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Michael Praetorius

1571 - 1621 Person Name: M. Praetorius Harmonizer of "ES IST EIN' ROS'" in Rejoice in the Lord Born into a staunchly Lutheran family, Michael Praetorius (b. Creuzburg, Germany, February 15, 1571; d. Wolfenbüttel, Germany, February 15, 1621) was educated at the University of Frankfort-an-der-Oder. In 1595 he began a long association with Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick, when he was appointed court organist and later music director and secretary. The duke resided in Wolfenbüttel, and Praetorius spent much of his time at the court there, eventually establishing his own residence in Wolfenbüttel as well. When the duke died, Praetorius officially retained his position, but he spent long periods of time engaged in various musical appointments in Dresden, Magdeburg, and Halle. Praetorius produced a prodigious amount of music and music theory. His church music consists of over one thousand titles, including the sixteen-volume Musae Sionae (1605-1612), which contains Lutheran hymns in settings ranging from two voices to multiple choirs. His Syntagma Musicum (1614-1619) is a veritable encyclopedia of music and includes valuable information about the musical instruments of his time. Bert Polman

Paul Manz

1919 - 2009 Composer of "SITTLER" in Sing to the Lord Paul Manz (May 10, 1919 – October 28, 2009), was an American composer for choir and organ. His most famous choral work is the Advent motet "E'en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come", which has been performed at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge, though its broadcast by the neighbouring Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, in its Advent Carol Service precipitated its popularity. His most famous organ works are his volumes of neo-Baroque chorale preludes and partitas. Paul Manz long served the church as recitalist, composer, teacher and leader in worship. He was Cantor Emeritus at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke, Chicago, Illinois; as well as Cantor Emeritus of Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was the director of the newly established Paul Manz Institute of Church Music, and was Professor Emeritus of Church Music at Christ Seminary Seminex at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Paul Otto Manz was born to Otto and Hulda (Jeske) Manz in Cleveland, Ohio. Trained as an educator at Concordia Teacher's College in River Forest, Illinois (now Concordia University Chicago ) he earned a Master's Degree in Music at Northwestern University. A Fulbright grant enabled him to study with Flor Peeters in Belgium and Helmut Walcha in Germany. The Belgian government invited him to be the official United States representative in ceremonies honoring Flor Peeters on his 80th birthday and his 60th year as titular organist of the Cathedral of Saint Rombout in Mechelen, Belgium. At that time, Flor Peeters referred to his former student as ‘my spiritual son.’ Paul Manz concertized extensively in North America. He appeared at Lincoln Center in New York City, with the National Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Geoffrey Simon, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall and with the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, and Henry Charles Smith. In addition, he played recitals in churches and cathedrals here and abroad. He was in great demand for his hymn festivals, which are his legacy as a church musician. He conducted many organ clinics, participated in liturgical seminars and appeared as lecturer and recitalist at the regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists. The esteem and respect with which Paul Manz is regarded can be seen in the many honors he received. He was twice named one of the “Ten Most Influential Lutherans,” served as National Councilor of the American Guild of Organists and is listed as one of the “101 Most Notable Organists of the 20th Century.”[6] He was the recipient of many honorary doctorates and awards. Northwestern University, his alma mater, presented him with the prestigious “Alumni Merit Award;.” The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago presented him with the distinguished "Confessor of Christ Award"; The Chicago Bible Society presented him with the “Gutenberg Award; and the Lutheran Institute of Washington, DC honored him with the first “Wittenberg Arts Award.” At a convention of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, his colleagues honored him for his work in the church. A large gathering in Minneapolis, Minnesota held a “Paul Manz Celebration: Honoring the Life of a Church Musician” where substantial gifts were given to the Ruth and Paul Manz Scholarship for Church Musicians. Trinity Seminary of Columbus, Ohio bestowed the “Joseph Sittler Award for Theological Leadership” and among his many honorary doctorates is the Doctor of Sacred Music degree from Valparaiso University, and most recently, the Doctor of Music degree from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. As a performer, Manz was most famous for his celebrated hymn festivals. Instead of playing traditional organ recitals, Manz would generally lead a "festival" of hymns from the organ, in which he introduced each hymn with one of his famously creative organ improvisations based on the hymn tune in question. The congregation would then sing the hymn with his accompaniment. Sometimes he would play an improvisation between each sung stanza, as with his well-known variations on the tune, St. Anne, sung to the Isaac Watts text "Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past" with which he would traditionally end each festival. Many volumes of these improvisations have been written out and published and are played by church organists throughout the world. His musical compositions are internationally known. His organ works are extensively used in worship services, recitals and in teaching. His choral music is widely used by church and college choirs here and abroad. His motet, "E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come" is regarded as a classic and has been frequently recorded. His life and works are the subject of a doctoral dissertation which details his career spanning more than fifty years and analyzes his organ works. --en.wikipedia.org

David Hurd

b. 1950 Person Name: David Hurd, 1950- Composer of "ANDUJAR" in Worship and Rejoice David Hurd (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1950) was a boy soprano at St. Gabriel's Church in Hollis, Long Island, New York. Educated at Oberlin College and the University of North Carolina, he has been professor of church music and organist at General Theological Seminary in New York since 1976. In 1985 he also became director of music for All Saints Episcopal Church, New York. Hurd is an outstanding recitalist and improvisor and a composer of organ, choral, and instrumental music. In 1987 David Hurd was awarded the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, by the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. The following year he received honorary doctorates from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, and from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois. His I Sing As I Arise Today, the collected hymn tunes of David Hurd, was published in 2010. Bert Polman and Emily Brink

Marty Haugen

b. 1950 Person Name: Marty Haugen, b. 1950 Composer of "ANNIKA" in Gather Comprehensive Marty Haugen (b. 1950), is a prolific liturgical composer with many songs included in hymnals across the liturgical spectrum of North American hymnals and beyond, with many songs translated into different languages. He was raised in the American Lutheran Church, received a BA in psychology from Luther College, yet found his first position as a church musician in a Roman Catholic parish at a time when the Roman Catholic Church was undergoing profound liturgical and musical changes after Vatican II. Finding a vocation in that parish to provide accessible songs for worship, he continued to compose and to study, receiving an MA in pastoral studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul Minnesota. A number of liturgical settings were prepared for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and more than 400 of his compositions are available from several publishers, especially GIA Publications, who also produced some 30 recordings of his songs. He is composer-in-residence at Mayflower Community Congregational Church in Minneapolis and continues to compose and travel to speak and teach at worship events around the world. Emily Brink

Richard Wilbur

1921 - 2017 Author of "A Stable Lamp Is Lighted" in Rejoice in the Lord Richard Wilbur was born in New York City on March 1, 1921. He graduated with a B.A. from Amherst, where he was editor of the college newspaper, in 1942. Youthful engagements with leftist causes caught the attention of federal investigators when he was in training as a U.S. Army cryptographer, and he was demoted to a front-line infantry position where he saw action in the field in Italy, France and Germany. (When the cryptographer in Wilbur’s unit was killed, Wilbur also took over that function.) After demobilization, he continued his studies at Harvard where he obtained an M.A. in 1947, the year his first book was published. He was a member of the prestigious Harvard Fellows and taught there until 1954, when he moved to Wellesley and then to Wesleyan University. At Wesleyan he was instrumental in the founding of the acclaimed Wesleyan University Press poetry series that, from 1959 onward, featured new work by such important young poets as Robert Bly, James Wright, James Dickey, and Richard Howard, as well as such already-established writers as Louis Simpson and Barbara Howes. From Wesleyan he went to Smith as writer-in-residence. In 1987 he was named the second Poet Laureate of the U.S., following Robert Penn Warren. In the postwar years, when poets born between 1920 and 1935 often underwent dramatic changes in their writing styles, Wilbur remained someone who mastered a style early and continued to work within it. It is a style in a direct line of descent from Wallace Stevens: unabashedly rich in its diction, urbane in its metrical sophistication, and remarkably light-hearted and playful. His first and second books, The Beautiful Changes (1947) and Ceremony (1950), were influential volumes, and Wilbur was widely regarded in the 1950s as a poet no less important than Robert Lowell. His third collection, Things of This World (1956), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Advice to a Prophet (1961) was followed by Walking to Sleep (1969), which was charlee.jpg (42846 bytes)awarded the Bollingen Prize. The Mind-Reader was published in 1976, and a New and Collected Poems in 1987 (with twenty-four new poems). "The typical ghastly poem of the fifties was a Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur," wrote Donald Hall in 1961, "a poem with tired wit and obvious comparisons and nothing to keep the mind or the ear occupied." Hall added presciently: "It wasn’t Wilbur’s fault, though I expect he will be asked to suffer for it." Wilbur’s poetry has not, as Hall predicted, retained the high value it had accrued in the postwar years. Although his fame as a translator has continued to grow – his blank verse rhymed-couplet versions of several plays by Moliere have received wide praise – his poetry is often cited as an example of the formalism and the apolitical timidity that is associated with the 1950s. "Wilbur is still admired," Robert von Hallberg notes in his contribution to the Cambridge History of American Literature (1996), "but really as the best poet of the 1950s." Even though he is an outstanding example, he excels in a debased category. Among minor poets he is allowed to be most major, but among major poets he is not even considered the most minor. A Wilbur poem reads so easily that it can dispel close scrutiny, as if the poem just as it is says all that needs to be said and withholds nothing. (As a result, Wilbur’s work has rarely attracted the attention of the skillful critic.) In fact, the smooth surface of the Wilbur poem can successfully distract us from recognizing how unusual and unexpected are the twists and leaps that structure the poem’s narrative. Many poems by Wilbur, while striking a superficial "balance," implicitly celebrate, while demonstrating, the virtues of a wit that is elaborately playful. --www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/wilbur/bio.htm He died on October 14, 2017, at a nursing home in Belmont, Massachusetts. --Wikipedia