Church Music

No hymn is identified with the Protestant Reformation more than Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress.” Luther (1483-1546) left a body of congregational songs that both defined the Lutheran confessional tradition and became truly ecumenical in influence. His thirty-seven hymns stand alongside his theological writings and his translation of the Bible…...

The text of our hymn of the day, “All My Hope on God Is Founded”, was written in 1680 by Joachim Neander (“Meine Hoffnung stehet feste”). Neander was the first important hymn-writer of the German Reformed Church and his texts were quickly received into Lutheran hymnbooks. Today’s hymn was later…...

This morning, we sing “Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies” at the opening of worship, a marvelous text by Charles Wesley, a great hymn writer of the church. This hymn is paired with the tune, RATISBON, since the two were joined in Old Church Psalmody (1847), but the tune has…...

God, be the Love to Search and Keep Me is a hymn by Richard Bruxvoort Hooligan (b. 1967), a composer and musician who teaches about music and spiritual formation....

This morning’s organ prelude, “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele” (“Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness” literally: Adorn yourself, O dear soul) is a chorale prelude attributed to J. S. Bach based on a Lutheran hymn by Johann Franck with a melody by Johann Crüger. The hymn is a song for…...

Our opening hymn, “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation”, is a translation of an ancient text. When it comes to translating hymns written originally in Latin or Greek, John Mason Neale (1818-1866), sometimes called the “prince of translators,” has no peer. The son of an Anglican clergyman, Neale intended to…...

“All Are Welcome” by Marty Haugen was “an attempt to write a text that reflects the welcome to table fellowship that Jesus offered unconditionally to everyone.” The five stanzas of the hymn as it now appears were “redacted down” from thirteen stanzas Haugen originally created with the intention that they…...

“O God, Our Help in Ages Past” is Isaac Watts at his finest. Here he is paraphrasing the first part of Psalm 90. His original had nine stanzas and was published in his Psalms of David (London, 1719), where it was headed “Man frail, and God eternal” - which aptly…...

Albert F. Bayly (1901-1984) wrote “Praise and Thanksgiving” to “meet the need for harvest thanksgiving hymns which remind us that we can thank God rightly only if we are ready to do [God’s] will by sharing those gifts with others, so they can rejoice with us.” It was first published…...

In the summer of 1930, while he was on vacation in Maine, Harry E. Fosdick (1878-1969) wrote this hymn for the opening of Riverside Church in New York City on October 5 of that year. It was sung at the dedication of the building in February 1931. Of this prayer…...