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Hans Leo Hassler

1564 - 1612 Composer of "PASSION CHORALE" in The Cyber Hymnal Hans Leo Hassler Germany 1564-1612. Born at Nuremberg, Germany, he came from a family of famous musicians and received early education from his father. He then studied in Venice, Italy, with Andrea Gabrieli, uncle of Giovanni Gabrieli, his friend, with whom he composed a wedding motet. The uncle taught him to play the organ. He learned the polychoral style and took it back to Germany after Andrea Gabrieli's death. He served as organist and composer for Octavian Fugger, the princely art patron of Augsburg (1585-1601). He was a prolific composer but found his influence limited, as he was Protestant in a still heavily Catholic region. In 1602 he became director of town music and organist in the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg until 1608. He married Cordula Claus in 1604. He was finally court musician for the Elector of Saxony in Dresden, Germany, evenually becoming Kapellmeister (1608-1612). A Lutheran, he composed both for Roman Catholic liturgy and for Lutheran churches. He produced two volumns of motets, a famous collection of court songs, and a volume of simpler hymn settings. He published both secular and religious music, managing to compose much for the Catholic church that was also usable in Lutheran settings. He was also a consultant to organ builders. In 1596 he, with 53 other organists, had the opportunity to examine a new instrument with 59 stops at the Schlosskirche, Groningen. He was recognized for his expertise in organ design and often was called on to examine new instruments. He entered the world of mechanical instrument construction, developing a clockwork organ that was later sold to Emperor Rudolf II. He died of tuberculosis in Frankfurt, Germany. John Perry

Johann Sebastian Bach

1685 - 1750 Person Name: Johann S. Bach Harmonizer of "PASSION CHORALE" in The Cyber Hymnal Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach into a musical family and in a town steeped in Reformation history, he received early musical training from his father and older brother, and elementary education in the classical school Luther had earlier attended. Throughout his life he made extraordinary efforts to learn from other musicians. At 15 he walked to Lüneburg to work as a chorister and study at the convent school of St. Michael. From there he walked 30 miles to Hamburg to hear Johann Reinken, and 60 miles to Celle to become familiar with French composition and performance traditions. Once he obtained a month's leave from his job to hear Buxtehude, but stayed nearly four months. He arranged compositions from Vivaldi and other Italian masters. His own compositions spanned almost every musical form then known (Opera was the notable exception). In his own time, Bach was highly regarded as organist and teacher, his compositions being circulated as models of contrapuntal technique. Four of his children achieved careers as composers; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Chopin are only a few of the best known of the musicians that confessed a major debt to Bach's work in their own musical development. Mendelssohn began re-introducing Bach's music into the concert repertoire, where it has come to attract admiration and even veneration for its own sake. After 20 years of successful work in several posts, Bach became cantor of the Thomas-schule in Leipzig, and remained there for the remaining 27 years of his life, concentrating on church music for the Lutheran service: over 200 cantatas, four passion settings, a Mass, and hundreds of chorale settings, harmonizations, preludes, and arrangements. He edited the tunes for Schemelli's Musicalisches Gesangbuch, contributing 16 original tunes. His choral harmonizations remain a staple for studies of composition and harmony. Additional melodies from his works have been adapted as hymn tunes. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Lucy A. Bennett

1850 - 1927 Author of "O Teach Me What It Meaneth" in The Cyber Hymnal Lucy A. Bennett was born on January 8, 1850 in Green Farm, Falfield, Gloucestershire, England. She was a staunch Methodist and a poet. She began to write poems, hymns and prose at an early age. As a young woman, she attended Keswick Conventions where she met and corresponded with prominent Christian leaders, including Christina Rosseti and C. H. Spurgeon. She was active at Mount Pleasant Chapel where she arranged for ministers, led a Bible Class for women, and visited and helped the poor and needy. She helped to found All Nations College, Upper Norwood and Mount Hermon College, Streatham Common. She died on March 10, 1927 Dianne Shapiro, from Mid-Victorian Poetry, 1860-1879: an annotated biobiliography by Catherine W. Reilly (London: Mansell Publishing Ltd., 2000, and "A tribute to the life and work of Brian Torode" (btsarnia.org) accessed 9/20/2020

Chrétien Urhan

1790 - 1845 Person Name: Chrétian Urhan, 1790-1845 Composer of "RUTHERFORD" in Complete Mission Praise Chrétien Urhan (Baptised as Christian Urhan; 16 February 1790, Montjoie - 2 November 1845, Belleville) was a French violinist, organist, composer and player of the viola and the viola d'amore. His father first introduced him to the violin. He was first mentioned in 1804 by Joséphine de Beauharnais that he had replaced a violinist for a performance of Haydn's The Creation, at the young age of 14. From there he was sent to work in Paris, where he took instruction from Jean-François Lesueur, master of the chapel of the Tuileries. He also learned from prominent teachers such as François-Antoine Habeneck, Rodolphe Kreutzer and Pierre Rode. He was invited to join the imperial chapel as a violinist in 1810. In this period the young Urhan shared lodgings with his friends the harpist Franz Anton Stockhausen (father of Julius Stockhausen) and the painter Carl Begas the elder (who was studying with Antoine Jean Gros, 1813-15). In 1815, through a Quartermaster in the Prussian army of occupation, Urhan and Stockhausen (who corresponded with Beethoven) obtained a score of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony and set it before Habeneck, with the result that the work was introduced to Paris. The two were among Amis de Beethoven, or Beethoven-Bruder in Paris, together with Wilhelm Mangold and others. In the early 1820s the violinist Sina, a member of the string quartet led by Schuppanzigh for Andreas Razumovsky, with Urhan gave new encouragement to Habeneck to continue with the master's works. Until Stockhausen's marriage to the singer Margarethe Schmuck, a member of their circle, in 1825, he lived with Urhan, who remained a lifelong friend. In 1816, Urhan was appointed solo viola at the Opéra de Paris, and became solo violinist in 1825. Strongly Catholic, he was also appointed the organist at the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in Paris in 1827, a position that he held until his death. In this position he met the young Franz Liszt, with whom he played chamber music, and also the Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata in a mass. A number of composers wrote prominent parts for Urhan. Meyerbeer composed for him solo viola and solo viola d'amore parts in his opera Les Huguenots, and Rudolph Kreutzer, the solo viola d'amore part in his opera Le Paradis de Mahomet. In 1834, Berlioz wrote his Harold en Italie for orchestra with viola obbligato at the request of Niccolò Paganini, who refused to play the work. Berlioz offered the solo viola part to Urhan and the premiere was given on 23 November 1834 at the Paris Conservatory. According to Ernest Legouvé, he was both entirely religious and entirely devoted to music. He lived like a medieval ascetic, abstaining from almost everything except his daily visit to the Café des Anglais. His love for theatre music created a severe inner conflict, which he overcame by asking the permission of the Archbishop to play in the orchestra of the Opéra (of which he was Leader), being told it was a matter for his own conscience. He accepted this by always being seated with his back to the stage, so that he never saw the singers or dancers for whom he played, even when providing solo accompaniment for a dancer. Legouvé thought there were several greater violin virtuousi in Paris than Urhan, but that he outshone them through his profound knowledge of the masters and respect for their music, and through the indefinable quality of style which he brought to them. He often differed with Habeneck, when the conductor wanted to make cuts, and actually published and signed an article against Habeneck when he withdrew some double-basses from Beethoven's Choral Symphony. He did not merely guard the reputation of the old masters, but he was also a fierce advocate and defender of the new, and of those of the future. He was the first to introduce a song of Schubert's into France ('L'Adieu'). For Legouvé, to see him play was like watching Fra Angelico painting in his cell, a medieval mystic at work. The Stockhausens visited Urhan in his fifth-floor Paris apartment in 1839, and found him living in great simplicity in two rooms, with a piano and five stools in his bedroom, where they sat and were made very welcome. In 1843 Urhan encouraged their son Julius while he was in Paris. In November 1845 Julius wrote to inform his parents of Urhan's death. He had been living in pitiable conditions in Belleville, and began to refuse his food: thoughts of suicide made him resolve to starve himself to death. He suffered agonies of pain and descended into a frenzy, giving terrible grief to his friends, none of whom could talk him out of it. All interventions failed, and Urhan, whom the Stockhausen and Legentil families considered their dear friend, and who had formerly taken communion every Sunday, lost his faith in God and his desire for life. Thus he died, quietly at last with friends at his bedside, on 2 November 1845. --en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (excerpts)