...
Here is love, vast as the ocean. William Rees* (1802-1883), translated by William Edwards (1848-1929) and Howell Elvet Lewis* (1860-1953).
This is Rees's best known and finest hymn, dating from some time in the 1870s. In the manner of earlier Moravian and Methodist hymns, there is an intense focus on the shedding of Christ's blood, which Rees explores through a series of water-inspired metaphors in the second stanza. Though Edwards' translation is somewhat free, he faithfully preserves this...
Hermannus Contractus (Hermann the Lame). b. Swabia, 18 July 1013; d. Reichenau, 24 September 1054. He was a Benedictine monk of the monastery on the Reichenau*, the island in Lake Constance.
Hermann, born of a noble Swabian family, was crippled from birth. He was given as an oblate to the monastery on the Reichenau on 15 September 1020 and remained there all his life. His biography can be reconstructed from his own writings and from an account written by his disciple Berthold. This was composed...
Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn. Elisabeth Cruciger (Creutziger)* (ca. 1500-1535).
This hymn is from Eyn Enchiridion oder Handbuchlein (Erfurt, 1524), and Johann Walter*'s Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn (Wittenberg, 1524), entitled 'Eyn Lobsangk von Christo'. In some later books it is 'Ein geistlich liedt von Christo, Elisabet Creutzigerin'. Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied III. pp. 46-7, gives four texts of this hymn. It had five 7-line stanzas, beginning:
Herr Christ, der einig Gotts...
Heut triumphieret Gottes Sohn. Kaspar Stolzhagen* (1550-1594).
This joyful Easter hymn, filled with double 'Halleluja's, comes from Stolzhagen's Kinderspiegel, oder Hauszucht und Tischbüchlein. Wie die Eltern mit den Kindern vor und nach Essens Abendes und Morgens singen und beten sollen (Eisleben, 1591), a hymnbook for children and adults to use daily. In JJ, p. 1648, James Mearns* thought the hymn 'may possibly be' by Stolzhagen, but he is given as the author in EG (109).
It was entitled...
HILDEGARD of Bingen. b. Böckelheim, 1098; d. 17 September 1179. The last of ten children of Mechthild and Hildebert, members of the minor nobility, Hildegard was a weak child whose illness was linked throughout her life with distinctive visions. Committed to the religious life as a sort of tithe, Hildegard lived for several years with Jutta of Sponheim, who taught her to read and chant the psalter before both were enclosed as anchorites at Rupertsberg Abbey on 1 November 1112. Hildegard...
HILDUIN. b. ca. 785; d. 22 November 855-61. A cousin of the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious (ruled 814-840), Hilduin was abbot of Saint Denis, near Paris, from 814 until 840, and also abbot of Saint Médard of Soissons, Saint Germain des Prés in Paris, and Saint Ouen in Rouen during this time. As Archicapellanus of Louis the Pious' chapel from 819 to 840, he was a member of the royal household, responsible for ecclesiastical legislation, and close to the centre of Carolingian politics. Hilduin...
Hillsong: Hillsong (Hillsong Music Australia); Hillsong (Church)
Hillsong Church is a contemporary pentecostal megachurch founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1983. At the time of writing, the congregation gathers to worship on six continents with an additional outreach through its digital platform Hillsong Church Online (HCO) as well as music streaming on various online platforms. The Hillsong brand is one of the most recognisable among Christians globally. Hillsong is well known internationally...
Höga Majestät, vi alla. Samuel Johan Hedborn* (1783-1849).
Published in Psalmer av Hedborn (1812), this has been described by Marilyn Kay Stulken* as 'One of our loftiest hymns of praise' (1981, p. 322). Its use has been primarily by North American Lutherans, in translation. According to hymnary.org., it appeared in a few Swedish language books in the USA between 1890 (Lill Basunen Innehallande Andliga Sånger) and 1903 (Nya Psalmisten: sånger för allmän och enskild uppbyggelse). It was...
How beauteous were the marks divine. Arthur Cleveland Coxe* (1818-1896).
These stanzas were identified in JJ, p. 267, as coming from Coxe's 'Hymn to the Redeemer', a poem of seven 8-line stanzas, written ca. 1840 and published in Halloween (Hartford, 1845) as one of the 'Lays, Meditative and Devotional' that followed 'Halloween' itself. It is uncertain when the selection of stanzas that became so popular was made, or by whom: it may have been by Henry Ward Beecher* for the Plymouth...
How few receive with cordial faith. William Robertson, d. 1745*.
According to James Mearns* in JJ, p. 536, this paraphrase of Isaiah 53 ('Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?') was identified by the daughter of William Cameron* as having been written by William Robertson for the unpublished Translations and Paraphrases of 1745, and amended by John Logan* for the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases in Verse of 1781. Mearns noted that it was 'still in C.U....
How lovely on the mountains. Leonard E. Smith, Jr.* (1942- ).
The full first line is 'How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him'. Based on Isaiah 52: 7-10, this worship song was written at Riverton, New Jersey in 1973. With its refrain ('Our God reigns') it was first sung in the New Covenant Community Church, where Smith was a worship leader. Copyrighted in 1974, three further stanzas were added in 1978.
The song became widely known through its use by evangelists. Its effect comes from...
ROBBINS, Howard Chandler. b. Philadelphia, 11 December 1876; d. Washington, DC, 20 March 1952. Educated at Yale (BA 1899) and the Episcopal Theological Seminary (BD 1903). He was ordained (deacon 1903, priest 1904), serving a curacy at St Peter's, Morristown, New Jersey (1903-05). He was rector of St Paul's Church, Englewood, New Jersey (1905-11), rector of the Church of the Incarnation, New York City (1911-17), and Dean of the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York (1917-29). He became...
OLSON, Howard. b. St Paul, Minnesota, 18 July 1922; d. Sun City Center, Florida, 1 July 2010. Howard Olson has a well-deserved reputation for his African hymns, such as 'Christ has arisen, Alleluia (Mfurahini, Haleluya)*, 'Neno lake Mungu' ('Listen, God Is Calling'), and 'Njoo kwetu, Roho mwema' ('Gracious Spirit, Heed Our Pleading'). They have have found their way into hymnals around the globe. Olson's Tumshangilie Mungu: Nyimbo za Kikristo za Kiafrika has gone through six successive...
BLAIR, Hugh. b. Edinburgh, 7 April 1718; d. Edinburgh, 27 September 1800. According to James Mearns* (JJ, pp. 144-5), he was educated at the University of Edinburgh from 1730 (when he was twelve years of age), graduating MA in 1739 (Mearns gives his death date as 27 December 1800). He was licensed to preach in October 1741, and became minister of Collessie, Fife, in 1742. He moved as second minister to the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, in 1743, and to Lady Yester's Kirk (see William Robertson, d....
SHERLOCK, Hugh Braham. b. Portland, Jamaica, 21 March 1905; d. 19 April 1998. Educated at Beckford and Smith School (now St Jago High School) and Calabar High School, Sherlock worked as a civil servant before attending Caenwood Methodist Theological College. He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1932, and served as a missionary in the Turks and Caicos Islands, before returning to Kingston, Jamaica, in 1940. At Kingston he did remarkable work under the name of 'Operation Friendship' in a...
KERR, Hugh Thomson. b. Elora, Ontario, Canada, 11 February 1871; d. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 27 June 1950. Kerr was educated at the University of Toronto, and at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh. After being ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1897, he was pastor of congregations in Kansas and Illinois before having a distinguished and lengthy ministry through two world wars at Shadyside Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh (1913-46). He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the...
OOSTERHUIS, Huub (Hubertus Gerardus Josephus Henricus). b. Amsterdam, 1 November 1933; d. Amsterdam, 9 April 2023. Oosterhuis was educated at the Jesuit Ignatius College and met Bernard Huijbers* in the Liturgical Choir there. He entered the Jesuit Novitiate, singing again under Huijbers in the Gregorian Choir. He studied Philosophy and History, Language and Theatre, and published his first devotional song (to Mary) in 1954. Working with Huijbers he published Fifty Psalms (eventually published...
Hymns and Psalms (HP) (1983). The British Methodist Hymns and Psalms was sub-titled 'A Methodist and Ecumenical Hymn Book' reflecting the initial hope that this might be a hymn book project in which the United Reformed Church, the Churches of Christ, and the Wesleyan Reform Union would join. It was also a reflection of the ecumenical mood of the time, in spite of the rejection by the Church of England of possible Anglican-Methodist union in the early 1970s.
The Methodist Conference of 1979...
Hymns and Songs (1969). Hymns and Songs (1969) was a British Methodist Supplement to MHB. It contained 99 hymns and songs, five canticles and psalms, and 26 'Supplementary Tunes' to hymns in MHB. Some of the contents were traditional, because the opportunity was taken to include some omissions from MHB (such as James Montgomery*'s 'Songs of praise the angels sang'*). Others were (in the words of the preface) 'in an idiom and style which answer the demand for more contemporary expressions and...
Hymns for Prayer and Praise (1996). Hymns for Prayer and Praise was published by the Canterbury Press for the Panel of Monastic Musicians in 1996. It was intended primarily for use in monastic and religious communities, but also in churches in which daily prayer is offered with music. It acknowledges a debt to the Liber Hymnarius of the monks of Solesmes (1983), but its texts are in English, with a small selection of Latin hymns at the end of the book (501-515). The first five hundred hymns...
I cannot tell why He, whom angels worship. William Young Fullerton* (1857-1932).
This four-stanza hymn was written to be sung to LONDONDERRY AIR, the plangent tune from Fullerton's native Northern Ireland. Probably the first use of the tune with a hymn was in SofP (1925), when it was set to Frank Fletcher*'s 'O Son of Man, our hero strong and tender'*.
The date of composition of the words is uncertain, but must be before 1930, when they were printed in a Baptist supplement for young...
I waited for the Lord my God. Scottish Psalter, 1650.
This metrical version of Psalm 40 has 17 stanzas in The Psalms of David in Metre of 1781 and The Scottish Psalter, 1929, but the text that is customarily used in worship is from stanzas 1-4:
I waited for the Lord my God, and patiently did bear; At length to me he did incline My voice and cry to hear.
He took me from a fearful pit, and from the miry clay, And on a rock he set my feet, establishing my way.
He put a new song in my...
IAKOBOS Peloponnesios (Protopsaltes). b. ca. 1740; d. 23 April 1800. A pupil of Ioannes Trapezuntios*, Iakobos Peloponnesios sang as domestikos at the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from 1764 until 1776, when he was appointed teacher at the patriarchal school of music together with Daniel Protopsaltes* and Petros Peloponnesios*. Around 1784 he returned to the Great Church as lampadarios, succeeding Petros Peloponnesios. After the death of Daniel Protopsaltes in December 1789 he was...
Iam desinant suspiria. Charles Coffin* (1676-1749).
This hymn appeared in the Paris Breviary (1736) and in Hymni Sacri Auctore Carolo Coffin (1736). It was written for Matins on Christmas Day. It is a very attractive Christmas hymn, which has attracted much attention from translators (see JJ, pp. 576-7).
The Latin text was printed in John Chandler*'s Hymns of the Primitive Church (1837), in the 'Hymni Ecclesiae' (i.e. Latin) section. It had eight stanzas, beginning:
Jam desinant suspiria;...
Ich gruße dich am Kreuzesstamm. Valentin Ernst Löscher* (1673-1749).
This was written in 1722, and published during Löscher's time as a Lutheran pastor in the High Church at Dresden, in an Appendix of 1728 to Das Privilegirte Ordentliche und Vermehrte Dreßnische Gesang-Buch (1722). It was headed 'Übung der Andacht, der Liebe, des Glaubens, der Hoffnung, und des Gehorsams unter dem Creutze Christi' ('The practice of devotion, love, belief, hope, and obedience at the foot of the Cross') . It...
In God's most holy presence. Ernest James Dodgshun* (1876-1944).
This was published in the Fellowship Hymn-Book (1909). It was one of the earliest hymns by Dodgshun, who had joined the Society of Friends in 1908, and who later gave up work as a businessman to join the National Adult School Union, of which he became Secretary in 1924. It remained in the 1933 revision of FHB, published by the NASU and The Brotherhood Movement, Incorporated. Dodgshun and his wife Mary were members of the...
In grief and fear to Thee, O Lord. William Bullock* (1798-1874).
According to JJ, p. 564, this appeared in Bullock's Songs of the Church (Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1854), with the title 'The Church in Plague or Pestilence'. It had five stanzas:
In grief and fear, to Thee, O Lord, We now for succour fly,Thine awful judgments are abroad, O shield us, lest we die!
The fell disease on every side, Walks forth with tainted breath;And Pestilence, with rapid stride, Bestrews the land with death.
Our...
In the hour of my distress. Robert Herrick* (1591-1674).
From Herrick's His Noble Numbers: or, His Pious Pieces, Wherein (amongst other things) he Sings the Birth of his Christ: and Sighes for his Saviours Suffering on the Crosse (1647). It was entitled 'His Letanie, to the Holy Spirit'. It had twelve triple-rhymed stanzas, with a refrain, 'Sweet Spirit, comfort me!'
Twelve stanzas was too long even for a litany hymn, and most hymnbooks select five or six.The original text of the six-stanza...
IOANNES Trapezuntios. b. date and place unknown; d. ca. 1769-73. Ioannes Trapezuntios, also called Ioannes Protopsaltes, was a pupil of Panagiotes Chalatzoglu. His name derives from his birth place Trapezunt/Trebizond (Trabzon in Turkey). A 1727 document by patriarch Païsios asserts that the domestikos Ioannes Kyritzes was appointed teacher at the newly founded patriarchal school of music; this Ioannes Kyritzes can be identified as Ioannes Trapezuntios. In 1728 Ioannes called himself...
Ja, fürwahr! uns führt mit sanfter Hand. Friedrich Adolf Krummacher* (1767-1845).
According to James Mearns* in JJ, p. 634, this was first published in Krummacher's Festbüchlein, in the Third Edition, 1813, of the part entitled Der Sonntag (first published 1808). There were three Festbüchleinen: Der Sonntag (1808, 1810, 1813, 1819); Das Christfest (1810, 1814, 1821); and Das Neujahrsfest (1819). They consisted of conversations, historical observations, and stories: this hymn is sung by children...
MARASCHIN, Jaci C. b. Bagé, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 12 December 1929; d. São Paulo, 29 June 2009. At the end of his career Maraschin was Emeritus Professor at the São Paulo Methodist University and an ordained priest of the São Paulo Anglican DioceSse of the Brazilian Episcopal Anglican Church, part of the Anglican Communion. He started his musical education early in life with private tutors for music theory and piano. He held a Diploma from the Instituto Musical de Porto Alegre, Brazil, and...
JACOPONE da Todi (BENEDETTI, Jacopo). b. Todi, Italy, ca. 1236; d. Collazzone, 25 December 1306. The Franciscan poet Jacopo Benedetti was born to a noble family. He signed his name Jacobus Benedicti de Tuderto; chroniclers refer to him as either Jacobus Tudertinus or Jacobus de Benedictis. The name Jacopone (something on the lines of 'Big Jim') may refer to his physical stature, for he was a tall man. More importantly, it was the common and, ironically, belittling name, unbefitting his...
LAWSON, James. b. Elston, Nottinghamshire, England, 17 March 1847; d. Ottawa, Canada, 1 May 1926. Lawson has been difficult to identify, if only because his best-known hymn, 'I will follow thee, my Savior'*, has, in some books, been incorrectly attributed to 'James L., Elginburg'. In his 1989 Companion to the Song Book of the Salvation Army of 1986, Gordon Taylor suggested that 'it seems likely that his name was James Lawson, and that Elginburg was not a surname but was possibly a place with...
MONTGOMERY, James. b. Irvine, Ayrshire, 4 November 1771; d. Sheffield, 30 April 1854. His father was minister of the Moravian congregation at Irvine. He was educated at the Moravian school at Fulneck, Pudsey, near Leeds. In 1783, his parents went as Moravian missionaries to Barbados, where they both died of fever when he was about twenty years old. He was apprenticed to a baker in Mirfield, Yorkshire, but was more interested in writing poetry or playing and composing music. He ran away from the...
QUINN, James. b. Glasgow, 21 April 1919; d. Edinburgh, 8 April 2010. He was educated at St Aloysius' College, Glasgow, and read Honours in Classics at the University of Glasgow (MA 1939). He entered the Novitiate of the Jesuit Order in 1939, studying philosophy at Heythrop College (1941-44), followed by a period as a Greek and Latin teacher at Preston Catholic College (1944-48). He returned to Heythrop College to study theology (1948-52), being ordained in 1950. He served his Tertianship at St...
BENDER, Jan Oskar. b. in Haarlem, Holland, 3 February 1909; d. Hanerau, Germany, 29 December 1994. Jan Bender was a distinguished church musician, organist, educator, and composer, for whom hymnody was very important. His mother, Margarette Schindler (1874-1951), was German. His Dutch father, Hermann Bender (1870-1908), a piano dealer, died the year in which Jan was born. In 1922 his mother moved back to her native town, Lübeck, Germany, where Jan studied organ, and began to compose at the...
CREWDSON, Jane (née Fox). b. Perran-ar-worthal, Cornwall, 22 October 1809; d. Whalley Range, Manchester, 14 September 1863. As a young woman she moved with her family to Exeter in 1825. There she met Thomas D. Crewdson, a Manchester manufacturer, whom she married in 1836. The marriage is recorded in the Register of Marriages of the Devon Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends: the Crewdsons were a notable Quaker family, originally from Kendal. She was a strong supporter of the Reformation....
DE BRÉBEUF, Jean, SJ. b. Condé-sur-Vire in Lower Normandy, France, 25 March 1593; d. Saint-Ignace, Canada, 16 March 1649. Born into a family that may have been related to the English Earls of Arundel, Brébeuf entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen at age 24, where he taught at the Collège de Rouen and was ordained priest in 1622 at Pontoise. A linguist, he was chosen to go to the missions in New France; he sailed from Dieppe in April 1625. After spending a winter with the Montagnais of the...
TISSERAND, Jean. b. date and place unknown; d. 1494. Tisserand was a Franciscan friar, working in Paris in the late 15th century, where he founded an Order for penitent women. He was the author of two Easter hymns, 'Surrexit hodie' and 'O Filii et Filiae'*. His sermons were published after his death as Sermones Religiosissimi F. Jo. Tisserandi, quos tempore Adventus Parisiensibus disseminavit (Paris, 1517).
The authorship of 'O filii et filiae' was uncertain for many years. Tisserand was...
TAYLOR, Jeremy. b. Cambridge, 1613 (baptized 13 August); d. Lisburn, County Antrim, Ireland, 13 August 1667. Although his parents were not prosperous, his father taught him some grammar and mathematics before he entered the Perse School. He entered Gonville and Caius College as a 'sizar', a poor scholar who did the duties of a servant, in 1626 (BA 1631, MA 1634). A brilliant student, he was ordained in 1633, graduating in 1631. Through the influence of Archbishop Laud, he was made a Fellow of...
ADAMS, Jessie. b. Ipswich, Suffolk, 9 September 1863; d. York, 15 July 1954. She was educated at Ipswich and at York (her family moved to York in 1878). She continued to live with her parents in various parts of London (Tottenham, Twickenham, Forest Gate) from 1889 until 1900, when they moved back to East Anglia. She returned to York in her final years.
Adams was a member of the Society of Friends; she was very interested in the Adult School Movement (the National Adult School Organisation...
Jesus, my Saviour, full of grace. Benjamin Ingham* (1712-1772).
This hymn appeared in the Inghamite hymnal, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of Those that seek, and Those that have Redemption in the Blood of Christ (Kendal, 1757), known as the 'Kendal Hymn Book'. It had six stanzas:
Jesus, the Saviour of my soul, Be Thou my heart's delight;Remain the same to me always, My joy by day and night.
Hungry and thirsty after Thee, May I be found each hour; Humble in heart, and happy kept By...
This essay examines Jewish hymnals, primarily English language ones, published in the United States and represents to a large extent the Reform tradition and only to a lesser extend the Conservative branch of Judaism. Traditional Jewish hymnody is covered in two articles: Hebrew hymnody* (piyyut) and Jewish Sabbath hymns*.
19th century
Although Jewish communities existed in the United States as early as 1654, the early settlers were primarily Portuguese (Sephardic) and hymnody beyond the...
Introduction: Hebrew hymns and the problem of English nomenclature
In discussions of Hebrew liturgy, the designation hymn poses a linguistic challenge. Neither the English term—especially in its modern Western connotations—nor its classical root has a precise or exclusive equivalent in Hebrew. Struggling to provide translations, modern Hebrew dictionaries give a series of generically loose Hebrew counterparts, none of which adequately captures the nature of the specific Hebrew liturgical forms...
OWENS, Jimmy Lloyd. b. Clarksdale, Mississippi, 9 December 1930. After school at Jackson, Mississippi, he attended Millsaps College, and was a jazz band arranger; after a conversion he directed music in several churches in southern California. He married Carol Owens* in 1954. Beginning in the 'Jesus Movement', the Owens were active in writing contemporary Christian musicals, performing and recording in various places in California, and doing musical missions for the Church of the Way in Los...
ROTHE, Johann Andreas. b. Lissa, near Görlitz, 12 May 1688; d. Thommendorf, near Bunzlau, 6 July 1758. He was the son of a Protestant priest. He studied theology in Leipzig, and in 1711 he was admitted to the preachers' college of the Church of the Holy Trinity at Görlitz. From 1719 to 1722 he was private tutor to Count von Schweinitz at Leuba near Görlitz, before Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf* called him to be priest at Bethelsdorf (in which parish 'Herrnhut' was situated). As a rousing...
PETER, Johann Friedrich (John Frederick). b. Herrendijk, the Netherlands, 19 May 1746; d. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 13 July 1813. Born into a Moravian Church community where his father was minister, Peter was educated at the Moravian Boys' Schools in Haarlem and Zeist, with further study at the church's academy in Niesky, Germany. In 1765, he entered the seminary at Barby, Germany, for theological training, completing his studies in 1769. In 1770, he was sent by the church to Bethlehem,...
HORN, Johann. b. Domaschitz, Bohemia ca. 1490; d. 11 February 1547. His original name was Johann Roh, but he styled himself Cornu in Latin and Horn in German. He was ordained priest in 1518 and became a senior cleric in the Moravian church. He is known for two books: his Písnĕ chval božských (Prague, 1541), and his edition of the Bohemian hymnbook Ein Gesangbuch der Brüder in Behemen und Merherrn published in Nuremberg in 1544; he may have been the author or at least the translator of many of...
DOBER, Johann Leonhard. b. 7 March 1706; d. 1 April 1766. Like his father, he was a potter by trade, a descendant of Bohemian brethren who had emigrated to Mönksroth, Northern Bavaria. According to accounts of his life, in 1723 he was 'immediat vom Heyland ergriffen' ('suddenly moved by the Saviour'), and in 1725 he followed his elder brother Martin to Herrnhut, where he worked as a potter. In 1732 he went with David Nitschmann as the first missionary to St Thomas in the West Indies, from which...
HERBST, Johannes. b. Kempten, Swabia, 23 July 1735; d. Salem, North Carolina, USA, 15 January 1812. Herbst was educated at the Moravian Church school in Herrnhut, Saxony. He served the church in various non-ministerial capacities in the Moravian communities of Gnadenfrey, Gnadenberg, and Kleinwelke (in Germany) and Fulneck (in England). After his ordination as a minister in the Moravian Church in 1774, he was superintendent of the communities of Neudietendorf and Gnadenfrey. In 1786 Herbst and...
ANTES, John (Johann). b. Frederick, Pennsylvania, 24 March 1740; d. Bristol, England, 17 December 1811. Born near the Moravian Church community of Bethlehem, Antes was educated at the Moravian Boys' School in Bethlehem, where his talent in music was encouraged. During the early 1760s, he established an instrument-making atelier in Bethlehem where he crafted violins, violas, and violoncellos (he is known to have made at least seven instruments, of which two are still extant). Feeling the call of...
CENNICK, John. b. Reading, Berkshire, 12 December 1718; d. London, 4 July 1755. On one side of the family his grandparents had been Quakers, persecuted for their beliefs, but his parents were members of the Church of England. He was educated at Reading, and brought up strictly, 'kept constant to daily Prayers'. As a young man he subsequently went through a period of depression. He was trained as a shoemaker.
He had an experience of salvation in 7 September 1737, and sought out the Methodists in...
DAMASCENE, John, St (John Chrysorrhoas, John of Damascus). b. ca. 655; d. ca. 745. John received a good literary and philosophical education in his native Damascus, and became renowned in Constantinople as the author of liturgical hymns. Eventually he became a monk, probably at Jerusalem Cathedral rather than at the monastery of St Sabas, as has traditionally been believed (see Conticello, 2000, Louth, 2002). He became the theological advisor of Patriarch John V of Jerusalem, who ordained him...
BOKWE, John Knox. b. 15 March 1855; d. 21 July 1922. Bokwe studied with William Kolbe Ntsikana, grandson of Ntsikana Gaga* (or 'Gaba'), and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in Scotland (1906). He was a member of the Ngqika Mbamba clan (Xhosa), born at Ntselamanzi near Lovedale, the Presbyterian mission. Bokwe was the first to adapt John Curwen's Tonic Sol-fa* system to Xhosa music. Bokwe's transcriptions of Ntsikana's songs, published in 1878, conveyed in notation aspects of the oral...
KOUKOUZELES, John, St [Ioannes]. b. ca. 1280; d. ca. 1350. A singer and prolific composer from Mount Athos, Koukouzeles was the foremost exponent of the kalophonic vocal style. In his works we note a marked expansion both of music and text. He increases the length of traditional melodies in three ways: (i) by setting very many notes to the individual syllables of the hymnody (melismas); (ii) by interpolating new words and phrases in pre-existing texts thereby giving him scope to write more...
PECHAM, John (Johannes de Pescham, Peccanus, Pischano, Pisano, Pithyano). b. Patcham, Sussex, ca. 1230; d. Mortlake, Surrey, 8 December 1292. After receiving his early education at the Cluniac Priory at Lewes, John Pecham joined the Order of Friars Minor in Oxford ca. 1250. Pecham studied the liberal arts at Oxford and then, some time between 1257 and 1259, travelled to Paris, where he completed his studies in theology. He served as Franciscan lector and regent master of theology there from...
POLLOCK, John. b. Glasgow, Scotland, 27 October 1852; d. Belfast, Northern Ireland, 4 January 1935. The son of Janet, née Riddell, and Alexander Pollock, a grocer and tea merchant, John was baptized into the Free Church of Scotland, where his father was an Elder of the Kirk. His lively grasp of ideas and propensity for instructing others were in evidence at an early stage: he became a Sunday School teacher at the age of twelve.
At first attracted to a career in business, he entered the Arts...
MURRAY, John Stewart. b. Invercargill, New Zealand, 5 November 1929; d. 17 February 2017. The son of a pioneer Scottish settler family, John Murray was educated at King's High School and the University of Otago, Dunedin. After graduating (MA 1952), he studied at King's College, Cambridge, from 1952 to 1955, completing an MA in Divinity in 1954, followed by a period of study at the Graduate School, Bossey Ecumenical Institute, Geneva, where he was awarded a Diploma in Ecumenical Studies. He...
SWERTNER, John. b. Haarlem, the Netherlands, 1746; d. Bristol, 11 March 1813. As a young man he came to England, where he married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Cennick*. He was the minister of the Moravian church at Dublin, and for ten years minister of the Fairfield Moravian Settlement, Droylsden, Manchester (1790-1800).
He was the editor of the British Moravian hymnbook, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren (1789) and of its enlarged edition,...
TAULER, John (Johannes). b. Strasbourg, ca. 1300; d. Strasbourg or Cologne, 15 June 1361. Tauler became a Dominican monk. He studied under the great teacher Meister Eckhart, and became renowned as a teacher and preacher, first at Strasbourg and then at Basle. His place of death is uncertain. He is normally thought of as one of the 'Friends of God', a name for some 14th-century mystics: Catherine Winkworth* described him as one of those who 'spoke often of a mystical or hidden life of God in the...
ADAM, Joseph. b. perhaps Dundee, ca. 1843, date unknown; d. Bournville, Birmingham, 10 March 1919. According to the Churches of Christ periodical, The Bible Advocate ('Pleading for a Complete Return to the Faith and Practice of the New Testament Church'), 4 April 1919, he was born 'some seventy-six years ago in the city of Dundee'. Adam was trained as a carpenter, but became a Churches of Christ evangelist, trained at Birmingham by the great Churches of Christ evangelist David King (1819-1894)....
SCRIVEN, Joseph Medlicott. b. Seapatrick near Banbridge, Co Down, Ireland (later Northern Ireland), 10 September 1819; d. Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, 10 August 1886. The son of James Scriven and Jane Medlicott, he attended Addiscombe Military College, Surrey (1837-39), training for service in India. Owing to poor health he withdrew, returning to Ireland and studying at Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1842). Impelled by his fiancée's drowning on the eve of their wedding, Scriven emigrated from...
COOK, Joseph Simpson. b. County Durham, England, 4 December 1859; d. Toronto, Ontario, 27 May 1933. He emigrated to Georgetown, Ontario, entering the Methodist ministry as a probationer with London Conference in 1880, serving Bayfield Mission on the eastern shore of Lake Huron from 1881 until 1883. He enrolled in a combined course in Arts and Theology at McGill University and Wesleyan Theological College, being ordained in 1885. He earned an MA from Illinois Wesleyan University (1892), a BD...
STENNETT, Joseph. b. Abingdon, Berkshire, 1663; d. Knaphill, Buckinghamshire, 11 July 1713. He was educated at Wallingford Grammar School. He moved to London in 1685, joining the Seventh Day Baptist Congregation at Pinners' Hall, Broad Street in 1686 and becoming pastor there in 1690. As a Seventh Day Baptist, he was free to preach in other chapels in London on Sundays, and he became widely known and respected as an eminent nonconformist. He married Susanna, daughter of George Guill, a Huguenot...
JOSEPH the Hymnographer, St. b. Sicily, between 812 and 818; d. ca. 886. He was taken as a child to Peloponnesos, but fled to Thessalonike, where he became a monk. Later he went to Constantinople, living for several years in the Church of Antipas. He founded his own monastery, ca. 850. After capture by the Arabs, and exile during the iconoclastic controversy (cf. Theodore of Studios*), he returned to Constantinople no later than 866-7, where he was later appointed staurophylax (guardian of the...
Jubilate Hymns
The British Jubilate Group was founded in November 1980 as a limited liability company with the title Jubilate Hymns Ltd. It still retains its legal title but is now commonly known as the Jubilate Group.
Prior to their adoption of the Jubilate name, a team, chiefly of young Anglican clergy led by Michael Baughen*, later Bishop of Chester, began in the early 1960s to write hymn texts and tunes, initially for the church youth groups for whom they had pastoral responsibility. They...
JULIAN of Norwich. b. 1342; d. ca. 1416. Her anchorite cell was at the Parish Church of St Julian, Conisford, Norwich, and this may be the origin of her name. Little is known for certain about her life, although she became an anchoress before 1394.
She wrote The Revelations of Divine Love, reflections on sixteen visions of Christ crucified which she received in May 1373. A short version was written at some point in the years following the vision; the longer version (on which her reputation...
TRANOVSKÝ, Juraj (Tranoscius). b. Teschen, Silesia (Cieszyn, Poland), 9 April 1592; d. Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš, Hungary, 29 May 1637. He studied at the Gymnasium (Grammar School) at Guben from 1603-05 and at Kolberg, and later at Wittenberg (1607-12), returning to Prague, where he taught in the St Nicholas Gymnasium, later becoming rector of a school in Holešov, Moravia. He was ordained in 1616, and became pastor of Meziřiči. In 1623 he was imprisoned during the persecution of Protestants...
JUSTINIAN I, Emperor. b. ca. 482; d. 565. The troparion (see Byzantine hymnody*), 'ό Μονογενής' ('The Only-begotten'), is attributed to the Emperor Justinian by the Chalcedonians, and to Severus, patriarch of Antioch, by the monophysites. The Chalcedonians held the belief, agreed at the 451 Council of Chalcedon, that Christ was one person in two natures (human and divine), while the monophysites believed that Christ possessed only one nature.
The hymn takes the form of a prayer, ending with a...
FALCKNER, Justus. b. Langenreinsdorf, near Zwickau, Saxony, 22 Nov 1672; d. probably in America, ca. 1723. The son of a Lutheran pastor, he studied at Halle under August Hermann Francke (I)*. The intense and demanding Pietism of Halle made him feel inadequate to be a minister, and he became a lawyer in Rotterdam; but he responded to a call from a Swedish pastor, Andrew Rudmann, for help for the Lutherans in America, where he agreed to be ordained (1703). He ministered to a Dutch congregation...
See 'Byzantine hymnody#Kanon'*
KASSIA the Nun. ca. 800-805; d. by 867. Well educated in Byzantine imperial court circles, Kassia became an hegoumena (abbess). More than twenty securely attributed works survive, principally stichera. Kassia is one of four known female Byzantine hymnodists. She appears to have written both texts and music herself, thus being the only known Byzantine female melode (composer of both text and music). Her most famous composition in her lifetime was the sticheron 'Augoustou monarchēsantos'...
GETTY, (Julian) Keith. b. 16 December 1974. Getty is a Northern Irish hymn-writer, composer and performer. His work is often collaborative, working together with his wife, Kristyn Getty* and Stuart Townend*. In partnership with Townend, he has been responsible for some of the most popular hymns of the early 21st century, most famously 'In Christ alone my hope is found'* (2001). This hymn has become one of the best known of all 21st-century hymns; it has frequently featured at or near the top of...
KOMITAS. Komitas I Aghtsetsi, Catholicos of All Armenians. b. ca. 560; d. 628. A well-known churchman, poet, and musician. When he was Catholicos (primate) of the Armenian church (615-628) the relics of a group of nuns, headed by Gayanē and including Hrip'simē, who was of famed beauty, were discovered in Edjmiadsin. Komitas constructed the Church of St. Hrip'simē in 618, where the remains were interned, and composed the hymn 'Andzink' nvirealk'' ('Devoted souls') to celebrate the occasion. He...
See 'Byzantine hymnody#Kontakion'*
KOSMAS of Maiouma, St (The Hagiopolite, the Jerusalemite, the Melode, the Monk, the Poet). b. ca. 675; d. 752/754. He was born in the patriarchate of Jerusalem, probably in Jerusalem itself. According to later hagiography Kosmas lived as a monk at Saint Sabas, but according to recent research it is more likely that he served at the Resurrection Cathedral at Jerusalem. He was elected bishop of Maiouma in Phoenicia, ca. 743, at the age of nearly 70.
Together with St John Damascene*, Kosmas was...
GETTY, Kristyn (née Lennox). b. 22 May 1980. She is a Northern Irish singer and hymn-writer. Best known for her work in collaboration with her husband Keith Getty*, and Stuart Townend*, she features prominently as a soloist or lead singer on their albums and continues to perform with her husband as part of an Irish-American folk band. She and her husband are frequently cited as co-authors and their work features strong Celtic influences, both in words and music. Their series New Irish Hymns has...
History
The territory of present-day Latvia, a country of approximately 25,400 square miles, situated on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, has been inhabited since 9,000 BCE and by Baltic tribes since 2,000 BCE. These tribes settled various regions that have come to be known by their tribal names – Kurzeme (Courland), Zemgale (Semigallia), Latgale (Letgallia) and Vidzeme (Livland). These regions differed linguistically, with all but the Livs, who were Finno-Ugric speakers like their...
Dseesmu Grahmata Biskapu Metodistu baznizai Latwija (Rigâ, 1924) [The Latvian Methodist Episcopal Hymnal].
The Latvian Methodist Episcopal hymnal (cited as LAMEH 1924) has some similarities with that of the Lithuanian Methodist Episcopal Hymnal (cited as LIMEH 1923, see 'Lithuanian Methodist hymnody'*). Both hymnals included a preface by George Albert Simons*, the Methodist Episcopal Superintendent of the Baltic States; both were heavily dependent on the Gesangbuch der Bischöflichen Methodisten...
HOUSMAN, Laurence. b. Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 18 July 1865; d. Glastonbury, Somerset, 20 February 1959. He was the son of a solicitor, and the younger brother of the poet and scholar A.E. Housman (1859-1936). He was educated at home and at Bromsgrove School, before training in London as a graphic artist. He worked as a book illustrator, and was art critic of The Manchester Guardian for 16 years from 1895. He wrote poems, novels, and plays, and journal articles on topics such as feminism,...
Lead, Holy Shepherd, lead us. Hamilton Montgomerie MacGill* (1807-1880).
This translation was included in the hymnbook of the United Presbyterian Church, The Presbyterian Hymnal (1877). The Church had been formed in 1847 through a union between the United Secession Church and the Synod of Relief (see 'Synod of Relief hymns'*). MacGill was one of the compilers of the 1877 hymnbook.
It was a translation of a hymn by Clement of Alexandria* (Titus Flavius Clemens, ca. 150- ca. 215), entitled 'Hymn...
FISHER, (Malcolm) Leith. b. Greenock, Renfrewshire 7 April 1941, d. Glasgow, 13 March 2009. Educated at Greenock Academy, he studied Arts and Divinity at the University of Glasgow 1959-65 (MA, BD), and received a Diploma in Pastoral Studies from Birmingham University (1965-66). He was licensed by the Presbytery of Greenock, May 1965. On 18 January 1967 he was ordained by the Presbytery of Glasgow while assistant minister (1966-68) at Govan Old Parish Church, the church from which in 1938 George...
Let Christian faith and hope dispel. John Logan* (1748-1788).
This was paraphrase 48 in Translations and Paraphrases (1781), part of the material for worship, together with the Scottish Psalter*, that dominated services in the Church of Scotland until recent times. The full title was Translations and Paraphrases, in verse, of several passages of Sacred Scripture. Collected and Prepared by a Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in order to be sung in...
Let not your hearts with anxious thoughts. William Robertson, d. 1745*.
This is one of two paraphrases of chapter 14 of St John's Gospel. The first begins as above, and paraphrases verses 1-7; its companion-piece, 'You now must hear my voice no more', paraphrases verses 25-28. According to James Mearns* in JJ (p. 672), Robertson wrote them both for the draft of the never-published Translations and Paraphrases of 1745; they were identified as the work of Robertson by the daughter of William...
Let streams of living justice. William Whitla (1934 –).
Set to Gustav Holst*'s THAXTED, 'Let streams of living justice' was written in 1989 as a response to the events in Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, China; and dedicated to the mothers of the disappeared (in Argentina), the author's home community of Holy Trinity in Toronto, and the people of Tiananmen Square. It was first published in Sing Justice, Do Justice (Selah Publishing, 1998), the result of the Hymn Society in the United States and...
Lim, Swee Hong (林瑞峰).b. Singapore; 11 June 1963.
Lim, Swee Hong is a Singaporean church musician, composer, and educator. Born into a Chinese Christian family, Lim inherited the faith of his maternal heritage as a fourth-generation Christian. His father (Baptist) and mother (Presbyterian) instilled the value of service to God. Along with his siblings, Lim was encouraged by his mother to serve the church through music-making. Lim began to learn musical instruments at an early age, planting the...
Lietuviška Giesmių Knyga (Kaunas, 1923) [The Lithuanian Methodist Episcopal Hymnal]. This hymnbook (cited as LIMEH 1923) was published in 1923 with Lithuanian Methodist Episcopal pastors Karlas Metas and Jonas Tautoraitis as editors. Like the other Methodist hymnbooks of the Baltic states (see 'Estonian Methodist hymnody'*and 'Latvian Methodist hymnody'*) it was heavily dependent on the Gesangbuch der Bischöflichen Methodisten Kirche in Deutschland und der Schweiz ('Hymnbook of the German...
[note: 'French Canada' refers not only to the province of Quebec, but also to the pockets of French-speaking people in all parts of Canada]
Early history
Roman Catholic liturgical music was brought to New France in the 17th century by French missionaries and peasants. In the 1640s the Jesuit Relations (Relations des jésuites, Paris, 1632-72) referred to music sung by the peoples of the First Nations and French settlers. One of the songs that has survived and is sung at Christmas time in...
KROEHLER, Lois Clara. b. Saint Louis, Missouri, 9 September 1927; d. Bremerton, Washington, 3 August 2019. Missionary, translator, music teacher, hymn writer, and hymnal editor, Lois Kroehler lived in Belleville, Illinois, Ft. Collins, Colorado, and Lyman, Nebraska during her childhood. She graduated from the University of Nebraska (1949) with a major in Spanish and went immediately to Cuba upon graduation to serve as an English language secretary for the Cuban Director of Presbyterian Schools...
Lord of might, and Lord of glory. John Stuart Blackie* (1809-1895).
In Blackie's Songs of Religion and Life (Edinburgh and New York, 1876) this hymn was entitled 'Prayer for Direction':
Lord of might, and Lord of glory, On my knees I bow before Thee, With my whole heart I adore Thee, Great Lord! Listen to my cry, O Lord!
Passions proud and fierce have ruled me, Fancies light and vain have fooled me, But Thy training stern hath schooled me; Now, Lord, Take me for Thy child, O Lord.
...
Lord of our highest love. Gilbert Young Tickle* (1819-1888).
The earliest printing of this hymn recorded in Hymnary.org. is in The Christian Hymnal (Cincinnati, 1882), published for the Churches of Christ. It was published in the same year in New Christian Hymn and Tune Book (Cincinnati: Fillmore Brothers). In Britain it was almost certainly among the 34 hymns by Tickle in A Collection of Hymns for Churches of Christ (Birmingham, 1888), edited by David King (1819-1894), with Tickle as an...
Lord of the brave, who call'st Thine own. John Huntley Skrine* (1848-1923).
Written in 1893 for a service of Confirmation during the time that Skrine was Warden (Headmaster) of Trinity College, Glenalmond, a 'public' or independent school (i.e. private school) with a strong Anglican tradition. It was later published in Skrine's Thirty Hymns for Public School Singing (1899). It was included in the Public School Hymn Book (PSHB, 1903), and remained in later editions (1919, 1949), until it was...
Lord, now the time returns. John Austin* (1613-1669).
First printed in Austin's Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (Paris, 1668), in the section 'The Office of our B. Saviour', where it is part of 'Complin for our B. Saviour'. It had eight 4-line stanzas:
Lord, now the time returns, For weary man to rest; And lay aside those pains and cares With which our day's opprest:
Or rather change our thoughts To more concerning cares: How to redeem our mispent time, With sighs, and...
MANZARA, Loretta, CSJ. b. London, Ontario, Canada, 4 May 1948. Loretta Manzara, CSJ, is a liturgist, organist, and hymnal editor. Her family's origins, and the rich cultural roots which fed her early life, can be traced to England on her maternal grandparents' side and to Italy on the side of her paternal grandparents. Music was a part of the life of her parents and their six children. After working his regular job at GM Diesel, her father took weekend bartending work to pay for her music...
STEAD, Louisa M.R. b. Dover, England, 1 February 1846; d. Penkridge (now Mutare), near Umtali, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), 18 January 1917. Louisa immigrated to the United States as a young woman, ca. 1871, where she resided with friends in Cincinnati, Ohio. At a camp meeting revival in Urbana, Ohio, Louisa committed herself to missionary service, but was unable to fulfill her vow owing to poor health. After marrying George Stead in 1873, she gave birth to their only child, Louise...
Lucis Creator optime. Latin, author unknown, 8th Century or earlier.
According to JJ, p. 700, this hymn was found in many early books and manuscripts. It was at one time attributed to Gregory the Great*, but this is now believed to be unlikely. In monastic Uses it was the first hymn, and thus the Sunday hymn, for Vespers in the 'New Hymnal' (see 'Medieval hymns and hymnals'*):
Lucis Creator optimeLucem dierum proferens,Primordiis lucis novaeMundi parans originem:
Qui mane iunctum vesperiDiem...
Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota began with a cluster of Norwegian schools which became part of the American Lutheran Church (ALC): Augsburg Seminary, Augustana Seminary, Luther Seminary, Red Wing Seminary, and the United Church Seminary. The earliest of these was founded in 1869. In 1917 Luther Seminary was created from the former Luther Seminary, Red Wing Seminary, and the United Church Seminary. Augsburg Seminary joined it in 1963. In 1967 Northwestern Seminary moved next to Luther...
The Society was formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1958, the result of discussions and recommendations from a meeting in Des Moines, Iowa the previous year attended by distinguished musicians, including Walter E. Buszin*, Daniel T. Moe (1926–2012), and Gerhard Cartford*. That group visioned an organization of a national, inter-synodical body of Lutherans interested in the promotion of Christian worship, music, ecclesiastical architecture, art, and literature within the Lutheran church. The...
MAKARIOS the Hieromonk. b. ca. 1770; d. 1836. A professor of Byzantine chant, typographer, translator and composer, Makarios was born in Perieţi, Walachia (southern Romania); his date of birth, accepted by most of his biographers, remains uncertain: estimates oscillate between 1750 (Bishop Iosif Naniescu) and 1780 (Ion Popescu-Pasărea). Makarios was a pupil of Constandin (Căldăruşani Monastery), affiliated with the teacher Şărban, the protopsaltis of Walachia. In 1817 he learned the New Method...
CHRYSAPHES, Manuel. fl. 1440–1463. He was the most impressive, prolific and distinguished Byzantine composer, singer, scribe and theoretician at the time of Constantinople's political decline. His output was exceptionally prolific and his chants were known and sung for centuries, not only in the Greek- but also in the Slavonic- and Romanian-speaking east. His contributions to the repertory of Byzantine liturgical music reveal him as an important figure in the development of the Eastern chant...
COCKBURN-CAMPBELL, Margaret (née Malcolm). b. 1808; d. Alphington, near Exeter, Devonshire, 6 February 1841. She was the daughter of a General, Sir John Malcolm, GCB, who was a friend of the Duke of Wellington. She married her cousin, Sir Alexander Thomas Cockburn-Campbell, in 1827. He was one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren, and he and his wife must have been closely associated with them in their early years during her short life-time. One year after her death, some of her hymns were...
HATCHETT, Marion Josiah. b. Monroe, South Carolina, 19 July 1927: d. Sewanee, Tennessee, 7 August 2009. Son of a United Methodist Church minister, he was confirmed as a member of the Episcopal Church while a student at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina (AB 1947). He continued his studies at The School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee (BD, 1951, STM, 1967), and General Theological Seminary, New York City (THD, 1972).
Ordained in the Episcopal Church (deacon...
NYSTROM, Martin J. b. Seattle, Washington State, 1956. Following his graduation from Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma (BME, 1979) he became an evangelist and musician in New York with the 'Christ for the Nations' movement, and for Hosanna! Music, Mobile, Alabama, for whom he produced five Praise-Worship albums. He has composed over 250 songs, mostly one-stanza worship songs such as: 'Times of refreshing, here in your presence', 'Jesus I am thirsty' (with Don Harris), 'I will come and...
BYRNE, Mary Elizabeth. b. Dublin, Ireland, 2 July 1880; d. Dublin, 19 January 1931. She was educated at the Dominican Convent in Dublin, and the National University of Ireland (the Roman Catholic university founded by John Henry Newman to provide higher education for Catholics parallel to that of Trinity College, Dublin). Her Irish name was Máiri Ní Bhroin, but she published much of her work as Mary E. Byrne. She was a research scholar who worked for the Board of Intermediate Education. With...
MACDONALD, Mary (née MacDougall). b. Ardtun, Isle of Mull, 1789; d. Ardtun, 21 May 1872. She was the daughter of a farmer; she married a crofter, Neil Macdonald. A devout Baptist, she wrote hymns and poems in Gaelic which she sang at her spinning wheel. The best known is probably 'Leanabh an aigh', verses of which were roughly translated as 'Child in the manger'* by Lachlan Macbean* for his Songs and Hymns of the Scottish Highlands (1888) and set to the Highland melody called in hymnbooks...
PETERS, Mary (née Bowly). b. Cirencester, 17 April 1813; d. Clifton, Bristol, 29 July 1856. Mary Bowly became governess to the children of the Revd John William Peters (1791-1861), rector of Quenington (1823-34) and perpetual curate of Ampney St Mary (1824-32) (both in Gloucestershire), and vicar of Langford (on the Berkshire-Oxfordshire border) (1825-34). Peters resigned the Ampney living in 1832 in order to serve the other two parishes more adequately, and in 1834 he resigned the others on...
REDMAN, Matt. b. Watford, Hertfordshire, 14 February, 1974. He was raised in Chorleywood, attending St Andrew's Church, and being educated at Watford Grammar School until 1992.
He has been a full-time worship leader since the age of 20, helping to set up the 'Soul Survivor' movement in Watford, and developing an enthusiasm for Christian song-writing that reaches people normally outside the more established church circles. He has travelled internationally, settling twice in America (California...
Medieval Hymns and Hymnals.
This entry is by various authors. See below.
Hymns have been a part of Christian worship since the earliest times, but the use of Latin in worship appears to postdate the acceptance by Emperor Constantine of Christianity as the official Roman faith in 313. On the patristic Latin hymn repertory, see Latin hymns*.
Medieval hymns vary in their poetic structure, some being metrical, some accentual, and others are organized according to syllable count together with final...
Mensch, wiltu leben seliglich. Martin Luther* (1483-1546).
This hymn is a short hymn on the Ten Commandments ('Die zehen gebot auffs kürßte', Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied, III. 17). It was first printed in Johann Walter*'s Geystliche gesangk Buchlein (Wittenberg, 1524). Jenny (p. 329) notes it as 'Die Zehen gepot kurtz' at number 12 in Das Wittenberger Gemeindegesangbuch (1533). It had five stanzas, with 'Kyrioleis' after each stanza. In the title 'kürßte' was used to distinguish it...
Methodist Hymnody, USA
Hymns were used within the Methodist movement for teaching of doctrine, for evangelism (of the unsaved and to revive those who faith was lagging), for praise and confession. Important doctrines for the Wesleyan movement are Arminianism, the understanding that Christ died for everyone, not just the elect; the Christian journey as the way of salvation, on a continuum of God's prevenient grace (which comes before one is awakened to God's call), justifying and...
SCHIRMER, Michael. b. Leipzig, 1606 (baptised 18 July); d. Berlin, 4 May 1673. He was educated at the Thomasschule at Leipzig, and studied theology at the University there. He was a youthful prodigy, who began his undergraduate study at the age of 13. He became Rektor at Freiberg (Saxony) in 1630, combining it with the post of pastor at Striegnitz. He was crowned as a 'King's Poet' in 1637.
In 1636 he was appointed Sub-Rektor at the Gymnasium at the Greyfriars Cloister in Berlin, where he...
GUIMONT, Michel. b. 1950. Composer and choral director, Michel Guimont studied psychology at Concordia University, received his Bachelor of Music and Masters in Music Composition at the University of Montreal and attended Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He has studied conducting with Canadian choral conductor Wayne Riddell in Montreal and attended numerous master classes with Frieder Bernius and Helmuth Rilling from Germany.
Director of music at Notre Dame Cathedral-Basilica...
Milanese hymns. The hymns of Ambrose of Milan* were sung in the Milanese Church from the end of the 4th century onwards, and were quickly diffused in the West (cf. AVG. conf. 9,7,15 ; PAVL. MED. vita Ambr. 13), but nothing leads one to suppose that a Liber hymnorum was compiled during Ambrose's lifetime. The oldest preserved witnesses of the Milanese, or 'Ambrosian', hymnal are no older than the last third of the 9th century. These are the psalter-hymnals Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm....
Mille voix pour Te chanter/ A Thousand Tongues to Sing to You (2006)
This hymnal was the first French-language hymnal for United Methodists in Europe and Africa. It was edited by S T Kimbrough Jr.*, with Carlton R. Young* as music editor. They were assisted by Jane-Marie Nussbaumer, Claire-Lise Meissner-Schmidt, Abraham Arpellet, Nkemba Ndjungu, and Wesley Macgruder. It was published in the USA by the General Board of Global Ministries, New York, and in France in La Bégarde de Mazenc,...
Missionary College Hymns (Scotland, 1914)
This compilation for the Free Church Women's Missionary Training Institute in Edinburgh was remarkable in including hymns from traditions other than the Christian: Vedic, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Syrian, African, Islamic – one of the latter being the Muezzin's call to prayer. They were set to tunes appropriate to their provenance, many Indian, but also melodies from Japan, Syria, Africa, China, Persia and Egypt, with instructions regarding...
Monarche aller Ding. Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen* (1670-1739).
First published in Freylinghausen's Neues Geist-reiches Gesang-Buch (Halle, 1714). It had eleven 6-line stanzas. It was described by James Mearns* in JJ as 'a fine hymn of Praise, on the majesty and love of God' (p. 396). Its stanzas began as follows (with John Wesley*'s translation in parenthesis. He omitted stanzas 3, 4, and 8):
Monarche aller Ding ('Monarch of all, with lowly fear')
Du bist die Majestät ('Before thy Face,...
Monk of Salzburg. fl. late 14th century. Part of a literary circle, some of whose members are referred to in his songs, the monk of Salzburg was associated with the hedonistic court of Pilgrim II von Puchheim, archbishop of Salzburg from 1365 to 1396. 57 secular songs and 49 sacred songs survive, some of which are translations of Latin monophonic and polyphonic hymns and sequences* into German. The monk's songs were widely transmitted for over a century; they are found in almost 100...
Conferences on music have been held at The Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Conference Center in Hunt, Texas, beginning with the 1974 Mo-Ranch Music Conference, renamed the Mo-Ranch Worship & Music Conference. In 2009 the Mo-Ranch and PAM West conference merged and were renamed the Mo-Ranch/PAM Conference on Worship & Music. These annual conferences include ensembles, seminars, and educational and recreational activities for all ages, and its worship is informed by reformed principles, and the...
The Moravian Church is an international Protestant Church tracing its roots to the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus* (1369-1415) who championed congregational singing at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. Following his martyrdom by the Council of Constance in 1415, groups of his followers arose in Bohemia to continue his reforming ideas. One such group formed the jednota bratrská in 1457, establishing their own ministry ten years later. Known officially as the Unitas Fratrum or Unity of the Brethren,...
This is the name given to the liturgy used by Christians in the Iberian peninsula living under the rule of the moors before the reconquest of Spain. Because it was in use before the coming of the Arabs, the designation 'Mozarabic' tends to be avoided by modern scholars; 'Old Hispanic' is usually preferred. This liturgical rite was superseded, not without resistance, when the Roman liturgy was imposed on Spain by order of the Council of Burgos in 1080. It remained in use in some Toledan parish...
KROETSCH, Murray John. b. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, 7 April 1952. He was educated at St. Jerome's University College, University of Waterloo (BA in Religious Studies, 1974) and King's College, University of Western Ontario (MDiv, 1978); University of Notre Dame, Indiana (MA in Liturgical Studies, 1985); and postgraduate studies at Lateran University, Rome (2002-03).
Murray Kroetsch was ordained a priest for Hamilton Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada on 29 April 1978; and was...
My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine. William Ralph Featherston* (1846-1873).
This Gospel hymn is normally attributed to Featherston (but see below). After that the information is uncertain. It was said by Ira D. Sankey* (1906, pp. 165-6) to have been published without an author's name in The London Hymn Book of 1862. The usually reliable James Mearns* gives 1864 as the date, and the author as anonymous (JJ, p. 1676). Sankey's title probably refers to The London Hymn Book, containing...
NETO, Rodolfo Gaede. b. Ituêta, Minas Gerais, Brazil; 26 July 1951. Neto, a pastor in the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB), is a composer and hymnwriter. The son of Herman Carlos Ludwig Gaede and Hilda Dummer Gaede, Gaede Neto pursued the Bachelor of Theology, master's, and doctoral degrees from the Escola Superior de Teologia in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul state.
From 1979 to 1985, Neto served congregations in the Parishes of Alto Jatibocas (Itarana,...
DECIUS, Nikolaus. b. Upper Franconia, Bavaria, ca. 1490?; d. Stettin, 21 March 1541. He was also known as Nikolaus a Curia, Nikolaus von Hofe, and Nikolaus Hovesch. He became 'Probst' ('Provost') of a monastery at Steterburg, near Wolfenbüttel in 1519. Convinced by the Reformers, he left the monastery in 1522, and became a schoolmaster at Braunschweig. He matriculated at the University of Wittenberg in 1523, and became a Lutheran preacher at Stettin in 1526, before being appointed preacher at...
ZINZENDORF, Nikolaus Ludwig von. b. Dresden, 26 May 1700; d. Herrnhut, 9 May 1760. He was raised in the home of his Pietist maternal grandmother, Henriette von Gersdorf and educated at the Pietist School (Paedagogium) at Halle and the University of Wittenberg. Although forced to study law, his true vocation was theology, and his association with the Bohemian Brethren beginning in 1722 led him to ordination in the Lutheran Church and consecration as a Moravian bishop in 1737. He was of noble...
RICHARDS, Noel. b. 1955. Richards is a Welsh singer-songwriter, guitarist and worship leader. His songs belong to the modern evangelical tradition and are characterised by direct language and strong rhythmic profiles. Among his best known songs are 'All heaven declares' and 'You laid aside your majesty.' The former, first published in 1987, has gained widespread popularity, and still features prominently in lists of most-used hymns and songs (http://www.ccli.co.uk/resources/top25.cfm, accessed...
Now from the altar of my heart. John Mason* (ca. 1646-1694).
This is from Mason's Spiritual Songs, or, Songs of Praise to Almighty God upon several occasions (1683). It was entitled 'A Song of Praise for the Evening'. It had three stanzas and a half stanza:
Now from the Altar of my Heart, Let Incense Flames arise. Assist me, Lord, to offer up Mine Evening Sacrifice. Awake, my Love; Awake, my Joy, Awake my Heart and Tongue. Sleep not when Mercies loudly call: Break forth into a...
Now Israel. William Whittingham* (ca. 1525/1530- 1579).
This is one of the two metrical versions of Psalm 124 of 1551: the other begins 'Had not the Lord been on our side'. According to Millar Patrick*, the metrical version of 'Now Israel' in French and the tune are by Théodore de Bèze*, in Pseaumes octante trois de David, mise en rime francoise. A savoir quarante neuf par Clement Marot. et trente quatre par Theodore de Besze (Geneva, 1551). The first stanza of this, the better known version...
Now that the Day-star doth arise. Latin, perhaps 5th century, translated by John Cosin* (1595-1672).
This is Cosin's translation of 'Iam lucis orto sidere'*, the traditional hymn for Prime in Monastic Uses. According to The Hymnal 1940 Companion, p. 117, it took the place of the corresponding hymn in the Benedictine tradition (see 'Rule of Benedict*). It was printed in Cosin's A Collection of Private Devotions in the Practice of the Ancient Church (1627), as a hymn for Morning Prayer:
Now that...
Nun jauchzet, all ihr Frommen. Michael Schirmer* (1606-1673).
Published by Johann Crüger*, Schirmer's colleague at the Greyfriars Cloister and Gymnasium, Berlin, in his Newes vollkömliches Gesangbuch/ Augspurgischer Confession (Berlin, 1640). It was in the Advent section, where it was entitled 'Ein ander schön Adventliedlein. M. Michael Schirmers'. The 'ander' refers to 'Macht hoch die Tür, die Tor macht weit'*, with which it is presumably to be compared and contrasted.
It is found in the...
O for the robes of whiteness. Charitie Lees De Chenez* (1841-1923).
According to JJ, p. 109, this was published in Within the Veil, by C.L.S. [Charitie Lees Smith, her maiden name] (1867), but this has not been verified. It has also been stated that it was published in leaflet form in 1860. It was certainly printed in Lyra Britannica (1867), edited by Charles Rogers, where it was entitled 'Heavenly Anticipations'. Philip Schaff*, who printed it in Christ in Song (New York, 1869), described it...
O Heilger Geist, kehr bei uns ein. Michael Schirmer* (1606-1673).
Published by Johann Crüger*, Schirmer's colleague at the Greyfriars Cloister and Gymnasium at Berlin, in Newes vollkömliches Gesangbuch/ Augspurgischer Confession (Berlin, 1640). It was in the Whitsun-tide section, where it was entitled 'Ein ander PfingstLiedlein M. Mich. Schirmers' ('another short Whitsun-tide hymn by Michael Schirmer'). It is found in EG in seven 7-line stanzas, with line 4 as an effective pause with (in most...
O salutaris Hostia. Thomas Aquinas* ( ca. 1224/5-1274); English translation by Edward Caswall* (1814 -1878).
The Latin text of this hymn is from Aquinas's 'Verbum supernum prodiens, nec Patris linquens dexteram'*. It forms the last two stanzas of that hymn. These stanzas are widely known as a devotional text in both Latin and English.
O salutaris Hostia, quae caeli pandis ostium, bella premunt hostilia, da robur, fer auxilium.
Uni trinoque Domino sit sempiterna gloria, qui vitam sine...
O Sanctissima
This is a hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, of uncertain date and origin. It is believed to have been sung by Sicilian fishermen at the end of each day. The first known printing seems to have been in a London periodical, The European Magazine (1792) as part of a series whimsically called 'Drossiana' contributed by the anecdotist William Seward (1747-1799), a benevolent but odd member of the literary circle around Dr Samuel Johnson, whose epitaph he helped to compose. The original...
O that mine eyes would closed be. Thomas Ellwood* (1639-1713).
This hymn is taken from The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood. Or, an Account of his Birth, Education, &c… Written by his own hand. To which is added a Supplement by J. W. (1714). Published after Ellwood's death, his autobiography was supplemented by Joseph Wyeth (J.W.) in which this poem is quoted on page 462:
O that mine Eye might closed be To what becomes me not to see! The Deafness might possess mine Ear, To what...
O the deep, deep love of Jesus. Samuel Trevor Francis* (1834-1925).
Written before 1898, when it was published in Francis's Whence-Whither, and Other Poems. It had eight stanzas (accessible at https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/o-the-deep-deep-love-of-jesus). It was shortened to three stanzas in Hymns of Consecration and Faith 2 (1902), and in The Song Companion to the Scriptures (1911), and this has become the customary version in hymnals (the full hymn is in the posthumously-published...
O'er the gloomy hills of darkness. William Williams* (1717-1791).
From Williams's Gloria in Excelsis (Carmarthen, 1772), where it was Hymn XXXVII. A correspondent to the Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal of 1941 suggests that the diction and imagery may have been inspired by the Black Mountain range in Carmarthenshire which may be seen from Williams's home (Polack, 1958, p. 352).
The customary text is one of three (or sometimes four) stanzas, selected from the original seven. It was included in...
This is the name given to hymns used in the recitation of the Divine Office, or the modern Liturgy of the Hours observed by cloistered communities. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, Office hymns were typically collected either in a separate volume — a combined hymnary and psalter, which would contain all of the hymns and psalms used in the Office — or in the breviary itself, in a special section either at the rear of the volume or in a dividing section between the Temporale and Sanctorale....
OLUDE, (A. T.) Olajida. b. 16 July 1908; d. c. 1986. A Nigerian Methodist minister, Olude was educated at Wesley College, Ibadan, and at the Mindola training school. He was awarded the Order of Niger and, from the University of Nigeria, the Mus.D. degree (Young, 808).
A.M. Jones describes Olude as 'profoundly upset by the way European-type hymns murdered his language' (Jones, 1976). Jones also notes that Olude built up a collection of at least 77 hymns whose melodies followed precisely the...
Omni die, dic Mariae. Latin, probably by Bernard of Cluny* (12th century).
This is a selection of lines from 'Ut jucundus cervus undas, aestuans desiderat' (from Psalm 42: 1), the opening of a cycle of poems known as the Mariale. The authorship of the cycle is uncertain, but James Mearns*, after assessing all the evidence, attributed it to Bernard of Cluny (JJ, pp. 1200-1202). Section 7 of the Mariale began 'Omni die, dic Mariae, mea, laudes, anima'.
For Catholics it is notable as the Latin...
CAMPOS DE OLIVEIRA Jr, Oziel. b. Recife, Pernanbuco, Northeast Brazil, 26 July 1946. He studied theology at the Escola Superior de Teologia in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and later at Luther Theological Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. Oziel has served as pastor of the Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB, Igreja Evangélica de Confissão Luterano no Brasil) since 1973. Despite not having any formal training in music, Oziel has always maintained an...
SOSA, Pablo. b. in Chivilcoy, a province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 16 December 1933; d. Buenos Aires, 11 January 2020. Sosa was a composer, church musician and a local minister of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Argentina. He was emeritus professor of Liturgy and Hymnology at the Instituto Universitario ISEDET (Buenos Aires), and Choir Conducting at the National State Conservatory in Buenos Aires (1975-2005). He also established the musical group 'Música para Todos' in 1972, directing and...
Pan de vida (Bread of life). Bob Hurd* (1950– ) and Pia Moriarty (1948– ).
This eucharistic hymn is the best-known composition by Bob Hurd and his wife Pia Moriarty. Composed in 1988, it appeared initially in the first edition of Flor y Canto* (Portland, Oregon, 1989) and subsequently in most Catholic hymnals published in the United States.
The song, one of the first bilingual worship songs, was composed while Bob Hurd was living in Guatemala. During this time, he was searching for songs that...
PARK, Chai-hoon (Jai-hoon) 박재훈. b. Gimwha County, Gangwon Province, Korea (now North Korea), 14 November 1922; d. Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, 2 August 2021. Park was a composer and the foremost Korean hymnodist. His music-making and life influenced and shaped the development of Korean church music. He grew up in a Christian family, a rarity in that era, the youngest of the four sons from nine siblings. All four brothers became ministers later, a pledge that his mother had made to God. An...
BRENNAN, Patrick. b. Carraghroe, Co. Roscommon, Ireland, 1877; d. North Perth, Western Australia, 18 May 1951. He left for Australia 'in his early years' (Milgate, 1982, p. 224). He was ordained to the priesthood in 1902, serving in the diocese of Perth and editing the diocesan paper, The Record. After twelve years in parish work, he was accepted in 1915 by the Congregation of the most Holy Redeemer (C.SS.R), the 'Redemptorists', who sent him as a missionary to the Philippine Islands. He was...
GIBSON, Paul S. b. Guelph, Ontario, Canada, 3 August 1932. He earned the LTh at St Chad's Theological College, Regina (1954), a BA at Bishops University (1956), and studied at Oxford University (1957) doing research on the moral theology of Tractarians. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Emmanuel College, Saskatoon; Huron College, London; Vancouver School of Theology; Montreal Diocesan College; and Trinity College, Toronto. In 2006, he received the Cross of St Augustine, presented...
MOISE, Penina. b. Charleston, South Carolina, 23 April 1797; d. Charleston, SC, 13 September 1880. Penina was the sixth of nine children born to the union of Abraham (1736-1809) and Sarah (1762-1840) Moise (Moïse). She left school at the age of 12 upon her father's death but continued to study on her own. She suffered from poverty throughout her life; she suffered severe attacks of neuralgia and lost her eyesight completely by 1865. Her first published volume, Fancy's Sketch Book, appeared in...
Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.
The School of Theology (now known as Perkins School of Theology) [PST], was one of the three original schools of Southern Methodist University (SMU), founded in 1911 as a nonsectarian institution of higher education by what is now the United Methodist Church in partnership with Dallas civic leaders. After large gifts from Joe L. and Lois Craddock Perkins of Wichita Falls, Texas, beginning in 1945, the name of the School of Theology was...
ABELARD, Peter. b. le Pallet, near Nantes, Brittany, 1079; d. Châlons-sur-Saone, 21 April 1142. He was the son of Berengar, Lord of Pallet. His distinguished family background marked him out as a potential soldier, but he became a brilliant student of philosophy and theology, both at Paris and Laon. At 22 he was made a canon and teacher at the school attached to Notre Dame in Paris, where his lectures are said to have enthralled his students but alarmed his colleagues. However, one of them,...
PETER Damian. b. Ravenna 1007; d. Faenza, 22-23 February 1072. Peter Damian entered the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in 1035, and had become prior of the community by 1043. He was interested in church reform, both of his own community (combining elements of eremitic and coenobitic monasticism) and of the wider church. He was made Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia in 1057 and was made a Doctor of the Church in 1828.
The clear attestation of Peter Damian's hymn texts and their diffusion in common with his...
DAVISON, Peter Wood Asterly. b. Montreal, 12 June 1936. After a year at McGill University, he went to Balliol College, Oxford (BA 1959, MA 1962), Cuddesdon Theological College, Oxford (1959-61), and subsequently to McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago (DMin 1989). Ordained in 1961, he returned to Canada, serving as rector in Anglican churches in Montreal and in Alymer, Quebec, and in Vancouver; before becoming rector at Bishop Cronyn Memorial Church in London, ON, where he also taught...
PETER the Venerable (Peter of St. Maurice). b. 1092 or 1094; d. 25 December 1156. Petrus (Mauricius) Venerabilis, born at Montboissier, Auvergne, abbot of Cluny* 1122-1156, was one of the greatest of Cluny's abbots in its heyday in the 10th-12th centuries. He came of a noble family, became an oblate of Sauxillanges and entered Cluny under Abbot Hugh. He was prior of Vézelay (ca.1115-1120) and of Domène near Grenoble (1120-1122), in which year he was elected Abbot of Cluny. He led the monastery...
BLYCKER, Philip Walter. b. Chicago, Illinois, 22 March 1939; d. Roseburg, Oregon, 11 June 2023. Philip Blycker (also known as Felipe Blycker J. in Spanish publications), was a missionary, hymn writer, composer, and hymnal editor. He was raised in the evangelical tradition as a Baptist. Taking piano and trumpet lessons during his youth, he received degrees from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina (B.M.E., 1960) and VanderCook College of Music in Chicago (MMus Ed., 1966). He...
Praise ye Jehovah! Praise the Lord most holy. Margaret Cockburn-Campbell* (1808-1841).
Lady Campbell was a member of the Brethren, and this hymn, with others by her, was first published a year after her early death in James George Deck*'s Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1842, enlarged 1847). It had four stanzas:
Praise ye Jehovah! Praise the Lord most holy, Who cheers the contrite, girds with strength the weak; Praise him who will with glory crown the lowly, And with salvation beautify...
The Presbyterian Association of Musicians (PAM) was founded in 1970 in the wake of the announcement the previous year that the Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) would not longer sponsor the Presbyterian Conference on Church Music (see Montreat Conferences on Worship and Music*). An ad hoc group of leaders, Jerry Black, chair (1938-), David W. McCormick* (1928-2019), James R. Sydnor*, Richard Peek (1927-2005), Herbert Archer (1922-2005), William...
Presbyterian Church of England Hymnody
History
Presbyterianism traces its origins back to the Reformation, when one element in the Protestant tradition was the dislike of human authority in religious matters, and the preference for government by 'presbyters' (from the Greek 'presbuteros', or 'elder') rather than bishops or priests. In Scotland the Reformation was guided by the powerful John Knox (1505-1572), who had studied under Jean Calvin* in Geneva; in both Scotland and England...
The fact that the meetings for worship of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain are held on the basis of silence does not mean that there were no hymns in Quaker worship in the past, nor that hymns are not sung by Quakers in other parts of the world. From the beginning of their movement in 17th-century England Quakers sang psalms, but their attitude to them differed from that of other Christian groups. Robert Barclay, the early Quaker theologian, wrote in An Apology for the...
GUITIÉRREZ-ACHÓN, Raquel. b. Preston (now Puerto Guatemala), Province of Oriente, Cuba; 5 May 1927; d. Los Angeles, California, 5 January 2013. Raquel Gutiérrez-Achón was a church musician, pianist, choral conductor, hymnal editor, and promoter of Spanish-language hymns in the United States and Latin America. She studied music at the Instituto Santiago and the Conservatorio Provincial (Santiago de Cuba), Matin College (Pulaski, Tennessee), George Peabody College for Teachers (Nashville,...
Hymnody and Hymnals of the Reformed Church in America. The Reformed Church in America (RCA) is an offshoot of the Dutch Reformed Church, or Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk. It dates itself from the founding of a congregation in New Amsterdam (now New York City) by Jonas Michaelius (1577-1638) in April of 1628. Now with approximately 1,000 congregations in the United States and Canada, the RCA claims the oldest continuous Protestant ministry in North America, as well as the oldest theological...
CONNOLLY, Richard. b. Sydney, 10 November 1927; d. May 2022. He was educated at Lewisham Christian Brothers' School, then at Springwood (New South Wales) Marist Brothers' school. In 1946 he travelled to Rome and attended the Propaganda Fide College where he studied theology and music but withdrew in 1950 shortly before completing his ordination for the Roman Catholic priesthood. On his return to Australia he completed a BA at the University of Sydney (1956). In the same year he took up a...
PÂQUIER, Richard. b. Bursins (Switzerland), 25 October 1905; d. Vevey, 28 January 1985. The son of Ernest Henri, farmer, and Cécile Justine Masson, he became a Swiss Reformed pastor, ecumenical theologian, liturgist, and historian of the Vaud canton. A fellow student and friend of the philosopher Marcel Regamey (1905-82), he studied theology in Lausanne (1923-27) and at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut (1929) . He was pastor in Bercher (1929-1943) and Saint-Saphorin (1943-1966). He...
See 'Greek hymns, archaeology'*
The liturgical tradition of the patriarchate of Constantinople was centred in the cathedral of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), also called 'The Great Church'. The hymnody of this rite is quite restricted, especially compared to that of Jerusalem*. It consists of two types of hymns: psalmodic hymnody (Psalm refrains, troparia) and independent hymnody (kontakia).
Psalmodic hymnody
Ordinary refrains (the Psalter and the Odes)
The Psalter of the Constantinopolitan rite, including a series of 14...
The liturgical rite of Jerusalem, as the name indicates, developed and was practised primarily in the Holy City itself. The physical and organising centre of this rite was the Cathedral of Jerusalem, a complex of churches built around the cross and the tomb of Christ. Festal offices were celebrated in the Martyrium basilica (or other churches of the city) and daily offices in the Anastasis rotonda (the Church of the Resurrection, also called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). In addition,...
See 'Zimbabwean hymnody#Robert Kauffman'*
CULL, Robert Marcus. b. Los Angeles, California, 24 May 1949. He was encouraged by his parents to begin piano study at age six. He soon began playing music in his church, learning more than a dozen instruments. He attended Southern California College (now Vanguard University of Southern California), Costa Mesa, an Assemblies of God institution, and joined the Accents, a singing group recorded by Maranatha! Music. He attended campus concerts featuring song writers and performers in the emerging...
WALLACE, Robin Knowles. b. Toledo, Ohio, 6 January 1952. Wallace is a hymnological scholar, editor, teacher of congregational song, and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Her timely and influential published works are characterized by usability for scholars and practitioners, attention to language for inclusion and justice, and the centrality of congregational song in worship as a spiritual and theological formational practice.
Robin attended the University of Cincinnati, Ohio...
MANN, Robin. b. Murray Bridge, near Adelaide, South Australia, 26 July 1949. He was the son of sixth-generation German Lutheran parents. He was educated at Immanuel College, where he took piano lessons, and the University of Adelaide, where he completed a BA and Dip Ed. He underwent some musical and theological training at Luther Seminary, Adelaide. Three years of high-school teaching followed, before he took up work as a parish lay worker for St Stephen's Lutheran Church, Adelaide (1976-95)....
SMITH, Rodney ('Gipsy' Smith). b. Epping Forest, near London, 31 March 1860; d. at sea 4 August 1947). He was born in a Romany tent, the fourth of six children of Cornelius Smith (1831-1922) and Mary Welch (ca. 1831-1865). His family made a living selling baskets, clothes pegs, tinware, and through horse-dealing; neither of his parents could read. He grew up 'as wild as the birds, frolicsome as the lambs, and as difficult to catch as the rabbits' (Smith, 1901, Chapter 1). His mother died of...
ROMANOS the Melodist. fl. 6th century. Little is known about his life, and even the century in which he lived has long been hotly disputed. It is likely that he was born in Syria, in the city of Emesa, and that he was of Jewish origin. As a young man he served as deacon at the Church of the Resurrection in Beirut, before coming to Constantinople during the reign of Anastasius I (491-518), where he was attached to the Church of the Virgin in the Kyros quarter of the city.
After his death he was...
[This entry is in two parts. The first, by Joseph Dyer, discusses Roman hymnody from its beginnings to the 15th century. The second, by Daniel Zager, details 16th-century developments.]
Early and Medieval hymnody
Rome proved very reluctant to introduce the singing of hymns in the Divine Office. They were accepted by the papal court and the major basilicas only towards the end of the 12th century. In this they probably differed from the urban monasteries that followed the Rule of Benedict*, but...
The Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) is an educational charity that promotes the best use of music in worship, church life, and the wider community. It also publishes music and training resources, and organizes courses, short workshops and activities. With over 7,500 affiliates, members and 1,500 supporting friends in over 40 countries, it is an international network, supported by over 750 volunteers and a small team of staff based throughout the UK. RSCM in America, RSCM Australia, RSCM...
DUCK, Ruth Carolyn. b. Washington, DC, 21 November 1947. Ruth Duck graduated from Southwestern-at-Memphis University (now Rhodes College), Tennessee (BA, 1969). She attended Chicago Theological Seminary (MDiv, 1973); University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana (MA, 1987); and Boston University School of Theology (ThD, 1989). The Chicago Theological Seminary awarded her a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1983. She was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1974, after which she served at...
In the Roman rite, these were cycles of chants composed for the celebration of the Divine Office on the feast days of saints in the Middle Ages. They typically comprise the following items: the Magnificat* antiphon* of First Vespers* (sometimes one or more antiphons for the Vesper psalms); the invitatory antiphon and the antiphons and responsories of the Nocturns of the Night Office (Vigils, or Matins); the antiphons for the psalms and Benedictus of Lauds; and the Magnificat antiphon of Second...
Salvator mundi Domine. Latin, date and author unknown.
According to James Mearns* in JJ (p. 988), this hymn is found in manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries. It is found in the Sarum, York, Hereford and Aberdeen Breviaries, appointed as a hymn for Compline at times that varied from monastery to monastery.
Different versions of this popular hymn are found in Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus IV, p. 209, and in Analecta Hymnica, 23. 39. It was well known in England in Tudor times, because it...
TREGELLES, Samuel Prideaux. b. Falmouth, Cornwall, 30 January 1813; d. Plymouth, Devon, 24 April 1875. Educated at Falmouth Grammar School, he was employed at the Neath Abbey ironworks in Glamorgan, South Wales from 1829 to 1835. During that time he taught himself Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, and also learned Welsh, a language in which he sometimes preached. He was brought up as a Quaker, but joined the Plymouth Brethren. His hymns were published in their Hymns for the Poor of the Flock...
Most office services for St. James the Greater (Sant'Iago) use hymns from the Common of Apostles or Martyrs. However, the service at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, preserved in the 12-century Codex Calixtinus, used four proper hymns:
'Psallat chorus celestium' (f. 101v);
'Sanctissime O Iacobe' (f. 103r);
'Felix per omnes' (f. 104v); and
'Iocundetur et letetur' (f. 105v).
These hymns are spread across all the feasts of James celebrated at Compostela: the vigil (July 24), the...
TEMPLE, Sebastian. b. Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa, 12 February 1928; d. Tucson, Arizona, 16 December 1997. He was raised by his grandparents. At the age of 16 he wrote a romantic novel, and using its royalties moved to Italy. In 1951 he moved to London and prepared BBC news broadcasts relating to South Africa. Temple went to the United States in 1958, lived in Washington DC, was a Scientologist for ten years, converted to Catholicism and became a Secular Franciscan.
He was a student of...
Sequence is a Latin medieval chant sung after the Alleluia* of the Mass on feast days and, like the Alleluia, not usually sung in Lent. The Latin term 'sequentia' appears to derive from the function of the chant as one which 'follows' the Alleluia, after the pattern: (i) Alleluia incipit, (ii) Alleluia jubilus, (iii) Verse, (iv) Alleluia incipit, (v) Sequence. But it is not certain if this was the original or authentic order of performance, or if it was universally practised.
Sequences are...
'Shalom' is the Hebrew word for peace, used at meeting, or at a farewell; it conveys the sense of a wish, to mean 'peace be with you'. It occurs in the Hebrew Bible in various places, as an individual greeting or referring more widely to a general sense of peace and justice. In the New Testament, when Jesus used the phrase 'peace be with you, or 'my peace I give to you', he was using the concept implied in the word Shalom. It occurs with other Hebrew words: thus 'Shalom Aleikhem' ('Peace be...
ANTONIANO, Silvio. b. Rome, 31 December 1540; d. Rome, 16 August 1603. He was educated at the University of Ferrara, before being appointed by Pope Pius IV as Professor of Belles-Lettres at the Sapienza University in Rome. He was ordained as a priest in 1568, and became Secretary of the College of Cardinals; he held various posts in the Curia under successive Popes (Pius V, Sixtus V, Clement VIII). He had a particular interest in education, and published Tre Libri dell' Educazione Christiana...
MARAK, Simon Kara. b. near Kamrup, Assam, India, 1877; d. Jorhat, Assam, India, 16 February 1975. Simon Marak, an ethic A·chik (Garo) man, was a schoolteacher, pastor, and missionary in Assam, a state in far northeastern India. He received his primary education from the Guwahati Government School with the financial assistance of the Kamrup Baptist Association (1907–09) and continued his study at the Government Training School (1909–12), supplementing his early years of teaching with work as a...
Sing God's Glory (2001).
This is the title of a new and enlarged edition of Sing His Glory (1997), sub-titled 'Hymns for Sundays and Holy Days, Years A, B & C', published in Britain by the Canterbury Press, Norwich. The new title recognises the claims of the feminist movement in Britain, and the sub-title is an accurate description of the contents. The Revised Common Lectionary was authorised for use in the Church of England from Advent 1997, and this compilation is described as 'one...
Solis ad victimam procedis, Domine. Peter Abelard* (1079-1142).
From Hymnarius Paraclitensis, the book of hymns that Abelard wrote for the religious house of The Paraclete, where Heloise was Prioress (see Paraclete Hymnal*). It was written for the third nocturnal office on Good Friday. It beautifully combines the lament for the solitary figure of Christ 'going forth' to His sufferings and death with the promise that if we share His sufferings ('Tu tibi compati sic fac nos, Domine') we may...
SOPHRONIOS of Jerusalem. b. Damascus, ca. 560; d. 11 March 638. Born in Damascus, he became a monk at the cenobitic monastery of St. Theodosios in the Judean desert. From 578 onwards he undertook several travels in the Mediterranean region. He was patriarch of Jerusalem from 634 till his death, a year after the Arabic occupation of Jerusalem. St. Sophronios grew up within the Antiochian liturgical rite, but became familiar with that of Palestine at St Theodosios; at this time, these rites may...
In 1944 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky (founded in 1859) instituted a program leading to a degree in church music. President Ellis A. Fuller (1891-1950) was officially head of the program, but it was guided by Donald E. Winters (1910-1989) and Frances Weaver Winters (1908-1993), who included hymnology in its curriculum. In a reorganization of the seminary in 1953, a School of Church Music was established. Its name was changed in 1998 to School of Church Music and...
General
Southern Gospel is one of the multiple vernacular Christian music traditions that developed within American (and to some extent British) Protestant cultures during the 19th and 20th centuries, and part of the gospel music phenomenon that has flourished in Anglophone Christendom since the 1870s. It is also part of the Christian, but especially Protestant, practice of recreational musicking with vernacular songs and hymns.
'Southern Gospel' refers to a music tradition that dates arguably...
Spirit of God, that moved of old. Cecil Frances Alexander* (1818-1895).
First published in Hymns for Public Worship (1852, 1855), edited by Thomas Vincent Fosbery* for the SPCK (it is possible that Fosbery, born in Ireland, had a particular interest in Irish authors: cf. Emma Toke*). It had four stanzas. Taylor (1989, p. 172) notes that it was then printed in Alexander's Hymns Descriptive and Devotional (1858), with an additional stanza (stanza 3 in the following text; this stanza has not been...
The first Spring Harvest conference, a week-long Easter-time event, was launched in Prestatyn in 1979. Some 2,700 people attended. This has since become an annual event which has rapidly grown in popularity and influence among evangelical Christians of varied denominational backgrounds (the organisation subscribes to the beliefs of 'The Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith' and 'The Lausanne Covenant'). In 1986, the event expanded to two locations (Prestatyn and Minehead), and in 1988 the...
Gallus, an Irishman, companion of St Columbanus*, remained in Zürich because of illness when his master continued on his travels to Italy. His hermitage, established ca. 613, attracted disciples, and eventually in 720 St Othmar (ca. 689-759) founded a monastery. The Emperor Louis the Pious made it an independent royal abbey in 813. The period of its greatest cultural and intellectual achievement was the later 9th through to the first half of the 11th century. After a long period of mediocrity,...
This is the name given to a group of Roman Catholic composers, who were associated with a study centre in the parish of St Thomas More, North London, from 1969 onwards. The group's founder members were Stephen Dean*, Paul Inwood*, Bernadette Farrell*, Peter Jones, Ernest Sands*, Bill Tamblyn*, Christopher Walker* and James Walsh, although only Dean and Inwood were on the staff of the centre. Other members include Peter McGrail and Anne Quigley.
In 1985 Paul Inwood and Christopher Walker...
DAUERMANN, Stuart. b. Brooklyn, New York, 1944. Stuart Dauermann is a Messianic Jewish Rabbi. His education includes BA and MM degrees in music theory and music education, and MA and PhD degrees in Intercultural Studies. He has published several books on interreligious relations between Jews and Christians. He is Director of Interfaithfulness, an organisation dedicated to advancing interreligious relationships between Jews and Christians, and serves as Rabbi of Ahavat Zion Messianic Synagogue,...
HINE, Stuart Keene. b. Hammersmith, London, 25 July 1899; d. Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, 14 March 1989. Born into a Salvation Army family in London, he was educated at Cooper's Company School. He served in the First World War from 1917 to 1918/1919, after which he and his wife became Plymouth Brethren missionaries, mainly in Eastern Europe between 1923 and 1939, when they were forced to return to Britain by the political situation. During the Second World War they worked with displaced persons....
TOWNEND, Stuart. b. Edinburgh, 1 June 1963. He was educated at Sowerby Bridge High School, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, then at the University of Sussex, Brighton (1981-1985), where he gained an honours degree in American Studies (Literature). Remaining in Brighton, after a year of training in evangelism at the Clarendon Church (now Church of Christ the King), he joined the staff at Kingsway Music, Eastbourne, initially as an in-house arranger and editor, and later as Head of Music, editing...
SYNESIUS of Cyrene. b. Cyrene, ca. 370; d. Ptolemais, ca. 414. Born at Cyrene, of a distinguished family (Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury, II. 324, has some amusement at their claim to have been descended from Hercules). He was educated at Alexandria as a pupil of the famous neo-Platonist Hypatia, whom he described as 'a mother, a sister, and a teacher'. After a period as a soldier, and studying at home, he was sent on a mission to plead for remission of taxes...
History of the Syrian Church
Syriac Christianity has grown out of the Aramaic speaking population of Mesopotamia and its environs which, around the beginning of the Christian Era, was divided into two empires: the Roman-Byzantine Empire in the West and the Parthian-Persian Empire in the East. It had its early centre in Edessa in the West, a relatively independent kingdom, where the majority of the population spoke Aramaic. Edessa was christianised from Antioch as early as the 2nd century. The...
Tantum ergo sacramentum. Thomas Aquinas* ca. 1224/5-1274).
This two-stanza hymn consists of stanzas 5 and 6 of the great hymn by Aquinas, 'Pange lingua gloriosi Corporis mysterium'* (cf. The similar use of 'O salutaris Hostia'* taken from 'Verbum supernum prodiens, nec Patris linquens dexteram'*). It is sung in the office of the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, or during Mass at the Elevation of the Host (JJ, p. 878):
Tantum ergo sacramentum veneremur cernui:et antiquum documentum novo...
The Virgin Mary had a baby boy. West Indian carol.
This carol, sometimes called a spiritual, reflects one of the varied experiences and cultures encountered by enslaved Africans when they came to the Americas. Since it does not find its origins in the continental United States, 'The Virgin Mary' does not appear in the historical collections of African American spirituals* such as the monumental Slave Songs of the United States* (New York: 1867), the first extensive collection of African...
KARYKES, Theophanes. ca. second half 16th century. Karykes is said to be one of the most important Byzantine composers of the late 16th century, whose work already shows the stylistic influence of the new florid style. Theophanes Karykes is mentioned in the diary of the German pastor Stephan Gerlach: on a visit to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in October 1577, he made the acquaintance of a 'protopsaltes […] called Kariteus of Athens'. Karykes was a protopsaltes until 1578 and became ecumenical...
They are all gone into the world of light. Henry Vaughan* (1622-1695).
From Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, the second Edition, in two Books; by Henry Vaughan, Silurist (1655). The word 'Silurist' refers to the Silures, the ancient inhabitants of South Wales, where Vaughan lived. The second part of this book, with 'The Authors Preface To the following Hymns', was dated 30 September 1654. It contains a tribute to 'the blessed man, Mr George Herbert, whose holy life and...
AQUINAS, Thomas (St). b. ca. 1224/5; d. Fossa Nuova, 7 March 1274. Born to a southern Italian noble family, Thomas Aquinas studied at the University of Naples before becoming a Dominican friar in the early 1240s, against the wishes of his family. He studied with Albertus Magnus at Cologne (probably arriving late in 1244) and accompanied Albertus to the University of Paris (1245-48), subseqently returning with him to Cologne. He began to teach in Paris in 1252, and travelled widely in the...
ELLWOOD, Thomas. b. Crowell, near Chinnor, Oxfordshire, 1639 (baptized 15 October); d. Amersham, Buckinghamshire, 1 May 1713. He was born into a Puritan family which moved to London during the Civil War to support the Parliamentary cause. In 1659 Ellwood heard two Quakers preach at Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, and was so impressed that he became one of the early Friends. Thereafter his life was dominated by the joys of being a Quaker (friendships, such as that with the Pennington family,...
POTTER, Thomas Joseph. b. Scarborough, Yorkshire, 9 June 1828. d. Dublin, 31 August 1873. At the age of 20 he became a Roman Catholic, and was ordained as a priest in 1857. He was appointed Professor of Pulpit Eloquence and English Literature in the Foreign Missionary College of All Hallows, Dublin. From this came his instructive works, Sacred Eloquence; or, the theory and practice of preaching (Dublin, 1866), and The Spoken Word: or, the art of extemporary preaching, its utility, its danger,...
KELLY, Thomas. b. Kellyville, Queen's County [Co. Laois], Ireland, 13 July 1769; d. Dublin, 14 May 1855. He was the son of an Irish judge, Baron Kelly of Kellyville. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (BA, 1789), and began studying for a legal career. Against the wishes of his family, however, he gave up the law and became ordained as a priest in the Church of England in Ireland (1792). He began preaching in Dublin in 1793: the emphasis on the doctrine of grace, and the unusual energy...
PHILLIPS, Thomas King Ekundayo, b. Ondo State, Nigeria, 8 March 1884; d. Lagos, Nigeria, 10 July 1969. Born into the family of Bishop Charles Samuel Phillips of the Anglican Communion, he was the father of five children. Phillips graduated from Trinity College of Music, London (1914), majoring in organ and violin. He was the second Nigerian to receive a bachelor's degree in music from this institution. Phillips was appointed in 1914 to the position of Organist and Master of the Music at the...
THOMAS of Celano. b. Celano, ca. 1190; d. 4 October 1260. Because his biographies offered the world the first accounts of the life of St Francis of Assisi, the works of Thomas of Celano are considered vital tools for the interpretation of Franciscan Spirituality (see Franciscan hymns and hymnals*). Born into the noble family of the Conti di Marsi, Thomas of Celano would have had access to the best sort of education available in central Italy. His brilliant literary skills bear witness to a...
Thou, whose purpose is to kindle. D. Elton Trueblood* (1900-1994).
This hymn is also known by its title, 'Baptism by Fire'. In the Preface to The Incendiary Fellowship, dated Labor Day, 1966, Trueblood comments that it was written 'because of the conviction that the message of this book may be expressed more succinctly in poetry than in prose.' He writes of his admiration for the hymn 'God of grace and God of glory'* by Harry Emerson Fosdick*, and of 'the Biblical basis for his own hymn: ...
'Tis the gift to be simple. Shaker spiritual, 19th century, probably by Joseph Brackett, Jr. (1797-1882).
This is a Shaker song, described by them as a 'Gift Song from Mother's work' (referring to Ann Lee, known as 'Mother Ann'. See 'Shaker hymnody'*). David Holbrook*, who printed it in the Cambridge Hymnal* (1967), dated it from between 1837 and 1847. The Hymnal 1982 Companion agreed, noting that this was 'a period of renewed spiritual dedication' among the Shakers. Various theories are given...
SOGA, Tiyo. b. 1829; d. 12 August 1871. Soga was born in Gwali, Tyumie Valley, South Africa and died in Tutura, South Africa. JJ noted that 'The Rev. Tiyo Soga, a gifted Kafir missionary educated by the United Presbyterian Church, and early removed by death, compiled a book of hymns, which was printed in Scotland' (p.757). A more recent account by J. A. Millard indicates that Soga was the first Xhosa ordained in the United Presbyterian Church. Though his training at the Lovedale Mission was...
FETTKE, Thomas Eugene, b. Bronx, New York, 24 February 1941. Composer, arranger, and music producer, Fettke attended Oakland City College (AA [Associate of Arts] 1962) California State University at Hayward (BA 1966). He was a secondary school teacher for more than three decades, teaching voice and directing both public and private school ensembles, including Redwood Christian School system (1978-84), a K-12 interdenominational school system located in the San Francisco East Bay area, where he...
COOMES, Tommy. b. Long Beach, California, 19 May 1946. Singer/songwriter, producer, worship leader and music executive, Coomes played a key role in 'Jesus Music' in the 1960s and 1970s and development of worship music repertoire for the church in the late 20th century. Raised in Lakewood, California, he played trumpet and guitar in high school, studied music at California State University, Long Beach, and enlisted in the US Army. A year after leaving the army in 1969 he met a nucleus of hippie...
See 'Byzantine hymnody#Troparion'*
Troper (Lat. liber /libellus troparius, troparium, troperium, tropiarium, troporium, troponarius, trophonarius). A medieval book, booklet, or section of a book containing a significant number of tropes (chants introducing, and/or interpolated within, the chants of the mass proper and ordinary and sometimes of the office, such as the Benedicamus Domino).
John Beleth's liturgical commentary (Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ca. 1160-64) defines a troper as follows: 'a trophonarius is a book in...
A Generous Tribute: Twells on Lyte.
Henry Twells* paid a felicitous tribute to Henry Francis Lyte* that deserves to be better known. In Twells's Hymns and Other Stray Verses (1901), published after his death, there is a poem entitled 'The Rev. Henry Francis Lyte'. Twells described him as
A Parish priest, whose anxious post Was on South Devon's rocky coast, Through all his life at various times Had clothed his thoughts in graceful rhymes.
The poem goes on to describe Lyte's most famous hymn,...
Up to those bright and gladsome hills. Henry Vaughan* (1622-1695).
From Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1650). The first two words of this title mean 'sparkling flint'. It was headed 'Psalm 121'. It is a simple paraphrase of the Psalm by one who loved the hills of South Wales, where he lived. The 1650 text was as follows:
Up to those bright, and gladsome hils, Whence flowes my weal and mirth, I look, and sigh for him, who fils, (Unseen,) both heaven, and earth.
He...
Vatican II and hymns
When the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was convened, most Protestant hymn collections contained few Roman Catholic hymns. The reform of the liturgical life of the Roman Catholic Church in the 'Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy' ('Sacrosanctum Concilium', 1963) made an immediate ecumenical impact on most mainline Protestant traditions. A deeper theology of Baptism and Eucharist, the recovery of Scripture, the revision of the church year and the appearance of a...
Verbum supernum prodiens, nec Patris linquens dexteram. Thomas Aquinas* (ca. 1224/5-1274).
As with 'Pange lingua gloriosi Corporis mysterium'*, St Thomas was here taking an earlier text, 'Verbum supernum prodiens,/ a Patre olim exiens'*, and making it his own. It was written ca. 1263 for use on the Feast of Corpus Christi. It is printed in Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus I. 254, entitled 'De eadem festivitate ad Laudes' ('On the same festival at Lauds') thus linking it with St Thomas's other...
Verbum supernum prodiens,/ a Patre olim exiens. Latin, probably 10th century.
This is found in Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus I. 77, entitled 'De Adventu Domini', in two texts, one from a Rheinau Codex (TH IV. 144), the other from the Roman Breviary (1632), with line 2 as 'e patris aeterno sinu', and other variations from the original text. In Analecta Hymnica 2. 35, it is printed from a 10th-century hymnal of the Abbey of Moissac ('Das Hymnar der Abtei Moissac'). It is found in many medieval...
MENDOZA, Vicente Polanco. b. Guadalajara, Mexico, 24 December 1875; d. Mexico City, 14 June 1955. Methodist evangelist, hymn writer, and translator, he was acclaimed by many as the leading evangelist in Mexican Methodism of his generation, and the author of some of the most beloved hymns from this era in the Spanish language. Vicente P. Mendoza should not be confused with two others of his generation with a similar name: Vicente T. Mendoza (1894-1964), a Mexican Methodist musicologist,...
BEECHING, Victoria Louise (Vicky). b. 19 July 1979. Vicky Beeching is a British singer-songwriter, broadcaster and researcher. She was educated at Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School, Canterbury, and the University of Oxford.
She has recorded three albums, Yesterday, Today & Forever (2005), Painting the Invisible (2007), and Eternity Invades (2010). The first part of her career was largely spent in the USA, where she achieved considerable prominence as a recording artist and performed...
Voices in Praise. This collection, published in 2013, is the authorised hymnal of The Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas (MCCA). It is a significant milestone in the history of the MCCA, as it is the first time it has issued an authorised hymnal since its foundation in 1967. Its preface indicates Caribbean Methodism's longstanding attachment to the British Methodist Hymn Book (MHB, 1933), and, in describing its long gestation, summarises the diverse influences, cultural...
Was mein Gott will, gescheh allzeit. Albrecht*, Count (Markgraf) of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Duke of Prussia (1490-1568). ('Whatever God wills, let that happen always').
It is found in EG in the 'Angst und Vertrauen' section (EG 364). It was written in 1547 after the death of his first wife, Princess Dorothea of Denmark. It is found in Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied III. 1070-1, unattributed: Wackernagel prints two texts, one from Fünff Schöne Geistliche Lieder (Dresden, 1556), the other...
We praise thy name, all-holy Lord. Ebenezer Josiah Newell* (1853-1916).
This hymn on Saint David (ca. 500- ca. 589) was included in EH and NEH, SofPE, and A&MR. The three stanzas in EH and subsequent books were selected from a hymn in seven stanzas on the Welsh saints, published in The Northern Churchman and St David's Weekly (29 February 1896, i.e. just before Saint David's day, 1 March). There is reference to David's noble birth (he was the son of Ceredig ap Cunedda, king of Ceredigion)...
What service shall we render thee. Ernest James Dodgshun* (1876-1944)
Written shortly before the outbreak of World War I for inclusion on a 'Peace Hymn Sheet', and printed in a Supplement (1920) to the 1909 Fellowship Hymn Book. It was then included in RCH and MHB . It is a fine expression of Dodgshun's Quaker pacifism, turning the normal demands of the love of one's own country ('O Fatherland we love') into peaceful channels:
The service of the commonwealth Is not in arms alone; A nobler...
PENNEFATHER, William. b. Dublin, 5 February 1816; d. Muswell Hill, Middlesex, 30 April 1873. He was the son of a distinguished Irish lawyer who became chief Baron of the Exchequer Court. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1840; his undergraduate career was interrupted by illness). He took Holy Orders (deacon 1841, priest 1842), and was successively curate at Ballymacugh and vicar of Mellifont, near Drogheda, where he ministered to the people during the famine of 1845. He moved to...
REES, William. b. near Llansannan, Denbighshire, 8 November 1802; d. Chester, 8 November 1883. Brought up as a Calvinistic Methodist, Rees was ordained as a Congregationalist minister in 1832. He served chapels in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Liverpool, as was a renowned preacher and lecturer. Having studied Welsh poetry from a young age, his own strict-metre compositions won prizes at eisteddfodau in Brecon (1826) and Denbigh (1828). He took the Bardic name Gwilym Hiraethog. Rees was also...
Wir glauben all' an einen Gott. Tobias Clausnitzer* (1619-1684).
According to James Mearns*, this hymn for Trinity Sunday first appeared in a Gesang-Buch published at Culmbach-Bayreuth in 1668, where it had the initials 'C.A.D.' (JJ, p. 238). It appeared with Clausnitzer's name in a Nürnberg Gesang-Buch (1676) in three stanzas, corresponding to the three persons of the Holy Trinity:
Wir glauben all' an einen Gott, We all believe in One true God, Vater, Sohn, heiligen...
YISRAEL V'ORAITA (TORAH SONG)
The earliest appearance in a hymnal of the tune YISRAEL V'ORAITA is probably as 'Song of Good News' in Orlando Schmidt's (1924-2002) Sing and Rejoice! (Scottsdale, Pennsylvania and Kitchener, Ontario, 1979), with copyright 1967 by Willard F. Jabusch*. Probably the copyright covers not only Jabusch's hymn ('Open your ears, O Christian people, Open your ears and hear good news!') but also the combination of the hymn and tune, which is printed as melody-only with...