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Robert J. Batastini

b. 1942 Person Name: RJB Scripture: Psalm 78 Composer of "[Do not forget the works of the Lord]" in Catholic Book of Worship III Robert J. Batastini is the retired vice president and senior editor of GIA Publications, Inc., Chicago. Bob has over fifty-five years of service in pastoral music ministry, having served several parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago and one in the Diocese of Joliet. He served as executive editor and project director for the Worship hymnals (three editions), Gather hymnals (three editions), Catholic Community Hymnal, and as executive editor of RitualSong. In 1993 he became the first recipient of the Father Lawrence Heimann Citation for lifetime contribution to church music and liturgy in the U.S., awarded by St. Joseph's College, Rensselaer, Indiana, and was named "Pastoral Musician of the Year-2000" by the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM). At its 2006 conference, he was named a Fellow of the Hymn society in the United States and Canada. In his retirement he is active in the music ministry of St. Francis de Sales Parish, Holland, MI. Nancy Naber, from www.giamusic.com/bios/

Joseph Gelineau

1920 - 2008 Person Name: Joseph Gelineau, SJ Scripture: Psalm 78:1-2 Composer (Gelineau tone) of "[Do not forget]" in RitualSong Joseph Gelineau (1920-2008) Gelineau's translation and musical settings of the psalms have achieved nearly universal usage in the Christian church of the Western world. These psalms faithfully recapture the Hebrew poetic structure and images. To accommodate this structure his psalm tones were designed to express the asymmetrical three-line/four-line design of the psalm texts. He collaborated with R. Tournay and R. Schwab and reworked the Jerusalem Bible Psalter. Their joint effort produced the Psautier de la Bible de Jerusalem and recording Psaumes, which won the Gran Prix de L' Academie Charles Cros in 1953. The musical settings followed four years later. Shortly after, the Gregorian Institute of America published Twenty-four Psalms and Canticles, which was the premier issue of his psalms in the United States. Certainly, his text and his settings have provided a feasible and beautiful solution to the singing of the psalms that the 1963 reforms envisioned. Parishes, their cantors, and choirs were well-equipped to sing the psalms when they embarked on the Gelineau psalmody. Gelineau was active in liturgical development from the very time of his ordination in 1951. He taught at the Institut Catholique de Paris and was active in several movements leading toward Vatican II. His influence in the United States as well in Europe (he was one of the founding organizers of Universa Laus, the international church music association) is as far reaching as it is broad. Proof of that is the number of times "My shepherd is the Lord" has been reprinted and reprinted in numerous funeral worship leaflets, collections, and hymnals. His prolific career includes hundreds of compositions ranging from litanies to responsories. His setting of Psalm 106/107, "The Love of the Lord," for assembly, organ, and orchestra premiéred at the 1989 National Association of Pastoral Musicians convention in Long Beach, California. --www.giamusic.com

George Kingsley

1811 - 1884 Scripture: Psalm 78 Composer of "HEBER" in The Psalter Born: July 7, 1811, Northampton, Massachusetts. Died: March 14, 1884, Northampton, Massachusetts. Kingsley played the organ at the Old South Church and Hollis Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He also taught music at Girard College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, served as music supervisor for public schools in Philadelphia, and compiled a number of music books, including: Sunday School Singing Book, 1832 The Harmonist, 1833 The Social Choir, 1836 The Sacred Choir, 1838 The Harp of David, 1844 The Young Ladies’ Harp, 1847 Templi Carmina (Northampton, Massachusetts: 1853) The Juvenile Choir, 1865 --www.hymntime.com/tch

Henry L. Lettermann

1932 - 1996 Person Name: Henry L. Lettermann, 1932-96 Scripture: Psalm 78:1-8 Author of "Lord Jesus Christ, the Children's Friend" in Lutheran Service Book The youngest of four children, Henry L. Lettermann was born February 28, 1932, to Henry Christopher Lettermann and Anna (née Gerstacker) Lettermann, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His primary level education took place at First Evangelical Lutheran School in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, where his father served as principal. It was in this setting where the riches of the church’s song would be imprinted on the young heart and mind of Henry Lettermann. After his education at First Lutheran, he attended Concordia High School, matriculating to Concordia Teachers College (now Concordia University) in River Forest, Illinois, where he received the bachelor of science degree in 1954. It was at Concordia where Lettermann’s love for literature and poetry, especially the poetry of Americans Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, began to be formed.In 1959 Lettermann received his master of arts degree from the University of Chicago, subsequently receiving his doctor of philosophy degree from Loyola University, Chicago, in 1974. Eventually Dr. Lettermann achieved the rank of full professor at Concordia. Lettermann’s talent for poetry and his genuine interest in education resulted in a number of fruitful unions. A number of his texts appeared in the Concordia Music Education Series, published in the 1960s by Concordia Publishing House, while numerous hymns and carols appeared in Lutheran Education—the official journal of the Lutheran Education Association. From 1979 to 1987 Lettermann served as a member and secretary of the Hymn Text and Music Committee of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s Commission on Worship which prepared Lutheran Worship (1982). As a member of this committee he contributed both original texts and translations from the German. As a servant of the church at large, Lettermann wrote texts on commission from various congregations as well. Excerpted from "The Precious Gift: The Hymns and Carols and Translations of Henry L. Lettermann" by Scott M. Hyslop, used with permission

Graham Maule

1958 - 2019 Person Name: Graham Maule, b. 1958 Scripture: Psalm 78:24-25 Author of "Bread is blessed and broken" in Singing the Faith

William Knapp

1698 - 1768 Person Name: William Knapp, 1698-1768 Scripture: Psalm 78:1-8 Composer of "WAREHAM" in Lutheran Service Book Born: 1698, Wareham, Dorsetshire, England. Died: September 26, 1768, Poole, Dorsetshire, England. Buried: Poole, Dorsetshire, England.

Gregory Murray

1905 - 1992 Person Name: Anthony Gregory Murray (1905-1992) Scripture: Psalm 78:23-25 Composer of "TRISAGION AND REPROACHES" in Church Hymnary (4th ed.)

Bertus Frederick Polman

1945 - 2013 Person Name: Bert Polman Scripture: Psalm 78 Author (st. 1) of "O God, We Have Heard (Psalm 44)" in Lift Up Your Hearts Bert Frederick Polman (b. Rozenburg, Zuid Holland, the Netherlands, 1945; d. Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 1, 2013) was chair of the Music Department at Calvin College and senior research fellow for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Dr. Bert studied at Dordt College (BA 1968), the University of Minnesota (MA 1969, PhD in musicology 1981), and the Institute for Christian Studies. Dr. Bert was a longtime is professor of music at Redeemer College in Ancaster, Ontario, and organist at Bethel Christian Reformed Church, Waterdown, Ontario. His teaching covered a wide range of courses in music theory, music history, music literature, and worship, and Canadian Native studies. His research specialty was Christian hymnody. He was also an organist, a frequent workshop leader at music and worship conferences, and contributor to journals such as The Hymn and Reformed Worship. Dr. Bert was co-editor of the Psalter Hymnal Handbook (1989), and served on the committees that prepared Songs for Life (1994) and Sing! A New Creation (2001), both published by CRC Publications. Emily Brink

Lowell Mason

1792 - 1872 Person Name: Dr. L. Mason Scripture: Psalm 78:23-44 Composer of "[At his command, amid their camp]" in Bible Songs 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.

Calvin Seerveld

b. 1930 Scripture: Psalm 78 Versifier of "The Mighty Deeds the LORD Has Done" in Psalter Hymnal (Gray) Calvin Seerveld (b. 1930) was professor of aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto from 1972 until he retired in 1995. Educated at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan; the University of Michigan; and the Free University of Amsterdam (Ph.D.), he also studied at Basel University in Switzerland, the University of Rome, and the University of Heidelberg. Seerveld began his career by teaching at Bellhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi (1958-1959), and at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois (1959-1972). A fine Christian scholar, fluent in various biblical and modern languages, he is published widely in aesthetics, biblical studies, and philosophy. His books include Take Hold of God and Pull (1966), The Greatest Song: In Critique of Solomon (1967), For God's Sake, Run with Joy (1972), Rainbows for the Fallen World: Aesthetic Life and Artistic Task (1980), and On Being Human (1988). He credits the Dutch musician Ina Lohr for influencing his compositions of hymn tunes. Most of his Bible versifications and hymns were written for the Psalter Hymnal (1987), on whose revision committee he ably served. Bert Polman