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Johann Sebastian Bach

1685 - 1750 Person Name: Johann S. Bach Harmonizer of "VATER UNSER" 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)

Dmitri Stepanovich Bortnianski

1751 - 1825 Person Name: D. Bortnianski Composer of "ST. PETERSBURG" in The Book of Common Praise Dimitri Stepanovitch Bortniansky (1751-1825) Ukraine 1751-1825 Born in Glukhov, Ukraine, he joined the imperial choir at age 8 and studied with Galuppi, who later took the lad with him to Italy, where he studied for 10 years, becoming a composer, harpsichordist, and conductor. While in Italy he composed several operas and other instrumental music, composing more operas and music later in Russia. In 1779 he returned to Russia, where he was appointed Director to the Imperial Chapel Choir, the first as a native citizen. In 1796 he was appointed music director. With such a great instrument at his disposal, he produced many compositions, 100+ religious works, sacred concertos, cantatas, and hymns. He influenced Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovshy, the latter editing Bortniansky's sacred work, amassing 10 volumnes. He died in St. Petersburg. He was so popular in Russia that a bronze statue was erected in his honor in the Novgorod Kremlin. He composed in different musical styles, including choral works in French, Italian, Latin, German, and Church Slavonic. John Perry

James Ashcroft Noble

1844 - 1896 Author of "Lord Jesus, in the days of old" in The Book of Common Praise Noble, James Ashcroft, was born at Liverpool in 1844, and came to London in 1881. He was then for eight years at Birkdale, Lanes., but returned to London in 1892, and died April 3, 1896, at Wandsworth Common. He was a well-known essayist, and contributed to the Spectator, the Academy, and other literary papers. In 1887 he published Verses of a Prose Writer, simple and unambitious, but with the breath of true poetry. In the section entitled "Poems of the Inner Life" there are two hymns written in 1886 for the elder (2) and younger (1) girls at Wintersdorf, a girl's school at Birkdale, where he used to lecture on English literature:— 1. God of beauty, Thou hast spread. [Beauty of Nature.] 1887, p. 92, as "A Hymn of Beauty, written for the little ones at Wintersdorf." In C. Farrington's Hymns for Children, 189 i. 2. Lord Jesus, in the days of old. [The Way to Emmaus.] 1887, p. 95, as “A Hymn for Evening, written for the girls at Wintersdorf." In the Sunday School Hymnary, 1905. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.] --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)