Emma L. Ashford

I have written about Emma Ashford before on this date (see links below), but unfortunately have not unearthed anything new about her since.  However, in recent months a few people who are also interested in her work have visited the blog and left comments. (I now get many more readers who are searching for a particular writer or composer than those who are looking for the new material.)  One of those commenters has recorded several performances of Ashford's organ compositions and posted them on YouTube.

This is known as Emma Ashford's voluntary on Abide with me (a favorite of many), though of course it's really based on the tune EVENTIDE by composer William H. Monk rather than the text.  Chris S. performs it on a reed organ.



I have been having computer problems for a while now which have mostly curtailed posting but I hope to be back soon.


Four Years Ago: Emma L. Ashford

Two Years Ago: Emma L. Ashford 

William Henry Monk

Composer William Henry Monk, born today in 1823 in Brompton, is actually one of the most influential people in the development of hymn tunes as we know them today.

At age 18 he was first employed as a church organist, and served at a few different locations until 1852, when he began playing at St. Matthias Church in Stoke Newington, where he established a daily choral service with only a volunteer choir, and remained there until his death in 1889. He also taught music at various times at Bedford College, the National Training School for Music, The School for the Indigent Blind, and was a professor of music at Kings College.

Monk was intrigued by the Oxford Movement and especially the particular music requirements of high church liturgy. With some friends, he established a musical journal, The Parish Choir, and served as its editor for a time. Though the magazine only lasted three years, it was very influential in Anglo-Catholic circles, and probably led to Monk's employment as the first music editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern, which would eventually sell more than sixty million copies.

In that position, Monk was, in a sense, continuing the work of William Henry Havergal and Henry J. Gauntlett, who in addition to composing their own tunes, often arranged and harmonized tunes from earlier composers into the sort of four-part arrangements we still use today. Monk's own tunes were popular in his time (less so today) but his arrangements of such tunes as ELLACOMBE, ST. MAGNUS, VICTORY, and DIX are still widely known and sung. Remember also that Hymns A&M was one of the earliest hymnals to print the texts and tunes together, which would eventually become the standard.

Monk remained with the Hymns A&M organization, at least in a consulting capacity, until his death, through the editions of 1861, 1868, 1875, and 1889 (his notes on that last edition were completed the day before he died). He also was the music editor of the following collections:

The Holy Year (by Christopher Wordsworth)

The Congregational Psalmist

Psalter, Hymnal, and Anthem Book of the Scottish Church

Book of Common Prayer, with Plainsong and Appropriate Music

This tune of Monk's, originally written for the text Soldiers of Christ, arise, is one that has survived (sometimes called ENERGY). In many Lutheran churches (and probably elsewhere) the first two stanzas were sung each week at the offering. I can still hear my great-grandmother singing this exuberantly.

We give thee but thine own,
Whate’er the gift may be;
All that we have is thine alone,
A trust, O God, from thee.

May we thy bounties thus
As stewards true receive,
And gladly, as thou blessest us,
To thee our first-fruits give.

To comfort and to bless,
To find a balm for woe,
To tend those lost in loneliness
Is angels’ work below.

The captive to release,
To God the lost to bring,
To teach the way of life and peace—
It is a Christ-like thing.

And we believe thy Word,
That strong our faith may be;
Whate’er we do for thine, O Lord,
We do it unto thee.

William Walsham How, 1864; alt.
Tune ST. ETHELWALD (S.M.)
William H. Monk, 1861

We have talked more than once about the hymn that is matched with Monk's most enduring tune: EVENTIDE. As he recalled the origin of the tune years later, it was realized at an 1861 committee meeting shortly before Hymns Ancient and Modern was going to the printer that they had no tune for Abide with me (writer Henry Francis Lyte's own tune was deemed unacceptable). Monk went out and wrote EVENTIDE in ten minutes. His wife, however, remembered it differently, telling the editor of The Music of the Methodist Hymn Book (1935) that he wrote it as they watched a beautiful sunset together. Perhaps she thought it was a better tale for posterity.

Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher (born June 24, 1813) was the most famous clergyman of his time, a Civil War-era media star of a type we might recognize today. He'd get himself on television in this century, although unlike today's well-known television preachers his views were mostly liberal: favoring abolition, evolution, and women's suffrage.

He pastored the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn NY from its inception in 1847 until his death in 1887. Under his leadership the church was one of the largest in the country, with regular attendance in the thousands, and occasional guests such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain came to hear Beecher's acclaimed sermons.

He's here today because he actively promoted congregational singing in worship. The first hymnal he compiled was Temple Melodies in 1851, which included about 500 hymns and 200 tunes. He soon decided that was inadequate, and in 1855 brought out the Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes, with 1374 hymns and 367 tunes. Since he could get no publisher to bring out anything that extensive, the congregation raised the money themselves to have the first edition privately printed for their use. Both these hymnals were among the first in this country to include both words and music on the same page. Beecher also deliberately chose the texts from several different traditions, from psalm paraphrases, from the Englishmen Wesley and Watts, and (shockingly to some) from Unitarian and Roman Catholic sources. Before long the Plymouth Collection was being used in many other churches, no longer considered a publishing risk.

The members of Beecher's extended family were among the intellectual elites of the country, most of them acclaimed in their own fields. Like other Beecher ventures, the Plymouth Collection was a bit of a family affair. Novelist sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, then particularly famous following the publication of mammoth bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin, contributed three hymns, and younger brother Charles was one of the music editors. Charles and his fellow music editor, John Zundel (longtime organist at Plymouth Church) both contributed several tunes to the hymnal. Zundel later wrote the hymn tune BEECHER, named for Henry Ward, and still used today for a few different texts.

This hymn is by Mrs. Stowe, with a tune by Charles, from Henry Ward's Plymouth Collection:

When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
’Tis said, far down, below the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.

Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce so e’er it flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.

So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest!
There is a temple, sacred evermore,
And all the babble of life’s angry voices
Dies in hushed stillness at its peaceful door.

Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,
And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce so e’er it flieth,
Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee.

O Rest of rests! O Peace, serene, eternal!
Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never.
And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth
Fullness of joy, forever and forever.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, c.1855
Tune REST (Beecher) (11.10.11.10)
Charles Beecher, c.1855


Harriet's text is very much of its time and would probably not go over well today, though I think there's a lot to like in it (you may notice - no alt.). Charles's tune is pretty rangy (that second line!) and a bit hard to match up with the text, written in an American style that would be largely supplanted by the English Victorian tune writers and their more stately stepwise-moving tunes, meaning that Charles's several other tunes had little chance to migrate to other, later hymnals. And there's another, much better-known tune called REST by Frederick C. Maker.

P.S. The Plymouth Collection was the first American hymnal to include Abide with me. It was on the facing page to the above hymn, indicating that it could be sung to the same tune. Luckily, a few years later, W. H. Monk wrote the tune that we know today (EVENTIDE) and saved us from singing it to Charles Beecher's REST (not really -- with REST it would never have survived until today)

Henry Francis Lyte

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; God, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O thou who changest not, abide with me.

Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in thy wings,
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea—
Come, Friend of pilgrims, thus abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour.
What but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Henry Francis Lyte, 1847, alt.
Tune: EVENTIDE (10.10.10.10)
William Henry Monk, 1861

Henry Francis Lyte was the author of dozens of hymns that appeared in the hymnals of the nineteenth century, but his two most enduring are this one and Praise, my soul, the King of heaven. Since Abide with me was previously voted a favorite among readers of this blog (a small group, admittedly) it had to be featured today for Lyte's birthday (215 years ago). This hymn has probably also been near the top on just about any poll on hymns taken in more than a hundred years. I do admit to shuffling the original eight verses a bit in order to choose a final five, using one that has rarely been sung since the nineteenth century.

Lyte wrote his own tune for the hymn which was probably sung at All Saints, the church in Brixham where he was pastor for more than twenty years. But in 1861 the hymn was published in Hymns Ancient and Modern (the influential English hymnal that sold more than 60 million copies) with a new tune by the prolific composer W.H. Monk (one of the editors of the collection), the tune by which everyone knows it today. Others have tried to write new tunes for it, including Frederick Atkinson's MORECAMBE, but none have stuck, as this page from the Oremus Hymnal shows, listing the tunes matched with this text in hymnals spanning nearly 150 years. As mentioned before, tunes are often just as important as texts in establishing a hymn's popularity (for better or worse, some would say).

I know that many people associate this hymn mostly with funerals, but I never have. We used to sing it at the close of evening worship, and (very) occasionally it's used at Evensong in my present church. Heck, we even used to sing it in the subway or at airports. The four-part harmony is irresistible

Here's another verse by Lyte that I particularly like, the final verse of Jesus, I my cross have taken (1824). Sometimes you just find one verse especially meaningful, without liking the whole hymn. Like Abide with me, and like many hymns of the Victorian era, the last verse of the hymn ends up in heaven (that theme again). We used to sing about heaven a lot, so maybe that's why this jumped out to me when I first read it some months ago

Haste then, on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith and winged by prayer;
Heav'ns eternal day before thee,
God's own hand shall guide thee there.
Soon shall close the earthly mission,
Swift shall pass thy pilgrim days,
Hope soon change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

Now there's a verse that deserves to close with an "Amen."