My Starred Hymns
My FlexScores
My Hymnals
My Purchased Files
Planning worship?
Check out our sister site, ZeteoSearch.org,
for 20+ additional resources related to your search.
- |
User Links
Person Results
John Bacchus Dykes
1823 - 1876 Person Name: J. B. Dykes Composer of "ST. SYLVESTER" in The New Laudes Domini As a young child John Bacchus Dykes (b. Kingston-upon-Hull' England, 1823; d. Ticehurst, Sussex, England, 1876) took violin and piano lessons. At the age of ten he became the organist of St. John's in Hull, where his grandfather was vicar. After receiving a classics degree from St. Catherine College, Cambridge, England, he was ordained in the Church of England in 1847. In 1849 he became the precentor and choir director at Durham Cathedral, where he introduced reforms in the choir by insisting on consistent attendance, increasing rehearsals, and initiating music festivals. He served the parish of St. Oswald in Durham from 1862 until the year of his death. To the chagrin of his bishop, Dykes favored the high church practices associated with the Oxford Movement (choir robes, incense, and the like). A number of his three hundred hymn tunes are still respected as durable examples of Victorian hymnody. Most of his tunes were first published in Chope's Congregational Hymn and Tune Book (1857) and in early editions of the famous British hymnal, Hymns Ancient and Modern.
Bert Polman
John Bacchus Dykes
Lowell Mason
1792 - 1872 Person Name: L. Mason Composer of "COWPER" in The Academic Hymnal Dr. Lowell Mason (the degree was conferred by the University of New York) is justly called the father of American church music; and by his labors were founded the germinating principles of national musical intelligence and knowledge, which afforded a soil upon which all higher musical culture has been founded. To him we owe some of our best ideas in religious church music, elementary musical education, music in the schools, the popularization of classical chorus singing, and the art of teaching music upon the Inductive or Pestalozzian plan. More than that, we owe him no small share of the respect which the profession of music enjoys at the present time as contrasted with the contempt in which it was held a century or more ago. In fact, the entire art of music, as now understood and practiced in America, has derived advantage from the work of this great man.
Lowell Mason was born in Medfield, Mass., January 8, 1792. From childhood he had manifested an intense love for music, and had devoted all his spare time and effort to improving himself according to such opportunities as were available to him. At the age of twenty he found himself filling a clerkship in a banking house in Savannah, Ga. Here he lost no opportunity of gratifying his passion for musical advancement, and was fortunate to meet for the first time a thoroughly qualified instructor, in the person of F. L. Abel. Applying his spare hours assiduously to the cultivation of the pursuit to which his passion inclined him, he soon acquired a proficiency that enabled him to enter the field of original composition, and his first work of this kind was embodied in the compilation of a collection of church music, which contained many of his own compositions. The manuscript was offered unavailingly to publishers in Philadelphia and in Boston. Fortunately for our musical advancement it finally secured the attention of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, and by its committee was submitted to Dr. G. K. Jackson, the severest critic in Boston. Dr. Jackson approved most heartily of the work, and added a few of his own compositions to it. Thus enlarged, it was finally published in 1822 as The Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music. Mason's name was omitted from the publication at his own request, which he thus explains, "I was then a bank officer in Savannah, and did not wish to be known as a musical man, as I had not the least thought of ever making music a profession." President Winchester, of the Handel and Haydn Society, sold the copyright for the young man. Mr. Mason went back to Savannah with probably $500 in his pocket as the preliminary result of his Boston visit.
The book soon sprang into universal popularity, being at once adopted by the singing schools of New England, and through this means entering into the church choirs, to whom it opened up a higher field of harmonic beauty. Its career of success ran through some seventeen editions. On realizing this success, Mason determined to accept an invitation to come to Boston and enter upon a musical career. This was in 1826. He was made an honorary member of the Handel and Haydn Society, but declined to accept this, and entered the ranks as an active member. He had been invited to come to Boston by President Winchester and other musical friends and was guaranteed an income of $2,000 a year. He was also appointed, by the influence of these friends, director of music at the Hanover, Green, and Park Street churches, to alternate six months with each congregation. Finally he made a permanent arrangement with the Bowdoin Street Church, and gave up the guarantee, but again friendly influence stepped in and procured for him the position of teller at the American Bank.
In 1827 Lowell Mason became president and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society. It was the beginning of a career that was to win for him as has been already stated the title of "The Father of American Church Music." Although this may seem rather a bold claim it is not too much under the circumstances. Mr. Mason might have been in the average ranks of musicianship had he lived in Europe; in America he was well in advance of his surroundings. It was not too high praise (in spite of Mason's very simple style) when Dr. Jackson wrote of his song collection: "It is much the best book I have seen published in this country, and I do not hesitate to give it my most decided approbation," or that the great contrapuntist, Hauptmann, should say the harmonies of the tunes were dignified and churchlike and that the counterpoint was good, plain, singable and melodious.
Charles C. Perkins gives a few of the reasons why Lowell Mason was the very man to lead American music as it then existed. He says, "First and foremost, he was not so very much superior to the members as to be unreasonably impatient at their shortcomings. Second, he was a born teacher, who, by hard work, had fitted himself to give instruction in singing. Third, he was one of themselves, a plain, self-made man, who could understand them and be understood of them."
The personality of Dr. Mason was of great use to the art and appreciation of music in this country. He was of strong mind, dignified manners, sensitive, yet sweet and engaging.
Prof. Horace Mann, one of the great educators of that day, said he would walk fifty miles to see and hear Mr. Mason teach if he could not otherwise have that advantage.
Dr. Mason visited a number of the music schools in Europe, studied their methods, and incorporated the best things in his own work. He founded the Boston Academy of Music. The aim of this institution was to reach the masses and introduce music into the public schools. Dr. Mason resided in Boston from 1826 to 1851, when he removed to New York. Not only Boston benefited directly by this enthusiastic teacher's instruction, but he was constantly traveling to other societies in distant cities and helping their work. He had a notable class at North Reading, Mass., and he went in his later years as far as Rochester, where he trained a chorus of five hundred voices, many of them teachers, and some of them coming long distances to study under him. Before 1810 he had developed his idea of "Teachers' Conventions," and, as in these he had representatives from different states, he made musical missionaries for almost the entire country. He left behind him no less than fifty volumes of musical collections, instruction books, and manuals.
As a composer of solid, enduring church music. Dr. Mason was one of the most successful this country has introduced. He was a deeply pious man, and was a communicant of the Presbyterian Church. Dr. Mason in 1817 married Miss Abigail Gregory, of Leesborough, Mass. The family consisted of four sons, Daniel Gregory, Lowell, William and Henry. The two former founded the publishing house of Mason Bros., dissolved by the death of the former in 1869. Lowell and Henry were the founders of the great organ manufacturer of Mason & Hamlin. Dr. William Mason was one of the most eminent musicians that America has yet produced.
Dr. Lowell Mason died at "Silverspring," a beautiful residence on the side of Orange Mountain, New Jersey, August 11, 1872, bequeathing his great musical library, much of which had been collected abroad, to Yale College.
--Hall, J. H. (c1914). Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.
Lowell Mason
I. B. Woodbury
1819 - 1858 Composer of "DORRNANCE" in New Manual of Praise Woodbury, Isaac Baker. (Beverly, Massachusetts, October 23, 1819--October 26, 1858, Columbia, South Carolina). Music editor. As a boy, he studied music in nearby Boston, then spent his nineteenth year in further study in London and Paris.
He taught for six years in Boston, traveling throughout New England with the Bay State Glee Club. He later lived at Bellow Falls, Vermont, where he organized the New Hampshire and Vermont Musical Association. In 1849 he settled in New York City where he directed the music at the Rutgers Street Church until ill-health caused him to resign in 1851. He became editor of the New York Musical Review and made another trip to Europe in 1852 to collect material for the magazine. in the fall of 1858 his health broke down from overwork and he went south hoping to regain his strength, but died three days after reaching Columbia, South Carolina.
He published a number of tune-books, of which the Dulcimer, of New York Collection of Sacred Music, went through a number of editions. His Elements of Musical Composition, 1844, was later issued as the Self-instructor in Musical Composition. He also assisted in the compilation of the Methodist Hymn Book of 1857.
--Leonard Ellinwood, DNAH Archives
I. B. Woodbury
Henry Bateman
1802 - 1872 Person Name: Bateman Author of "Gracious Saviour, thus before thee" in New Manual of Praise Bateman, Henry, a popular writer of hymns for children, was descended from the De Voeux, a Huguenot family. Born on March 6, 1802, in Bunhill Row, Finsbury, he was educated for commercial pursuits, and followed the trade of a timber merchant. He died in 1872. During the greater part of his life he was addicted to the writing of poetry, but his hymns were mostly written between 1856 and 1864. His published works are:—
(1) Belgium and Up and Down the Rhine, 1858; (2) Sunday Sunshine: New Hymns and Poems for the Young, 1858; (3) Home Musings: Metrical Lay Sermons, 1862; (4) Heart Melodies: Being 365 New Hymns and Psalms, 1862; (5) Fret Not, and Other Poems, including Hymns with music, 1869.
From his Sunday Sunshine (Lond., Nisbet & Co., 1858) the following hymns have come into common use:—
1. A holy and a happy youth. Youthful Piety.
2. A noble river, wide and deep. Finding of Moses.
3. A sparrow with its plain brown coat. Providence.
4. A thought is but a little thing. Little Things.
5. A tranquil heart and pleasant thought. Peace.
6. A pebble in the water. Little Things.
7. Always by day, always by night. Omniscience.
8. And is it true that Jesus came? Good Shepherd.
9. At Jordan John baptizing taught. Whitsuntide.
10. Cross purposes, how sad they are. Duty.
11. Daniel was right as right could be. Duty.
12. From grassy nest on fluttering wing. Providence.
13. God does not judge as we must do. Charity.
14. God made the sea, the wide, deep sea. Providence.
15. Good night, good night, the day is done. Evening.
16. Great God, the world is full of Thee. Omnipresence.
17. How joyously amongst the flowers. Cain & Abel.
18. I always love those friends the best. Jesus the Truth.
19. If anything seems too hard to do. Perseverance.
20. In Eden's garden, fair and bright. Holiness.
21. In my soft, bed when quite alone. Omniscience.
22. In the wild desert, far from home. Providence.
23. It is but little that I know. Faith.
24. May I touch His garment's hem. Faith.
25. No tears in heaven! ah, then 1 know. Heaven.
26. O lead me not, O lead me not. The Lord's Prayer.
27. On the green grass five thousand men. Providence.
28. Over the fields in hedgerows green. Duty.
29. Sometimes I do not like to feel. Solitude.
30. There is one thing quite sure to make. Good Temper.
31. Thou blessed Jesus, pity me. Jesus the Guide.
32. Through all the way, the little way. Providence.
33. 'Tis very wonderful, I'm sure. Trust.
34. Tramp, tramp upon their unknown way. The Red Sea.
35. When God bade Abraham sacrifice. Resignation.
36. When Jairus's daughter was so ill. Power of Christ.
37. When morning, fresh and bright and new. Morning.
38. The good old book! with histories. Holy Scriptures.
39. Year after year, with patient love. A Parent's Love.
In addition to the foregoing the following from his Heart Melodies, &c. (Lond., Snow, 1862), are also in common use, and have attained to some popularity:—
40. Gracious Saviour, gentle Shepherd [thus before Thee]. Evening.
41. Let us pray, the Lord is willing. Prayer.
42. Was it for me, dear Lord, for me? Good Friday.
As will be gathered from the above list of hymns in common use, the Sunday Sunshine has been the most successful of Mr. Bateman's works. This success is due mainly to the fact that the hymns deal with subjects easily treated of in hymns for children. His hymns are hearty and natural in tone. Some of the best of those published in the Sunday Sunshine were given in the Book of Praise for Children, 1875, edited by W. Garrett Holder, and from thence have passed into many collections for children. His best hymn is "Light of the world! Whose kind and gentle care" (q. v.). It is a prayer of more than usual merit for Divine guidance. [Rev. W. Garrett Holder]
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Henry Bateman
Wilhelm A. F. Schulthes
1816 - 1879 Person Name: W. A. F. Schultz Composer of "[Gracious Saviour, thus before Thee]" in The Church School Hymnal with Tunes Wilhelm August Ferdinand Schulthes Germany 1816-1879. Born at Hesse Castle, Germany, son of a German army officer, he was raised Lutheran, but turned to Roman Catholicism around 1852. He directed the Brompton Oratory choir (1852-1872). He taught music at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton (1868-1879). He also wrote poetry. No information found regarding family or other life events. He died at Bois-de-Colombes, France.
John Perry
Wilhelm A. F. Schulthes
