John Ireland Tucker

Born on this day in 1819, the Reverend John Ireland Tucker is no longer well-known. He has no listing at the Cyber Hymnal site and barely a biographical listing at Hymnary.org. However, in his time, he was one of the most inflential people in the Episcopal Church for his devotion to and encouragement of music in worship.

His maternal grandparents, Joshua and Ann Sands, were among the founders of the first Episcopal congregation in Brooklyn, NY, in 1787, which held its first services in their home. That church would eventually become St. Ann's (named for Mrs. Sands) and lives on today as St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights.

Tucker was born in Brooklyn and named for a former rector of St. Ann's, John Ireland. One relative later claimed that the child could sing before he could talk. He was educated in schools in the New York metropolitan area; one of his teachers was William Muhlenberg at the Flushing Institute on Long Island, who would also have a place in American hymnic history. From a letter sent to young John by his mother we find a reference to chanting at Muhlenberg's school (not a widespread Episcopalian practice at the time), an interest which would reappear in later years. He also learned to play the organ as a student and was offered the opportunity to play a piece or two at services at St. Ann's during his school vacations.

Tucker graduated from Columbia College in 1837 and spent the next two years traveling abroad. Returning to New York, he served as a church organist,  reportedly being admonished at least once for "elaborate and showy" musicianship. He entered General Theological Seminary in 1841, graduated in 1844 and was ordained a deacon shortly after.

At the same time, in upstate Troy, New York, there was a girls' school associated with St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where the children were taught music and sometimes sang at services. The professional quartet choir objected to this and eventually threatened to quit if the girls were allowed to sing with them. The head of the school, Mary Warren (a daughter-in-law of the church's founders) solved the confict by endowing a new mission, the Church of the Holy Cross, where the girls' choir would sing every week. By the end of 1844 the new church had opened across town from St. Paul's, and Dr. Tucker was called as its first rector. The first choral service was held on Christmas Day, though the congregation had to go back to St. Paul's for the Eucharist as Tucker was still only a deacon.

In the choral services, rarely done at the time, many part of the liturgy were sung, including psalms, canticles and prayers. They sang psalms both to Gregorian chant tones and to composed Anglican chants. The choir usually performed one or two anthems, and the congregation joined them for the hymns.  The church was also one of the earliest Episcopal congregations to observe saints' days, and may have been the first to hold services on the Feast of the Ascension.

In 1848 Tucker was ordained to the priesthood, one day after the consecration of the Church of the Holy Cross. Choral services continued to be offered, and before long, Episcopal priests and musicians were traveling to Troy to experience them and to decide whether to start them in their own churches (many did). The Holy Cross choir also sang from time to time at other churches in the area on special occasions. Over the next several years, Tucker declined offers to pastor other congregations (he was even a nominee to become Bishop of Minnesota) and was to remain at Holy Cross until the end of his life.

Congregational singing at Tucker's church was considered equally as important as the choir's contributions. He took great interest in both the texts and tunes that were sung, and compiled his first collection, The Parish Hymnal, in 1870, for use in schools or confirmation classes. The texts in the Parish Hymnal were interlined with the music. Printed music in hymnals and the institution of musical education in public schools, both relatively new innovations at the time, allowed a greater variety of tunes to be used. Tucker chose tunes in several styles from both American and English composers.

At the time, the Episcopal church was still singing from their hymnal of 1826 (212 hymns, 150 psalm paraphrases), which was generally bound into the back of the Book of Common Prayer, and contained no music. When a new hymnal was finally approved in 1871 (only the texts were considered 'official'), the denomination licensed the book out to various musical editors, who chose their own tunes to be matched with the 520 texts contained therein. Tucker's edition, titled The Hymnal with Tunes Old and New, appeared the following year, and was taken up by many churches who thought they might emulate the hymn singing at Holy Cross. This musical edition of the 1871 hymnal is said to be the most popular of the four versions that were published.

Tucker compiled two hymnbooks for Sunday schools: The Children's Hymnal with Tunes (1874) and The New Children's Hymnal (1892). When the Episcopal church approved another new hymnal in 1892, he produced another musical edition (one of six this time) in 1894, The Hymnal Revised and Enlarged.

Across these hymnbooks, Tucker composed and published a handful of his own tunes, but most of them were not taken up by other editors, and none of his tunes are currently available to hear online.

John Ireland Tucker died on August 17, 1895, in the rectory which adjoins the Church of the Holy Cross. In December of the previous year the church and its rector had celebrated their fiftieth anniversaries with a joyful jubilee service. Sadly, the Church of the Holy Cross closed in December of 2009, before I was able to visit. It was purchased by a neighboring university but was not being used for anything the last time I saw it.

Most of the information here comes from a book by Christopher W. Knauff: Doctor Tucker, Priest-Musician (1897). The book is interesting for the wealth of information on his life and the history of his pastorate, his musical and liturgical contributions, and the Church of the Holy Cross itself. Many readers would probably be interested in the correspondence included from prominent hymn tune writers during the time Tucker was compiling his hymnals. 

Tucker's legacy lives on in the musical and liturgical life of the Episcopal church, though few people remember his name.



Seven Years Ago: William Cowper

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (June 20, 1743 - March 9, 1825) was well-known and very successful in her time as a poet, essayist, and children's educator. As she was growing up in Leicestershire, her father, a Presbyterian minister, saw that she received a strong, well rounded education, but her mother worried that she was becoming too intellectual (for a girl), which might damage her matrimonial prospects. However, Anna's love for learning would in later years inspire her to open a school with her husband, Rochefort Barbauld, where they taught for several years.

Her first book of poetry, published in 1773, sold very well, quickly establishing her literary reputation. While teaching at the Palgrave Academy, her school, she published books for children, including Lessons for Children (1778-79), and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781). These books continnued to be used in classrooms for nearly a hundred years. She also began to write political essays in support of such causes as abolition and religious freedom.

Barbauld's first five hymns were written before her first book of poetry was published, and were first printed in Hymns for Public Worship (1772), then in her own book. She went on to write several more, some intended specifically as hymns, and some poems that were later included as hymns in later hymnals. This one, perhaps the most familiar to modern hymn singers, was one of those first five.

Praise to God, immortal praise,
For the love that crowns our days;
Bounteous source of every joy,
Let thy praise our tongues employ;
All to thee, our God, we owe,
Source whence all our blessings flow.

All the plenty summmer pours,
Autumn's rich o'erflowing stores,
Flocks that whiten all the plain,
Yellow sheaves of ripened grain,
God, for these our souls shall raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise.

As thy prosp'ring hand hath blessed
May we give thee of our best;
And by deeds of kindly love,
For thy mercies grateful prove;
Singing thus through all our days,
Praise to God, immortal praise.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 1772; alt.
Tune: DIX (7.7.7.7.7.7.)
Conrad Kocher, 1838
arr., William Henry Monk, 1860

Barbauld's original hymn was quite different from this version. Hers was in nine verses of four lines each, rather than three (sometimes four) verses of six lines. The first four lines here comprised her first verse, but the next two lines are not hers (though doubtless intended to recall the doxology Praise God, from whom all blessings flow by Thomas Ken). Her second verse continued:

For the blessings of the field,
For the stores her gardens yield,
For the vine's exalted juice,
For the generous olive's use:

It's not really known who made these changes (which happened over many years). The Episcopal hymnal of 1826, where the hymn apparently first appeared in this country, does cast it in six-line verses, and includes those "new" last two lines in the first verse, so they may be the work of someone on the committee that produced that hymnal. This 1826 version uses much more of Barbauld's original than subsequent versions would.

When it first appeared in Hymns for Public Worship, the hymn was titled "Praise to God in Prosperity and Adversity." Her last four verses were:

Yet should rising whirlwinds tear
From the stem the ripening ear;
Should the fig-tree's blasted shoot
Drop her green, untimely fruit;

Should the vine put forth no more,
Nor the olive yield her store,
Though the sickening flocks should fall,
And the herds desert the stall;

Should thine altered hand restrain
The early and the latter rain;
Blast each opening bud of joy,
And the rising year destroy;

Yet to thee my soul shall raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise;
And when every blessing's flown,
Love thee for thyself alone.

Barbauld's fuller theme was that God should be praised no matter what the circumstances, in adversity as well as prosperity. These last verses were largely still present in 1826, but by the next Episcopal hymnal, in 1872, they were gone (except for the first two lines of the last verse, somewhat altered), and have never been restored. The hymn as used today is mostly the version printed in the Episcopal hymnal of 1892, and therefore, probably the work of someone on that committee.

The tune DIX was apparently first matched to this text in the 1872 hymnal in the music edition edited by J. Ireland Tucker (there were 5 different music editions, as the denominational authorities only approved the texts, not the tunes). It takes its name from William Chatterton Dix, who wrote the hymn most closely associated with it.

After many years of success, Anna Laetitia Barbauld's fortunes seemed to reverse toward the end of her life. Her husband became mentally unbalanced and took his own life in 1808. They had separated earlier that year after an episode in which he attacked her, forcing her to jump out of a window to escape. A few years later, during England's war with Napoleonic France, she published Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem, which was very critical of the ongoing war and predicted that England would go the way of earlier fallen empires if hostilities continued. This was a hugely unpopular stance (as we sometimes see even in the present day), and the savage criticism she received caused her to cease publishing entirely. Though she continued to write, nothing further was published until after her death in 1825. Later that year her niece, Lucy Aikin, published The Works of Anna Lætitia Barbauld, with a Memoir, and Barbauld's reputation was gradually rehabilitated.

P.S. The illustration above is of a Wedgwood cameo of Barbauld crafted in 1775.