Singing Praises — and Praising the Stories
A number of years ago, Lani Wright began a series for our newsletter of the history of various familiar hymns and hymn tunes. The plan was to solicit members’ recommendations of favorite hymns — as well as learn of memories that they associate with them. Sadly, a few of these hymn essays were over-written in the newsletter template, but here are the ones that have survived!
Please send in the title or first line of your favorite hymn (with or without any of your own musings and memories) — it doesn’t have to be in our current hymn book. In fact, if there is a hymn or gospel song you are interested in tracking down, one of us can probably find it for you!
The links are from a site or two that will actually play the tune for you. Sometimes the titles are different, but the tune will be the same. Here is the one I most often use: http://www.cyberhymnal.org (Note: clink the link on the word "MIDI" -- and make sure your sound is turned on!)
A number of similar sites on the Internet will play music that you are looking for and provide histories of the tunes and lyrics. But here is your chance to share your favorites with others and to add the memories, if you wish, that make them special to you.
Here are the hymn histories included here so far:
#538 Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing
THE SICILIAN MARINERS HYMN (SICILIAN MELODY)
Attrib. to John Fawcett (17401817), 1773
Conyer’s Collection of Psalms
St. Godfrey Thring (18231903)
Te origin of Sicilian Mariners (also known as “O Sanctissima”) is unknown, but in its first known appearance, it was the setting for “The Sicilian Mariner’s Hymn to the Virgin,” which begins with the Latin words O sanctissima. Soon thereafter it appeared in various German, English, and North American hymnals with various texts. In Germany this tune is traditionally sung with the Christmas text, “ O du fröliche, O du Selige,” of which there are a variety of English versions in other hymnals.
The tune name Sicilian Mariners has been around long enough to evoke some jokes as well. In a 1914 literary publication out of Britain’s Isle of Man appears a story about a young boy born to Manx (i.e. from the Isle of Man) parents in Marsala on the Mediterranean coast. Shipped home to London at the age of nine, the boy was greeted with, ‘“Well, so you have arrived at last; and how are the Sicilian Mariners?’ This little joke was lost upon the boy who simply answered, ‘Very well, thank you,’ but felt puzzled if not humiliated, for he did not then know what he soon afterwards found out from the church hymnbook, that there is a well-known tune bearing the name of ‘Sicilian Mariners.’” John Fawcett wrote the benediction that became the first two stanzas. Converted at age 16 under the ministry of George Whitefield, he at first joined the Methodists. He was eventually, however, ordained a Baptist minister at Wainsgate, Yorkshire.In 1772, he was invited to London to succeed J. Gill as pastor of the Carter’s Lane Baptist Church. On the day of his departure, he had preached his fare¬well sermon, the wagons were loaded, and he was ready to go. But he was so overcome by the thought of leaving the congregation he had come to love that he canceled his plans and stayed in Wainsgate. In 1793, Fawcett was invited to become president of the Baptist Academy in Bristol, but he similarly declined.In 1811, Fawcett received a Doctor of Divinity degree from an American school. With a long list of works and accomplishments to his name, he nevertheless practiced humility, as shown in the preface to Hymns Adapted to the Circumstances of Public Worship and Private Devotion:
I blush to think of these plain verses falling into the hands of persons of an elevated genius, and refined taste. To such, I know,they will appear flat, dull and unentertaining . . . . If it may be conducive, under divine blessing to warm the heart or assist thedevotion of any humble Christian in the closet, the family or thehouse of God, I shall therein sincerely rejoice, whatever censure I may incur from the polite world. #1091 in the Hymnal Companion,
“My feet are tired WALKING FOR THE GLORY OF
THE LORD
Frances Smith Thomas
Text and music: Frances Smith Thomas (1917–1999)
Commentary, “Thriving, with Scars,”
by Lani Wright
If you’ve ever traveled in the Pacific Northwest, you’ll find many small towns whose economic base was once the lumber industry, with local city parks or town welcome signs augmented by a horizontal slice of tree trunk towering higher than a tall man standing on a wagon bed. Kids scramble up to get their pictures taken astride it, grown-ups waggle their heads to imagine the vertical size of such a monster, and wonder at the energy it would take to fell it in the days before chainsaws and helicopters.
In our local Coiner Park, there’s a living remnant of such a tree — still vertical. It bears a wide white scar laid down a 30-foot length of its trunk not by any blade, but by one of those rare lightning strikes. It’s not one of the ancient monstrous trees, but what’s impressive is that, despite the damage inflicted years ago, it lives and thrives — scarred, yet whole, and tells the story of that powerful storm to any park visitor with open eyes.That’s how veterans of the US Civil Rights Movement live today — scarred, but thriving (the ones I know, anyway). As time marks us all, many of the ordinary-people-turned-activist with firsthand memories of those days are slipping away, and the rest of us are left to remember via their written stories and songs.We have at least one such song in the hymnal supplement. Because there is no room on the pages of the supplement booklets to include biographical sketches and anecdotal sidebars, here is yet another installment of a “serial” version of Hymnal Companion, expressly for selected supplement series songs. Attached to the original “My feet are tired” as it came to the selection committee, were the following stories.In the early days of the history-making nonviolent bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a newspaper reporter asked an elderly Negro woman whether she felt tired fromwalking several miles to and from her place of employment. “Well,” she replied, “my feet are tired, but my soul is resting.” The composer dedicated the song “to the 50,000 Negroes of Montgomery who, using only the weapon of love, withstood insults, threats, arrests, and bombings in their struggle with injustice; and who, with their faces turned toward freedom, kept ‘walking for the glory of the Lord.’” The song’s premier performance was at the Montgomery Anniversary concert, Manhattan Center, New York City, December 5, 1956. It featured Coretta Scott King (Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr.) as soloist, with Jonathan Brice at the piano. Since then, Mrs. King has presented this song in many recitals throughout the count as one of a group of spirituals describing the spirit of bus protest. Frances Smith Thomas, the peace and civil rights activist who wrote it, was a native of Columbia City, Indiana, and a 1939 graduate of Manchester College. A music major at the college, Frances studied social justice and international peace issues after Andrew Cordier, also a Manchester graduate and teacher (1923–1944), inspired her to do so. After graduating from Manchester, Frances and her husband, Cecil Thomas, taught at Lincoln School in Alabama, helping make the small, African-American school a viable experience for the young people of the community. Two of those students included Coretta Scott King and Jean Childs (1954) Young, wife of former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young. During Fran Smith Thomas’s memorial service, Coretta Scott King said, “In terms of our personal goals, they motivated, encouraged, and inspired us to reach for the highest and best. When it was time to go to college, it was the influence of Fran and Cecil Thomas that led Louise (Jean Childs’ sister), Cora (Jean Childs’ sister), and Jean Childs to come to Manchester; my sister Edyth and I to go to Antioch College . . . . They made sure we had scholarships, and other assistance to complete our college education.” After leaving Alabama, Fran and Cecil set up the first interracial work camp in the South in Nashville in 1943; they organized a bus protest caravan to Montgomery, Ala., in 1956; they organized a student delegation to Pakistan, India, and Ceylon in 1958; they established a conference on US-China relations in 1965; and they conducted a study tour of Japan in 1966. After Cecil’s death, Fran earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from Michigan State University (MSU). In 1978, she was appointed to MSU’s Department of Racial and Ethnic Studies, with special responsibility for developing the human rights program. She later worked for the School of Urban Affairs at MSU for 20 years. During the summers, she worked for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change in Atlanta. In her later years, Fran renewed her passion for music and became close to the Julliard String Quartet, Dizzy Gillespie, and Isaac Stern.#83 O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High
DEO GRACIAS
Apparuit benignitas
Attributed to Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380—1471)
Karlsruhe manuscript 368, 15th c.
Translated by Benjamin Webb (1819—1885)
The Hymnal Noted, 1851, alt. English melody, 15th c.
“The Agincourt Song”
This hymn originated in an anonymous Latin hymn of twenty-three rhymed stanzas, but it is sometimes attributed to Thomas à Kempis. Such conjecture is based on its affinity with the devotio moderna movement with which he was associated. This movement, which lasted from the lifetime of Thomas à Kempis until the 16th century, stressed meditation and the inner life.
Translator Benjamin Webb was an Anglican priest who was vicar of St. Andrew’s in London for more than 20 years. Under his leadership the church gained a reputation for the quality of its music. Webb promoted his English translation as a hymn for Sundays after Epiphany, the season celebrating the earthly ministry of Christ. The most widely used stanzas of this translation include Christ’s incarnation, baptism, fasting and temptation, intercession and suffering. The Presbyterian hymnal includes a stanza on Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and some others incorporate the descent of the Holy Spirit: For us he rose from death again; for us he went on high to reign; for us he sent his Spirit here to guide, to comfort, and to cheer. Thus, we have a hymn for all seasons and stanzas appropriate to specific celebrations could also be used individually.
DEO GRACIAS was the melody sung to a ballad celebrating the victory of King Henry V of England over the French at Agincourt in 1415. The king, however, insisted that credit be given to God instead; hence the words Deo gratias (thanks be to God). Following the Latin refrain Deo gratias, Anglia, redde pro victoria, the first stanza is:
Our king went forth to Normandy, With grace and might and chivalry: There God for him wrought marv’lously Wherefore England may call and cry: Deo gracias. (Loewen, Moyer, Oyer 1983)Quite a lovely recording of the Agincourt song can be found here:
Like the boisterous event (the fanfare makes sense in this context) for which it was first sung, Deo Gracias is a vigorous tune in the Dorian mode (the scale on the white keys of the piano from D to D). The present hymn tune does not include the music of the refrain because there is no text refrain. Early English sources for Deo Gracias include a parchment roll “dating from the first half of the fifteenth century and a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, coming probably from the mid-fifteenth century” (Stulken 1981).
THOMAS À KEMPIS (b. ca. 1380, Kempen, near Düsseldorf, Germany; d. 1471, Zwolle, Holland), whose surname was Hammerken, was born to peasant parents. When he was twelve, he attended a “poor-scholars’ house” connected with a community known as the Brethren of the Common Life in Deventer. There he was known as Thomas from Kempen (Latin, à Kempis). At age eighteen, he was admitted to the brotherhood and a year later joined the new monastery at Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle. In 1407 he took his vows, was ordained a priest in 1413, and became a sub-prior in 1425. He stayed at Mount St. Agnes until his death, writing and editing several biographies, tracts, and hymns. He probably edited and compiled the classic devotional The Imitation of Christ (1471), which contains the aims of his community, a lay fellowship devoted to Christian service as exemplified by Christ.(This one is not in our hymnal)
O Spirit, All-Embracing
THAXTED
Text: Delores Dufner, OSB, 2000
Music: Gustav Holst (1874–1934), The Planets, 1918
English composer Gustav Holst has been described by a biographer as an “oversensitive and somewhat miserable child” who was plagued life-long by physical health challenges. Even so, he combated poor health and the proverbial financial constraint of artists by developing a habit of prodigious walking or cycling, as well as eating a vegetarian diet decades before it was fashionable. When neuritis in his hand defeated him as a keyboardist and he took up the trombone, it marked a significant juncture in his development as a composer, since he learned to hear entire orchestrations in his mind’s ear. With a trombone strapped on his back as he strode over the English countryside, it also marked him as an oddity.
Despite his initial training at the Royal College of Music, Holst was largely self-taught as a composer, learning by experience and pondering deeply on his art. He avoided preconceived systems and academic theory. He went his own way experimenting; constantly searching for the right notes. Sometimes he was successful in his experimentation, sometimes not. Although he was naturally delighted with success he was wary of it and not put off by failure. “If nobody likes your work, you have to go on for the sake of the work,” he said. “And you’re in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself.” He refused the safe, easy answer. Neither could his personality be pinned down. Even more than most people, he was a remarkable combination of opposing characteristics – gregarious and solitary, perceptive and naïve in life and music. Despite the influence of the simplicity and directness of English folk-songs, he exhibited in his music a strong logical clarity of expression with a capacity to create the most complex contrapuntal forms, along with the irrational, romantic creativity. Holst was a contemporary and friend of Ralph Vaughn Williams, but never garnered the popularity of Vaughn Williams, perhaps because of the complexity of his works. He was as thorough as he was esoteric in his music and his personal interests — he set to music everything from Walt Whitman texts to the Hindu scriptures of the Rig Veda and the apocryphal gospels, for which he learned Sanskrit and Greek in order to most faithfully translate the poems he was interested in. Delores Dufner’s text, “O Spirit, all-embracing,” picks up the sense of an endless universe conveyed in Holst’s “Jupiter” movement, nicely matching the magnanimity of the tune. Notice how many strong names for the Spirit of God: Counselor all-wise, Stream of endless flowing, Wind of springtime, Beauty ever-blazing, Fire of glory, Undying flame, Passion’s power. Yet all this strength and power is best illumined when we humans, “servants lowly” that we are, are inspired by it to gain an understanding heart, delight in wisdom, and an urge to be always seeking the great Mystery and Light of not only the planets, but of the universe. In the end, Dufner’s text echoes the psalmist who, in contemplating the heavens (Psalm 8) was over-awed by the frailty of human life and by divine attention to mortals. We need both perspectives. So try this reminder from an old rabbinic story – write on one card or slip of paper: “You are but a speck in the universe.” Put it in your left pocket. And go stare at the night sky. Now write on another card or paper, “For you, the universe was created.” Put it in your right pocket. And go stare at the night sky. 1 O Spirit, all-embracing and counselor all-wise,
Unbounded splendor gracing a shoreless sea of skies:
Unfailing is your treasure, unfading your reward;
Surpassing worldly pleasure, the riches you afford.
Come, stream of endless flowing, and rescue us from death;
Come, wind of springtime blowing, and warm us by your breath.
2 O Beauty, ever-blazing in flower, field and face,
You show yourself amazing in unexpected place.
We see you and remember what once our dreams had been;
You fan the glowing ember and kindle hope within.
Come, fire of glory gracious, bless all who trust in you;
Undying flame tenacious, burn in your world (church) anew.
3 Come, passion’s power holy, your insight here impart,
And give your servants lowly an understanding heart
To know your care more clearly when faith and love are tried,
To seek you more sincerely when false ideals have died:
For vision we implore you, for wisdom’s pure delight;
In prayer we come before you to wait upon your light.
