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Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew
Author: Wm. Shrubsole, Jr. Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 106 hymnals Topics: The Glory of the Church Scripture: Isaiah 52:1 Used With Tune: HESPERUS
Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew
Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew (Zion Awake, Behold the Day)
Author: William Shrubsole Hymnal: The Cyber Hymnal #8405 Meter: 8.8.8.8 First Line: Zion, awake, thy strength renew Lyrics: 1 Zion, awake, thy strength renew,
Put on thy robes of beauteous hue;
And let th’admiring world behold
The King’s fair daughter clothed in gold.
2 Church of our God, arise and shine,
Bright with the beams of truth divine!
Then shall thy radiance stream afar,
Wide as the heathen nations are.
3 Gentiles and kings thy light shall view:
All shall admire and love thee, too;
Shall come like clouds across the sky,
Or doves that to their windows fly. Languages: English Tune Title: BEER-SHEAN
Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew (Zion Awake, Behold the Day)
Zion, Awake
Hymnal: Golden Grain #201 (1894) First Line: Zion, awake, thy strength renew Languages: English Tune Title: [Zion, awake, thy strength renew]
Zion, Awake
Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew
Author: Wm. Shrubsole, Jr. Hymnal: Church Hymnal, Mennonite #337 (1927) Meter: 8.8.8.8 Topics: The Glory of the Church Scripture: Isaiah 52:1 Languages: English Tune Title: HESPERUS
Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew
Lowell Mason
1792 - 1872 Composer of "MENDON" in Laudes Domini 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
Henry Baker
1835 - 1910 Composer of "HESPERUS" in Church Hymnal, Mennonite Henry Baker, Mus. Bac., son of the Rev. James Baker, Chancellor of the diocese of Durham; born at Nuneham, Oxfordshire; educated at Winchester School; graduated Bachelor in Music at the University of Oxford in 1867. He also worked as a civil engineer.
Scottish Church Music, its composers and sources by James Love; William Blackwwod and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1891
Henry Baker
W. Shrubsole
1759 - 1829 Person Name: Wm. Shrubsole, Jr. Author of "Zion, Awake, Thy Strength Renew" in Church Hymnal, Mennonite William Shrubsole was born in Sheerness, Kent, in 1759. His first occupation was as a shipwright in Sheerness Dockyard, but he was promoted, and afterwards removed to London, where he at length held the position of Secretary to the Committee of the Treasury in the Bank of England. He died at Highbury, in 1829. Mr. Shrubsole was the author of several hymns, and some articles in the religious magazines of his day.
--Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A. 1872.
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Shrubsole, William, eldest son of William Shrubsole, a master mastmaker in the dockyard at Sheerness, Kent, and a Lay Preacher, was born at Sheerness, Nov. 21, 1759. In his earlier years he was engaged as a shipwright in the dockyard, and then as a clerk. In 1765 he removed to London, and entered the Bank of England as a clerk. He subsequently became the Secretary to the Committee of the Treasury. He died at Highbury, Aug. 23, 1829. Mr. Shrubsole was for some time a communicant at St. Anne's, Blackfriars, during the incumbency of the Rev. W.Goode; but during the last twenty years of his life he was a member with the Congregationalists, and attended the Hoxton Academy Chapel. He interested himself in religious societies, and especially the London Missionary Society (of which he became a director and one of the secretaries), the Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society. He contributed hymns to the Evangelical Magazine, the Christian Magazine, the Theological Miscellany, the Christian Observer and the Youths' Magazine, at various dates, from 1775 to 1813. To these works we have traced nearly twenty of his hymns. A Memoir of Shrubsole was contributed by his daughter to Dr. Morison's Fathers and Founders of the London Missionary Society, 2 vols., London, Fisher, Sons & Co., 1844. Seven of his hymns are also given, together with a portrait, in the same work. His hymns in common use include:—
1. Arm of the Lord, awake, awake. Put on Thy strength, the nations shake. Missions. This appeared in Missionary Hymns, 1795; and in Morison's Fathers and Founders, &c, 1844, vol. i. p. 451, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines. Dr. Rogers in his Lyra Britannica, 1867, attributes this hymn to Shrubsole's father, and dates it 1780. Against this statement we can only put the fact that it is claimed in Morison for the son. Original text, Lyra Britanica, 1867, p. 502.
2. Bright as the sun's meridian blaze . Missions. Written Aug. 10, 1795, for the first meeting of the London Missionary Society. It was printed in the Evangelical Magazine, Sept., 1795, headed “On the intended Mission," and signed "Junior." It is also in Morison, 1844, i. p. 449, together with the note that the hymn "was duly acknowledged by Mr. Shrubsole in his lifetime, and the original manuscript, with numerous corrections, is in possession of his family, in his own autograph," and that it bears date "August 10, 1795." Original text Lyra Britanica, 1867, p. 504.
3. In all the paths my feet pursue. Looking unto Jesus. Appeared in the Evangelical Magazine, 1794; in Morison, i., 1844, p. 454; and Lyra Britanica, 1867, p. 503.
4. Shall science distant lands explore? Missions. Published in the Evangelical Magazine, 1795; and again in Morison, 1844, i. p. 452.
5. When streaming from the Eastern skies . Daily Duties; or, Morning. Published in the Christian Observer, Aug., 1813, in 8 stanzas of 8 lines, headed "Daily Duties, Dependence and Enjoyment," and signed Probus. Also in Morison, 1844, i. p. 453; and Lyra Brittanica, 1867, p. 505. The well-known cento, "As every day Thy mercy spares," is from this hymn, and begins with st. iii.
6. Ye saints, your grateful praises bring
W. Shrubsole
