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Gospel Songs and Lent? |
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION We sing gospel songs because, well, we just like to - they are the musical equivalent of comfort food. But more importantly today, we sing them because they connect many times with great Lenten themes of sin, redemption, the cross, the resurrection (we're into Holy Week now), and heaven or hell. Above all gospel songs stress the first person singular pronoun, the ground zero for introspection, surely a Lenten theme since the 40 days of Lent come from the 40 days of Jesus' introspection in the wilderness. Consider this quote from today's bulletin, Frederick Buechner's words on Lent: In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year's income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves...To hear yourself answer (such a question) is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end of it.[1] No sermon today - just notes on the music. As you listen, I suspect you will be struck as I was by some of the connections we will discover in the backgrounds of these gospel songs (e.g., the link between the authors of Stand By Me and Precious Lord, Take My Hand), the ties between popular music and higher education (e.g., Bucknell and Oberlin Colleges are represented), and the poignant circumstances surrounding such hymns as There's Within My Heart a Melody, When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, and Precious Lord, Take My Hand.[2] Shall We Gather at the River is by Robert Lowry, a 19th century Baptist pastor, professor and author hymn texts and tunes. A graduate of Bucknell University and later professor of belles-lettres there, he was a pastor in New York and New Jersey. When he was pastor at Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn during an oppressively hot summer, he found refreshment in the vision of the heavenly river. Lowry was also concerned that so much was said about the "river of death: and so little about the "pure water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." The contemporary American composer Aaron Copland has brought the hymn to the attention of serious vocal students and recital and concert audiences. There's Within My Heart a Melody was written in 1910 by Luther B. Bridgers, a Methodist minister and missionary. He wrote this hymn after a house fire in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, claimed the lives of his wife and three sons. Just a Closer Walk with Thee is of unknown origin. It appeared in the evangelistic song books of the Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company in the late 1940's. Precious Lord, Take My Hand was written by Thomas A. Dorsey in 1932 just a few days after the death of his wife and their infant son while he was away on a gospel music tour. He said, "I felt that God had done me an injustice. I didn't want to serve Him anymore or write gospel songs. I just wanted to go back to that jazz world I once knew so well." A friend helped him and encouraged him to return to the piano. As he began to play, he once again felt close to God and the words, "Precious Lord, take my hand," came to him. Dorsey was the son of an itinerant Baptist preacher. HE toured in the 1920's with the famed blues singer Gertrude (Ma) Rainey, accompanying her with his Wildcat Jazz Band. The music is Dorsey's arrangement of a melody by George Nelson, Professor of Sacred Music and Geology at Oberlin College, and a prime mover in the establishment of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1865. How Great Thou Art is so popular that it seems like "one of the old songs," but it is actually a fairly recent addition to North American hymnody. It was in 1955 when George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows introduced the song in a Billy Graham crusade in Toronto. It did not appear in a Southern Baptist hymnal until 1975. The words are by a Swedish hymn writer, Carl Boberg, and a Methodist missionary who served in the Ukraine, Stuart Hine. The melody is of unknown Swedish origin. Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound is John Newton's widely loved hymn. (The anonymous 5th stanza is the last verse of another hymn, Jerusalem, My Happy Home.) The tune, "New Britain," is of unknown derivation, having been ascribed to an early American origin and also to an African folk source. William Walker of Spartanburg, South Carolina, first joined the tune to Newton's words in 1835. Walker was a Baptist deacon and leader of congregational singing. Jesus Loves Me has words written by Anna Warner who taught a Sunday School class for West Point cadets. She authored a novel (1860) in which a sick child is held by his Sunday School teacher who sings this song. Miss Warner was buried with military honors and willed her home on the Hudson River to the United States Military Academy. The melody was written for the text by William Bradbury. Missionaries report that it is the favorite hymn of children in China, hence the tune name. Bradbury was organist at Baptist churches in New York City and a founder of the Bradbury Piano Company, later taken over by Knabe. He also wrote the music for He Leadeth Me, The Solid Rock, and Just As I Am. Stand By Me is by Charles Albert Tindley, who was born in Berlin, Maryland, in the 1850's, the son of slaves. His mother died when he was a child, and he was soon separated from his father. Charles was determined to get an education; he plowed all day and walked or ran 14 miles at night to learn from a teacher. He moved the Eastern Shore to Philadelphia where he worked as a church janitor and went to night school. Eventually he worked his way through college and seminary, becoming a pastor. In 1902 he became pastor of the church where he had been at the janitor. The church grew to over 7,000 members. He wrote many hymns, including Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There. His music inspired Thomas A. Dorsey to forsake vaudeville and the blues to write religious music, including his classic, Precious Lord, Take My Hand. His hymn, I'll Overcome Some Day ("If in my heart, I do not yield, I'll overcome some day." was easily transformed into the greatest of all freedom songs, We Shall Overcome. Just a Little Talk with Jesus is listed as a spiritual by Cleavant Derricks. In the chorus the men should "go for it" on the bass line! Footsteps of Jesus has a text by Mary Bridges Canedy Slade, a Fall River, Massachusetts teacher, assistant editor of The New England Journal of Education and wife of a minister. The melody is by Asa B. Everett who completed his medical training only to pursue a career in music. He studied in Leipzig, Germany for four years. I have not been able to discover any information on Whispering Hope, but I can tell you that several years ago Rae Cumbie and Sue Pierson did a dynamite duet of this gospel song. I'll Fly Away - In Robert Duvall's brilliant film, The Apostle, in his role as the preacher, Apostle E. F., he gathers his little band in the local radio station. They are going to sing I'll Fly Away, a song which some might misunderstand as escapism, but the Apostle E. F. connects it to behavior in the here and now. Before the song is over we see the people leaving the station carrying food for Thanksgiving Baskets. In a brief clip which Bill Butler will show after the postlude the Apostle sets up the song by saying, "I'm gonna fly away someday. I've got me my own lil' airplane. Someday I'm gonna' take off. I'm not going to Jackson, MS. I'm not going to New Orleans, LA. I'm not going to Paris, France. I'm going down that runway. I'm going yonder to heaven. I'm gonna' get up there and say `get outta the way booze! Get outta way starvin'!' I'm on my way to heaven. I'm on my way to heaven! Glory!" When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder was written by James M. Black of Williamsport, PA. He had invited a poorly clad child of a drunkard to Sunday School, where the children answered the roll call by reciting a scripture verse. The new girl was unable to respond at her first meeting. Black was troubled by the thought that all our names will be called from the Lamb's Book of Life. How sad if we are not present and ready to respond when our name is called. He wrote the entire hymn, words and music, in 15 minutes and never changed a note. The girl died of pneumonia ten days later. I would think that at her funeral this song was sung. Let the Lower Lights Be Burning was written by P. P. Bliss after he heard the evangelist Dwight L. Moody use a sermon illustration about a pilot during a storm. "Brethren," Moody concluded, "the Master will take care of the great lighthouse. Let us keep the lower lights burning." Bliss wrote the music for Wonderful Word of Life and It Is Well with My Soul. [This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook congregation and may not be reproduced without permission.] Notes: [1] Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark - An ABC Theologized [New York: Harper and Row] 1973, pp. 74-75 [2] My sources for this information are: Jere V. Adams, editor, Handbook to the Baptist Hymnal [Nashville: Convention Press] 1992; Kenneth W. Osbeck, Amazing Grace: 365 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotionals [Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications] 1990; William J. Reynolds, Companion to the Baptist Hymnal [Nashville: Broadman Press] 1976 |