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Robert Schumann
1810 - 1856 Composer of "CANONBURY" in Worship and Song. (Rev. ed.) Robert Alexander Schumann DM Germany 1810-1856. Born at Swickau, Saxony, Germany, the last child of a novelist, bookseller, and publisher, he began composing music at age seven. He received general music instruction at the local high school and worked to create his own compositions. Some of his works were considered admirable for his age. He even composed music congruent to the personalities of friends, who took note of the anomaly. He studied famous poets and philosophers and was impressed with the works of other famous composers of the time. After his father’s death in 1826, he went to Leipzig to study law (to meet the terms of his inheritance). In 1829 he continued law studies in Heidelberg, where he became a lifelong member of Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg. In 1830 he left the study of law to return to music, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, assured him he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but an injury to his right hand (from a practicing method) ended that dream. He then focused his energies on composition, and studied under Heinrich Dorn, a German composer and conductor of the Leipzig opera. Schumann visited relatives in Zwickau and Schneeberg and performed at a concert given by Clara Wieck, age 13 at the time. In 1834 he published ‘A new journal for music’, praising some past composers and deriding others. He met Felix Mendelssohn at Wieck’s house in Leigzig and lauded the greatness of his compositions, along with those of Johannes Brahms. He also wrote a work, hoping to use proceeds from its sale towards a monument for Beethoven, whom he highly admired. He composed symphonies, operas, orchestral and chamber works, and also wrote biographies. Until 1840 he wrote strictly for piano, but then began composing for orchestra and voice. That year he composed 168 songs. He also receive a Doctorate degree from the University of Jena that year. An aesthete and influential music critic, he was one of the most regarded composers of the Romantic era. He published his works in the ‘New journal for music’, which he co-founded. In 1840, against the wishes of his father, he married Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher, and they had four children: Marie, Julie, Eugenie, and Felix. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career, the earnings from which formed a substantial part of her father’s fortune. In 1841 he wrote 2 of his 4 symphonies. In 1843 he was awarded a professorship in the Conservatory of Music, which Mendelssohn had founded in Leipzig that same year, When he and Clara went to Russia for her performances, he was questioned as to whether he also was a musician. He harbored resentment for her success as a pianist, which exceeded his ability as a pianist and reputation as a composer. From 1844-1853 he was engaged in setting Goethe’s Faust to music, but he began having persistent nervous prostration and developed neurasthenia (nervous fears of things, like metal objects and drugs). In 1846 he felt he had recovered and began traveling to Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, where he was received with enthusiasm. His only opera was written in 1848, and an orchestral work in 1849. In 1850 he succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Dusseldorf, but was a poor conductor and soon aroused the opposition of the musicians, claiming he was impossible on the platform. From 1850-1854 he composed a wide variety of genres, but critics have considered his works during this period inferior to earlier works. In 1851 he visited Switzerland, Belgium, and returned to Leipzig. That year he finished his fourth symphony. He then went to Dusseldorf and began editing his complete works and making an anthology on the subject of music. He again was plagued with imaginary voices (angels, ghosts or demons) and in 1854 jumped off a bridge into the Rhine River, but was rescued by boatmen and taken home. For the last two years of his life, after the attempted suicide, Schumann was confined to a sanitarium in Endenich near Bonn, at his own request, and his wife was not allowed to see him. She finally saw him two days before he died, but he was unable to speak. He was diagnosed with psychotic melancholia, but died of pneumonia without recovering from the mental illness. Speculations as to the cause of his late term maladies was that he may have suffered from syphilis, contracted early in life, and treated with mercury, unknown as a neurological poison at the time. A report on his autopsy said he had a tumor at the base of the brain. It is also surmised he may have had bipolar disorder, accounting for mood swings and changes in his productivity. From the time of his death Clara devoted herself to the performance and interpretation of her husband’s works.
John Perry
Robert Schumann
H. W. Greatorex
1813 - 1858 Person Name: Henry W. Greatorex Composer of "GROSTETTE" in The Methodist Hymnal Henry Wellington Greatorex United Kingdom 1813-1858. Born at Burton upon Trent, England, he received a thorough musical education from his father, Thomas Greatorex, who was for many years organist of Westminster Abbey, and conductor of the London concerts of ancient music. Henry became a composer, author, compiler, editor, and arranger of music. He emigrated to the U.S. In 1839. In 1849 he married artist Eliza Pratt, and they had four children: Elizabeth, Kathleen, Thomas, and Francis Henry. Prior to settling in New York City as a music teacher and organist at Calvary Church, he played at churches in Hartford, CT, including Center Church and St Johns Episcopal Church in West Hartford, CT. He frequently sang in oratorios and concerts. For some years he was also organist and conductor of the choir at St. Paul's Chapel. In 1853 he was an organist at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. He did much to advance the standard of sacred music in the U.S. In days when country singing school teachers imposed more rudimentary melodies on hymn books. He published a collection of “Psalm & hymn tunes, chants, anthems & sentences” (Boston 1851). He died of yellow fever in Charleston, SC.
John Perry
H. W. Greatorex
John Hay
1838 - 1905 Author of "Defend Us, Lord, from Every Ill" in Worship and Song. (Rev. ed.) Hay, John, diplomat and author, born at Salem, Ind., Oct. 8, 1838; graduated at Brown University 1858; admitted to the 111. Bar; was private secretary to Pres. Lincoln; served in the Civil War; member of the Legation at Paris, Madrid, and Vienna, and Ambassador at the Court of St. James. In 1879-81 he was First Assistant Sec. of State, and from 1898 Sec. of State in the Cabinets of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, to his death July 1, 1905. His publications included Castilian Days, 1871; and, with J. G. Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols., 1887, &c. In 1871 he also published Pike County Ballads, and in 1890 Poems. Of his poems the following are in common use as hymns:—
1. From Sinai's cloud of darkness. [Law and the Gospel.] This begins with st. ii. of his poem, “Sinai and Calvary," in Poems, 1890, p. 152. Asked for its date and origin, Mr. Hay said: "I wrote the hymn several years ago, because I felt like it. I can say nothing more intelligible than that." It was included iu the New Laudes Domini, N.Y., 1892.
2. Lord, from far-severed climes we come. [Work on for God.] In the summer of 1895, at his summer home at Lake Sunapee, Mr. Hay was asked to write a hymn for the opening of the 15th International Christian Endeavour Convention, at Washington, the following year, but declined on the ground that his verse-writing days were past. But in the following spring he sent this hymn, with the statement that there was no obligation to use it. In his manuscript it is entitled "An Invocation." It was sung at the opening of the Convention of 1896, and again at the Convention on July 4, 1905, when the opening exercises assumed the form of a memorial service, as his body was being borne to the grave. It is in several American collections. In The Methodist Hymnal, N.Y., 1905, it opens with st. ii., “Defend us, Lord, from every ill." The original is in 4 stanzas of 4 lines.
3. Not in dumb resignation. [Submission.] Appeared in 3 stanzas of 8 lines in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1891, and entitled "Thy will be done." Given with alterations in Dr. L. Abbott's Plymouth Hymnal, N.Y., 1894.
Mr. Hay was for some time an office-bearer in the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, Washington, D.C. [Rev. L. F. Benson, D.D.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
John Hay
