Composer: Samuel Holyoke
Samuel Holyoke, American composer and teacher of vocal and instrumental music, was the son of Rev. Elizur Holyoke and Hannah Peabody. He was born on 15 October 1762 in Boxford, Massachusetts, in Essex County, and died on 7 February 1820, Concord, New Hampshire, in Merrimack County. He was a Congregationalist and a Mason, and never married.
After preparatory training at at Phillips Academy, Andover Holyoke matriculated at Harvard College in 1786. The source of his musical training is unknown, but he was composed music before he graduated from Harvard in 1789. In 1789-1790, he contributed four secular compositions to Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Magazine. A prolific composer, he composed some 700 pieces, including psalm tunes and anthem…
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Behold the friend of sinners diesBehold the friend of sinners dies,
With love and pity in his eyes,
To save a guilty world from death!
O sinners hear his dying groan,
Your load of sin he bears alone,
And yields for you,
and yields for you his life and breath.
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