SOLID ROCK

Composer: William B. Bradbury

William Bachelder Bradbury USA 1816-1868. Born at York, ME, he was raised on his father's farm, with rainy days spent in a shoe-shop, the custom in those days. He loved music and spent spare hours practicing any music he could find. In 1830 the family moved to Boston, where he first saw and heard an organ and piano, and other instruments. He became an organist at 15. He attended Dr. Lowell Mason's singing classes, and later sang in the Bowdoin Street church choir. Dr. Mason became a good friend. He made $100/yr playing the organ, and was still in Dr. Mason's choir. Dr. Mason gave him a chance to teach singing in Machias, ME, which he accepted. He returned to Boston the following year to marry Adra Esther Fessenden in 1838, then rel… Go to person page >

The Sunday school hymn writer William B. Bradbury (PHH 114) composed SOLID ROCK in 1863 for Edward Mote's "My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less." The tune name derives from that song's refrain: "On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. . . .” Bradbury published SOLID ROCK in his 1864 children's collection The Golden Censor. The tune exhibits a bar form (AAB) with a coda added to its final line, allowing a repeat of the final phrase in the versification. The final line was originally the refrain line in Mote's gospel hymn. SOLID ROCK is well-suited to singing in harmony; festival use of instruments other than organ heightens the thanksgiving mood of the psalm text.

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988