Music Ministry Musings from Mary
Today we examine two of our upcoming hymns for Sunday, Amazing Grace and Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, two widely popular hymns across the globe. You can click on the link to hear the St. Thomas-Epiphany Choir sing the first verse of each hymn.
The text of Amazing Grace was written by Englishman John Newton (1725-1807) and first published in Olney Hymns in 1779, for which Newton was a major contributor.
The story behind this autobiographical text is truly remarkable. John Newton began life as a seaman at the age of 11, and worked in the slave trade. In 1745 he himself became a slave to Princess Peye of the Sherbro tribe in what is now Sierra Leone, Africa. He was rescued in 1748, but continued working in the slave trade, and by 1750 was captain of two slave ships. He experienced a conversion to Christianity, and denounced his slave trading past, and became an ardent abolitionist. He went on to become an Anglican priest and worked tirelessly for the abolition of slavery and for the care of his parishes, first in Olney, Buckinghamshire and later as Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, London. It was during his 16 year tenure in Olney that he wrote and published Amazing Grace. During his time at Olney the church built a balcony to hold all the people who would come to hear him preach.
The music that we now sing to Amazing Grace first appeared in the American shape-note hymnal Columbian Harmony (Cincinnati, 1829) paired with another hymn text. Our Amazing Grace tune, which we now know as New Britain, had a number of different tune names in its early life. The first time we see New Britain paired with Newton’s text is in William Walker’s Southern Harmony (New Haven, CT, 1835). Amazingly, this immensely popular hymn did not enter Episcopal hymnals until the Hymnal Supplement in 1976.
Our second hymn this Sunday is the equally popular Joyful, joyful, we adore thee (tune name: Ode to Joy). The text was penned by Henry van Dyke (1852-1933), a prominent Presbyterian minister, during a visit to Williams College in the Berkshires in 1907, where he presented the text to the college president with these words: “Here is a hymn for you. Your mountains were my inspiration. It must be sung to the tune of Beethoven’s ‘Hymn to Joy’”. Interestingly, this text was set to another tune, Alleluia, in the Episcopal Hymnal 1940, and didn’t meet up with Beethoven’s tune until our current Hymnal 1982. Beethoven’s tune, of course, comes from the finale of his Ninth Symphony (1823). Beethoven drew his text for the Ninth Symphony from German poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller’s (1759-1805) poem An die Freude (Ode to Joy), which describes a vision of the brotherhood of the human race. Beethoven was ahead of his time in his commitment to the rights and value of individual humans rather than the ruling classes of the day. Of note as well is the fact that Beethoven was completely deaf by the time he composed his Ninth Symphony. Ode to Joy has become the official Anthem of the European Community.
