Hymn Blog - January 17, 2010

VU 530 – All Beautiful the March of Days. Many nature hymns speak of springtime and harvest. Not this one, written by Frances Whitmarsh Wile in 1911, on the suggestion to write about “the spiritual values of winter” by her pastor, William Channing Gannett, of the First Unitarian Church, Rochester, NY. And so the lovely wintry references. The tune is FOREST GREEN, an English traditional melody harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

MV 187 – We Give Our Thanks. See last week’s blog.

MV 28 – God of the Bible. The text is by Shirley Erena Murray, a New Zealand hymn poet whose beautiful and thought provoking texts appear frequently in Voices United (12 texts) and More Voices (6 texts).Composer Tony Alonso is a Catholic composer of contemporary liturgical music. In addition to five published collections of liturgical music with GIA Publications (Chicago, Illinois), Tony’s music appears in several compilations and hymnals throughout North America. A graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in choral conducting, Tony currently serves as the Director of Music for the Campus Ministry Team at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

MV 85 – Take, O Take Me as I Am. Our prayer response comes to us from the Iona Community. John Bell (text and music) is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland and a Member of the Iona Community. After a period in the Netherlands and two posts in church youth work, he became employed full time in the areas of music and worship with the Wild Goose Resource Group. He is a past convenor of the Church of Scotland's Panel on Worship and was convener of the Committee which produced its Church Hymnary 4. In 1999 he was honoured by the Presbyterian Church of Canada and the Royal School of Church Music which bestowed a Fellowship on him, and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow. He was made a Fellow of the Hymn Society in 2006. John has produced (some in collaboration with Graham Maule), many collections of original hymns and songs and two collections of songs of the World Church. These are published by the Iona Community in Scotland and by G.I.A. Publications (Chicago) in N. America. He is an occasional broadcaster, lectures in theological colleges in Britain, Canada and the U.S., but is primarily concerned with the renewal of congregational worship at grass roots level. Graham Maule (text collaborator) studied architecture, followed by several years in youth work, before moving into the area of worship renewal and adult education with the Wild Goose Resource Group of the Iona Community. Graham’s main areas of interest are in innovative lay training and education (theological and artistic) and lay involvement in worship.

VU 394 – Moved by the Gospel, Let Us Move. Ruth Duck, United Church of Christ minister, theological educator and hymn poet wrote this hymn celebrating the role of the arts in worship at the request of Janet Pearson Roth, a designer of robes and stoles, who was born in Toronto. It was published in Duck’s 1992 collection “Dancing in the Universe.” The tune, BETHLEHEM, was composed by Gottfried W. Fink in 1843, and has been used in many 20^th century hymn books.