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John H. Hewitt

Topics: Saving Faith Composer (refrain melody) of "HUDSON" in The Worshiping Church

1937 - 1986 Topics: Living the Faith Revival; Faith Arranger of "MARTYRDOM" in Zion still Sings Judge Jefferson Cleveland (1937-1986) was one of the most important scholars and editors of African-American congregational song of the 20th century. Along with Verogla Nix, he edited what is arguably the most groundbreaking collection of African-American song in the last half of the 20th century, Songs of Zion (1981/1982). Lutheran hymnologist Marilyn Stulken provides a biographical sketch of Cleveland’s life and accomplishments. Born in Georgia, Cleveland graduated from Clark College (Atlanta), Illinois Wesleyan University and received his doctorate in education from Boston University. He served on the faculty of three historically black Christian colleges: Claflin College (South Carolina), Langston University (Oklahoma), and Jarvis Christian College (Texas), before teaching at the University of Massachusetts and Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Cleveland’s musical arrangements, historical research and scholarship on the performance practice of African-American song have proven invaluable for the advancement of black gospel song, not only among African Americans, but also in Anglo hymnals to the present day. For example, Cleveland’s essay, “A Historical Account of the Hymn in the Black Worship Experience,” in Songs of Zion is a helpful introduction for laypersons and scholars alike. In addition to serving as a hymnody consultant for the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship, he toured the United States and Africa in 1981 and Europe in 1984 as a teacher, lecturer and performer. --www.umportal.org/

Sanford Fillmore Bennett

1836 - 1898 Person Name: Sanford F. Bennett Topics: Faith Author of "Sweet By and By" in Sing Joyfully Sanford Fillmore Bennett was born in Eden, New York, 21 June 1836. He and his parents moved to Plainfield, Illinois when he was two years old. He worked on the farm and attended district school during the winter. He was a voracious reader. At sixteen he entered Waukegon Academy. Two years later he began teaching at Wauconda. In 1858 he entered the University of Michigan, Afterward he had charge of the schools in Richmond, Illinois. Two years later he resigned and became Associate Editor of the Independent at Elkhorn, Wisconsin. In 1864 he enlisted in the Wisconsin Volunteers and served as Second Lieutenant. After the war he returned to Elkhorn and opened a drug store and began the study of medicine. He graduated from Rush Medical College in 1874. Dianne Shapiro, from "The Singers and Their Songs: sketches of living gospel hymn writers" by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (Chicago: The Rodeheaver Company, 1916)

Thomas Andrew Dorsey

1899 - 1993 Person Name: Thomas A. Dorsey, 1899-1993 Topics: Struggle, Faith Adapter of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" in This Far By Faith Thomas Andrew Dorsey was born in Villa Rica, a small rural town near Atlanta, Georgia. In 1919 he moved to Chicago. Most of his musical training was in the church, but he also studied and played jazz and blues. He later combined jazz and blues with religious texts, giving birth to gospel music. In 1931, along with Magnolia Lewis-Butts and Theodore Roosevelt Frye, he established the first gospel choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Chicago. He went on to lead the gospel choir at Pilgrim Baptist Church, which he led for 60 years. Dorsey was also instrumental in founding the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses (NCGCC) in 1933. The convention taught choirs all over the country how to sing gospel music. Dianne Shapiro, from "Gospel" in Encyclopedia of Chicago (accessed 8/12/2020)

Joseph A. Seiss

1823 - 1904 Person Name: Joseph A. Seiss, 1823-1904 Topics: Faith Translator (English) of "Beautiful Savior (Glorioso Cristo)" in Oramos Cantando = We Pray In Song 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

Theodore Baker

1851 - 1934 Topics: God: Faithfulness Translator of "We Gather Together" in Chalice Hymnal Theodore Baker (b. New York, NY, 1851; d. Dresden, Germany, 1934). Baker is well known as the compiler of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (first ed. 1900), the first major music reference work that included American composers. Baker studied music in Leipzig, Germany, and wrote a dissertation on the music of the Seneca people of New York State–one of the first studies of the music of American Indians. From 1892 until his retirement in 1926, Baker was a literary editor and translator for G. Schirmer, Inc., in New York City. In 1926, he returned to Germany. Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1987

Michael Praetorius

1571 - 1621 Person Name: Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) Topics: Faith Composer of "PUER NOBIS NASCITUR" in The Hymnbook 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

Grant Colfax Tullar

1869 - 1950 Topics: Faith Composer of "[Face to face with Christ my Saviour]" in Northfield Hymnal Grant Colfax Tullar was born August 5, 1869, in Bolton, Connecticut. He was named after the American President Ulysses S. Grant and Vice President Schuyler Colfax. After the American Civil War, his father was disabled and unable to work, having been wounded in the Battle of Antietam. Tullar's mother died when he was just two years old so Grant had no settled home life until he became an adult. Yet from a life of sorrow and hardship he went on to bring joy to millions of Americans with his songs and poetry. As a child, he received virtually no education or religious training. He worked in a woolen mill and as a shoe clerk. The last Methodist camp meeting in Bolton was in 1847. Tullar became a Methodist at age 19 at a camp meeting near Waterbury in 1888. He then attended the Hackettstown Academy in New Jersey. He became an ordained Methodist minister and pastored for a short time in Dover, Delaware. For 10 years he was the song leader for evangelist Major George A. Hilton. Even so, in 1893 he also helped found the well-known Tullar-Meredith Publishing Company in New York, which produced church and Sunday school music. Tullar composed many popular hymns and hymnals. His works include: Sunday School Hymns No. 1 (Chicago, Illinois: Tullar Meredith Co., 1903) and The Bible School Hymnal (New York: Tullar Meredith Co., 1907). One of Grant Tullar's most quoted poems is "The Weaver": My Life is but a weaving Between my Lord and me; I cannot choose the colors He worketh steadily. Oft times He weaveth sorrow And I, in foolish pride, Forget He sees the upper, And I the under side. Not til the loom is silent And the shuttles cease to fly, Shall God unroll the canvas And explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful In the Weaver's skillful hand, As the threads of gold and silver In the pattern He has planned. He knows, He loves, He cares, Nothing this truth can dim. He gives His very best to those Who chose to walk with Him. Grant Tullar --http://www.boltoncthistory.org/granttullar.html, from Bolton Community News, August 2006.

William Cowper

1731 - 1800 Topics: Believing Faith Author of "Heal Us, Immanuel, Hear Our Prayer" in The Worshiping Church William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper"; b. Berkampstead, Hertfordshire, England, 1731; d. East Dereham, Norfolk, England, 1800) is regarded as one of the best early Romantic poets. To biographers he is also known as "mad Cowper." His literary talents produced some of the finest English hymn texts, but his chronic depression accounts for the somber tone of many of those texts. Educated to become an attorney, Cowper was called to the bar in 1754 but never practiced law. In 1763 he had the opportunity to become a clerk for the House of Lords, but the dread of the required public examination triggered his tendency to depression, and he attempted suicide. His subsequent hospitalization and friendship with Morley and Mary Unwin provided emotional stability, but the periods of severe depression returned. His depression was deepened by a religious bent, which often stressed the wrath of God, and at times Cowper felt that God had predestined him to damnation. For the last two decades of his life Cowper lived in Olney, where John Newton became his pastor. There he assisted Newton in his pastoral duties, and the two collaborated on the important hymn collection Olney Hymns (1779), to which Cowper contributed sixty-eight hymn texts. Bert Polman ============ Cowper, William, the poet. The leading events in the life of Cowper are: born in his father's rectory, Berkhampstead, Nov. 26, 1731; educated at Westminster; called to the Bar, 1754; madness, 1763; residence at Huntingdon, 1765; removal to Olney, 1768; to Weston, 1786; to East Dereham, 1795; death there, April 25, 1800. The simple life of Cowper, marked chiefly by its innocent recreations and tender friendships, was in reality a tragedy. His mother, whom he commemorated in the exquisite "Lines on her picture," a vivid delineation of his childhood, written in his 60th year, died when he was six years old. At his first school he was profoundly wretched, but happier at Westminster; excelling at cricket and football, and numbering Warren Hastings, Colman, and the future model of his versification. Churchill, among his contemporaries or friends. Destined for the Bar, he was articled to a solicitor, along with Thurlow. During this period he fell in love with his cousin, Theodora Cowper, sister to Lady Hesketh, and wrote love poems to her. The marriage was forbidden by her father, but she never forgot him, and in after years secretly aided his necessities. Fits of melancholy, from which he had suffered in school days, began to increase, as he entered on life, much straitened in means after his father's death. But on the whole, it is the playful, humorous side of him that is most prominent in the nine years after his call to the Bar; spent in the society of Colman, Bonnell Thornton, and Lloyd, and in writing satires for The Connoisseur and St. James's Chronicle and halfpenny ballads. Then came the awful calamity, which destroyed all hopes of distinction, and made him a sedentary invalid, dependent on his friends. He had been nominated to the Clerkship of the Journals of the House of Lords, but the dread of appearing before them to show his fitness for the appointment overthrew his reason. He attempted his life with "laudanum, knife and cord,"—-in the third attempt nearly succeeding. The dark delusion of his life now first showed itself—a belief in his reprobation by God. But for the present, under the wise and Christian treatment of Dr. Cotton (q. v.) at St. Albans, it passed away; and the eight years that followed, of which the two first were spent at Huntingdon (where he formed his lifelong friendship with Mrs. Unwin), and the remainder at Olney in active piety among the poor, and enthusiastic devotions under the guidance of John Newton (q. v.), were full of the realisation of God's favour, and the happiest, most lucid period of his life. But the tension of long religious exercises, the nervous excitement of leading at prayer meetings, and the extreme despondence (far more than the Calvinism) of Newton, could scarcely have been a healthy atmosphere for a shy, sensitive spirit, that needed most of all the joyous sunlight of Christianity. A year after his brother's death, madness returned. Under the conviction that it was the command of God, he attempted suicide; and he then settled down into a belief in stark contradiction to his Calvinistic creed, "that the Lord, after having renewed him in holiness, had doomed him to everlasting perdition" (Southey). In its darkest form his affliction lasted sixteen months, during which he chiefly resided in J. Newton's house, patiently tended by him and by his devoted nurse, Mrs. Unwin. Gradually he became interested in carpentering, gardening, glazing, and the tendance of some tame hares and other playmates. At the close of 1780, Mrs. Unwin suggested to him some serious poetical work; and the occupation proved so congenial, that his first volume was published in 1782. To a gay episode in 1783 (his fascination by the wit of Lady Austen) his greatest poem, The Task, and also John Gilpin were owing. His other principal work was his Homer, published in 1791. The dark cloud had greatly lifted from his life when Lady Hesketh's care accomplished his removal to Weston (1786): but the loss of his dear friend William Unwin lowered it again for some months. The five years' illness of Mrs. Unwin, during which his nurse of old became his tenderly-watched patient, deepened the darkness more and more. And her death (1796) brought “fixed despair," of which his last poem, The Castaway, is the terrible memorial. Perhaps no more beautiful sentence has been written of him, than the testimony of one, who saw him after death, that with the "composure and calmness" of the face there “mingled, as it were, a holy surprise." Cowper's poetry marks the dawn of the return from the conventionality of Pope to natural expression, and the study of quiet nature. His ambition was higher than this, to be the Bard of Christianity. His great poems show no trace of his monomania, and are full of healthy piety. His fame as a poet is less than as a letter-writer: the charm of his letters is unsurpassed. Though the most considerable poet, who has written hymns, he has contributed little to the development of their structure, adopting the traditional modes of his time and Newton's severe canons. The spiritual ideas of the hymns are identical with Newton's: their highest note is peace and thankful contemplation, rather than joy: more than half of them are full of trustful or reassuring faith: ten of them are either submissive (44), self-reproachful (17, 42, 43), full of sad yearning (1, 34), questioning (9), or dark spiritual conflict (38-40). The specialty of Cowper's handling is a greater plaintiveness, tenderness, and refinement. A study of these hymns as they stood originally under the classified heads of the Olney Hymns, 1779, which in some cases probably indicate the aim of Cowper as well as the ultimate arrangement of the book by Newton, shows that one or two hymns were more the history of his conversion, than transcripts of present feelings; and the study of Newton's hymns in the same volume, full of heavy indictment against the sins of his own regenerate life, brings out the peculiar danger of his friendship to the poet: it tends also to modify considerably the conclusions of Southey as to the signs of incipient madness in Cowper's maddest hymns. Cowper's best hymns are given in The Book of Praise by Lord Selborne. Two may be selected from them; the exquisitely tender "Hark! my soul, it is the Lord" (q. v.), and "Oh, for a closer walk with God" (q. v.). Anyone who knows Mrs. Browning's noble lines on Cowper's grave will find even a deeper beauty in the latter, which is a purely English hymn of perfect structure and streamlike cadence, by connecting its sadness and its aspiration not only with the “discord on the music" and the "darkness on the glory," but the rapture of his heavenly waking beneath the "pathetic eyes” of Christ. Authorities. Lives, by Hayley; Grimshaw; Southey; Professor Goldwin Smith; Mr. Benham (attached to Globe Edition); Life of Newton, by Rev. Josiah Bull; and the Olney Hymns. The numbers of the hymns quoted refer to the Olney Hymns. [Rev. H. Leigh Bennett, M.A.] --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) ================ Cowper, W. , p. 265, i. Other hymns are:— 1. Holy Lord God, I love Thy truth. Hatred of Sin. 2. I was a grovelling creature once. Hope and Confidence. 3. No strength of nature can suffice. Obedience through love. 4. The Lord receives His highest praise. Faith. 5. The saints should never be dismayed. Providence. All these hymns appeared in the Olney Hymns, 1779. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907) ===================== Cowper, W., p. 265, i. Prof. John E. B. Mayor, of Cambridge, contributed some letters by Cowper, hitherto unpublished, together with notes thereon, to Notes and Queries, July 2 to Sept. 24, 1904. These letters are dated from Huntingdon, where he spent two years after leaving St. Alban's (see p. 265, i.), and Olney. The first is dated "Huntingdon, June 24, 1765," and the last "From Olney, July 14, 1772." They together with extracts from other letters by J. Newton (dated respectively Aug. 8, 1772, Nov. 4, 1772), two quotations without date, followed by the last in the N. & Q. series, Aug. 1773, are of intense interest to all students of Cowper, and especially to those who have given attention to the religious side of the poet's life, with its faint lights and deep and awful shadows. From the hymnological standpoint the additional information which we gather is not important, except concerning the hymns "0 for a closer walk with God," "God moves in a mysterious way," "Tis my happiness below," and "Hear what God, the Lord, hath spoken." Concerning the last three, their position in the manuscripts, and the date of the last from J. Newton in the above order, "Aug. 1773," is conclusive proof against the common belief that "God moves in a mysterious way" was written as the outpouring of Cowper's soul in gratitude for the frustration of his attempted suicide in October 1773. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)

Thomas Olivers

1725 - 1799 Person Name: Thomas Olivers, 1725-1799 Topics: Faith, Trust and Commitment Author of "The God of Abraham praise" in Complete Anglican Hymns Old and New Thomas Olivers was born in Tregonan, Montgomeryshire, in 1725. His youth was one of profligacy, but under the ministry of Whitefield, he was led to a change of life. He was for a time apprenticed to a shoemaker, and followed his trade in several places. In 1763, John Wesley engaged him as an assistant; and for twenty-five years he performed the duties of an itinerant ministry. During the latter portion of his life he was dependent on a pension granted him by the Wesleyan Conference. He died in 1799. --Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A., 1872. ================== Olivers, Thomas, was born at Tregynon, near Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in 1725. His father's death, when the son was only four years of age, followed by that of the mother shortly afterwards, caused him to be passed on to the care of one relative after another, by whom he was brought up in a somewhat careless manner, and with little education. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker. His youth was one of great ungodliness, through which at the age of 18 he was compelled to leave his native place. He journeyed to Shrewsbury, Wrexham, and Bristol, miserably poor and very wretched. At Bristol he heard G. Whitefield preach from the text "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" That sermon turned the whole current of his life, and he became a decided Christian. His intention at the first was to join the followers of Whitefield, but being discouraged from doing so by one of Whitefield's preachers, he subsequently joined the Methodist Society at Bradford-on-Avon. At that town, where he purposed carrying on his business of shoemaking, he met John Wesley, who, recognising in him both ability and zeal, engaged him as one of his preachers. Olivers joined Wesley at once, and proceeded as an evangelist to Cornwall. This was on Oct. 1, 1753. He continued his work till his death, which took place suddenly in London, in March 1799. He was buried in Wesley's tomb in the City Road Chapel burying ground, London. Olivers was for some time co-editor with J. Wesley of the Arminian Magazine, but his lack of education unfitted him for the work. As the author of the tune Helmsley, and of the hymn “The God of Abraham praise," he is widely known. He also wrote “Come Immortal King of glory;" and "O Thou God of my salvation," whilst residing at Chester; and an Elegy on the death of John Wesley. His hymns and the Elegy were reprinted (with a Memoir by the Rev. J. Kirk) by D. Sedgwick, in 1868. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)