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Samuel Sebastian Wesley

1810 - 1876 Person Name: Samuel S. Wesley Topics: Dios creador Alabanza y graditud; Adoración y alabanza Composer of "AURELIA" in Mil Voces para Celebrar Samuel Sebastian Wesley (b. London, England, 1810; d. Gloucester, England, 1876) was an English organist and composer. The grandson of Charles Wesley, he was born in London, and sang in the choir of the Chapel Royal as a boy. He learned composition and organ from his father, Samuel, completed a doctorate in music at Oxford, and composed for piano, organ, and choir. He was organist at Hereford Cathedral (1832-1835), Exeter Cathedral (1835-1842), Leeds Parish Church (1842-1849), Winchester Cathedral (1849-1865), and Gloucester Cathedral (1865-1876). Wesley strove to improve the standards of church music and the status of church musicians; his observations and plans for reform were published as A Few Words on Cathedral Music and the Music System of the Church (1849). He was the musical editor of Charles Kemble's A Selection of Psalms and Hymns (1864) and of the Wellburn Appendix of Original Hymns and Tunes (1875) but is best known as the compiler of The European Psalmist (1872), in which some 130 of the 733 hymn tunes were written by him. Bert Polman

Gregory Murray

1905 - 1992 Person Name: A. Gregory Murray, OSB, 1905-1992 Topics: Alabanza Harmonizer of "NUN DANKET" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song

Lowell Mason

1792 - 1872 Person Name: Lowell Mason, 1792-1872 Topics: Alabanza; Alabanza a Dios Arranger of "AZMON" in Santo, Santo, Santo 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.

Julia Ward Howe

1819 - 1910 Person Name: Julia W. Howe, 1819-1910 Topics: Alabanza Author of "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (Ya Alcanzo a Ver la Gloria)" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song Born: May 27, 1819, New York City. Died: October 17, 1910, Middletown, Rhode Island. Buried: Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe, Julia, née Ward, born in New York City in 1819, and married in 1843 the American philanthropist S. G. Howe. She has taken great interest in political matters, and is well known through her prose and poetical works. Of the latter there are Passion Flower, 1854; Words of the Hour, 1856; Later Lyrics, 1866; and From Sunset Ridge, 1896. Her Battle Hymn of the Republic, "eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," was written in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, and was called forth by the sight of troops for the seat of war, and published in her Later Lyrics, 1806, p. 41. It is found in several American collections, including The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1904, and others. [M. C. Hazard, Ph.D.] --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907) ============================ Howe, Julia Ward. (New York, New York, May 27, 1819--October 17, 1910). Married Samuel Gridley Howe on April 26, 1843. She was a woman with a distinguished personality and intellect; an abolitionist and active in social reforms; author of several book in prose and verse. The latter include Passion Flower, 1854; Words of the Hours, 1856; Later Lyrics, 1866; and From a Sunset Ridge, 1896. She became famous as the author of the poem entitled "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which, in spite of its title, was written as a patriotic song and not as a hymn for use in public worship, but which has been included in many American hymn books. It was written on November 19, 1861, while she and her husband, accompanied by their pastor, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, minister of the (Unitarian) Church of the Disciples, Boston, were visiting Washington soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. She had seen the troops gathered there and had heard them singing "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave" to a popular tune called "Glory, Hallelujah" composed a few years earlier by William Steffe of Charleston, South Carolina, for Sunday School use. Dr. Clarke asked Julie Howe if she could not write more uplifting words for the tune and as she woke early the next morning she found the verses forming in her mind as fast as she could write them down, so completely that later she re-wrote only a line or two in the last stanza and changed only four words in other stanzas. She sent the poem to The Atlantic Monthly, which paid her $4 and published it in its issue for February, 1862. It attracted little attention until it caught the eye of Chaplain C. C. McCable (later a Methodist bishop) who had a fine singing voice and who taught it first to the 122nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiment to which he was attached, then to other troops, and to prisoners in Libby Prison after he was made a prisoner of war. Thereafter it quickly came into use throughout the North as an expression of the patriotic emotion of the period. --Henry Wilder Foote, DNAH Archives

John Goss

1800 - 1880 Person Name: John Goss, 1800-1880 Topics: Alabanza Composer of "LAUDA ANIMA" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song John Goss (b. Fareham, Hampshire, England, 1800; d. London, England, 1880). As a boy Goss was a chorister at the Chapel Royal and later sang in the opera chorus of the Covent Garden Theater. He was a professor of music at the Royal Academy of Music (1827-1874) and organist of St. Paul Cathedral, London (1838-1872); in both positions he exerted significant influence on the reform of British cathedral music. Goss published Parochial Psalmody (1826) and Chants, Ancient and Modern (1841); he edited William Mercer's Church Psalter and Hymn Book (1854). With James Turle he published a two-volume collection of anthems and Anglican service music (1854). Bert Polman

Thomas Tallis

1505 - 1585 Person Name: Thomas Tallis, c.1505-1585 Topics: Alabanza Composer of "TALLIS' CANON" in Santo, Santo, Santo Thomas Tallis (b. Leicestershire [?], England, c. 1505; d. Greenwich, Kent, England 1585) was one of the few Tudor musicians who served during the reigns of Henry VIII: Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I and managed to remain in the good favor of both Catholic and Protestant monarchs. He was court organist and composer from 1543 until his death, composing music for Roman Catholic masses and Anglican liturgies (depending on the monarch). With William Byrd, Tallis also enjoyed a long-term monopoly on music printing. Prior to his court connections Tallis had served at Waltham Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral. He composed mostly church music, including Latin motets, English anthems, settings of the liturgy, magnificats, and two sets of lamentations. His most extensive contrapuntal work was the choral composition, "Spem in alium," a work in forty parts for eight five-voice choirs. He also provided nine modal psalm tunes for Matthew Parker's Psalter (c. 1561). Bert Polman

Joseph A. Seiss

1823 - 1904 Person Name: Joseph A. Seiss, 1823-1904 Topics: Alabanza; Alabanza a Jesucristo Translator (English) of "Beautiful Savior (Glorioso Cristo)" in Santo, Santo, Santo Joseph A. Seiss was born and raised in a Moravian home with the original family name of Seuss. After studying at Pennsylvania College in Gettysburg and completing his theological education with tutors and through private study, Seiss became a Lutheran pastor in 1842. He served several Lutheran congregations in Virginia and Maryland and then became pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church (1858-1874) and the Church of the Holy Communion (1874-1904), both in Philadelphia. Known as an eloquent and popular preacher, Seiss was also a prolific author and editor of some eighty volumes, which include The Last Times (1856), The Evangelical Psalmist (1859), Ecclesia Lutherana (1868), Lectures on the Gospels (1868-1872), and Lectures on the Epistles (1885). He contributed to and compiled several hymnals. Bert Polman

John Rippon

1751 - 1836 Person Name: John Rippon, 1751-1836 Topics: Alabanza Alterer of "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name (A Jesucristo Póstrense)" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song Rippon, John, D.D., was born at Tiverton, Devon, April 29, 1751, and was educated for the ministry at the Baptist College, Bristol. In 1773 he became Pastor of the Baptist church in Carter Lane, Tooley Street (afterwards removed to New Park Street), London, and over this church he continued to preside until his death, on Dec. 17, 1836. The degree of D.D. was conferred on him in 1792 by the Baptist College, Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. Rippon was one of the most popular and influential Dissenting ministers of his time. From 1790 to 1802 he issued the Baptist Annual Register, a periodical containing an account of the most important events in the history of the Baptist Denomination in Great Britain and America during that period, and very valuable now as a book of reference. But his most famous work is his Selection of hymns for public worship, which appeared in 1787. The full title of the first edition is A selection of Hymns from the best authors, intended as an Appendix to Dr. Watts's Psalms and Hymns. In 1791 he published a Selection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes from the Best Authors, adapted to Dr. Watts's Psalms and Hymns, and to his own Selection, and from that time the names of tunes were prefixed to the hymns in the successive editions of his hymn-book. In 1800 he published the 10th ed. of his Selections, containing more than sixty additional hymns. In 1827 it was still further enlarged, and in 1844, after his death, appeared The Comprehensive Edition, commonly known as The Comprehensive Rippon, containing most of the additional hymns, with about 400 then first added, making in all upwards of 1170, in 100 metres. A rival to the Comprehensive was also afterwards published under the old title, somewhat enlarged. In the preparation of the original book, and its subsequent improvement, Dr. Rippon performed an important service to Baptist Hymnody, and also, it is said, gained for himself "an estate" through its immense sale. In the preface to the tenth edition lie claims for himself the authorship of some of the hymns, but as he refrained from affixing his name to any of the hymns it is impossible now to say with certainty which ought to be ascribed to him. There can, however, be no reasonable doubt that hymn 535, 3rd part, "The day has dawned, Jehovah comes" (q.v.), is one of his compositions. Other hymns, probably by him, are, "Amid the splendours of Thy state" (Love of God), 1800; and "There is joy in heaven, and joy on earth" (Joy over the Repenting Sinner), 1787. He also altered the texts of and made additions to several of the older hymns. Some of these altered texts are still in common use. In 1830 the additions given in the 27th ed., 1827, of Rippon's Selections were reprinted, with notes by Dr. Slater, as:— Hymns Original and Selected; interspersed in the Twenty-seventh edition of the Selection, with Numerous Doxologies, in the Usual, the Peculiar, and in the less Common metres. By John Rippon, D.D. A second edition of this pamphlet of 82 hymns and doxologies appeared in 1832. [Rev. W. R. Stevenson, M.A.] --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Henry Van Dyke

1852 - 1933 Person Name: Henry van Dyke, 1852-1933 Topics: Alabanza Author of "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You (Jubilosos, Te Adoramos)" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song See biography and works at CCEL

Jan Struther

1901 - 1953 Person Name: Jan Struther, 1801-1953 Topics: Alabanza Author of "Lord of All Hopefulness (Dios Anhelante)" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song Jan Struther, given name: Joyce Torrens-Graham [sic Joyce Anstruther] (b. Westminster, London, England, 1901; d. New York, NY, 1953) wrote many poems and essays under the pen name of Jan Struther (derived from her mother's maiden name, Eva Anstruther). In addition to her pen name, Struther also had the married names of Mrs. Anthony Maxtone Graham and, from a second marriage, Mrs. Adolf Kurt Placzek. During World War II she moved with her children to New York City and remained there until her death. In England she is best known for her novel Mrs. Miniver (1940), which consists of sketches of British family life before World War II. Immensely popular, the book was later made into a movie. Struther also wrote comic and serious poetry, essays, and short stories, published in Betsinda Dances and Other Poems (1931), Try Anything Twice (1938), The Glass Blower (1941), and, posthumously, The Children's Bells (1957). Songs of Praise (1931) included twelve of her hymn texts. Bert Polman