HOTC #30: LSB 462, All the Earth with Joy Is Sounding
Der Auferstandene, Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1558
With this week’s hymn we bump up against Ascension, and find ourselves on the penultimate Sunday in the Easter season. In many ways the joy with which the Earth is sounding in this hymn sits as a counterpoint to the joyous acclamations of Heaven which we will hear about this Thursday at the Ascension.
We also get the opportunity to examine this unique combination: the contemporary wizardry of Stephen Starke’s fantastic Lutheran hymnody coupled with the musical magic of the popular British organist and composer Herbert Howells.
The Author
This is, I believe, our first interaction with the work of Rev. Stephen Starke, who is quite simply a synodical treasure in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Even if you’ve never heard of him (which, I highly doubt if you’re here reading about Lutheran hymnody), you’ve certainly sung, heard, and enjoy the fruits of his amazingly talented theological and poetic mind; his other contributions to Lutheran Service Book (whose Hymnody Committee he chaired) are:
LSB #339 Lift Up Your Heads, You Everlasting Doors
LSB #342 What Hope! An Eden Prophesied
LSB #362 O Sing of Christ
LSB #404 Jesus, once with Sinners Numbered
LSB #446 Jesus, Greatest at the Table
LSB #481 Scatter the Darkness, Break the Gloom
LSB #502 Holy Spirit, the Dove Sent from Heaven
LSB #561 The Tree of Life
LSB #564 Christ Sits at God’s Right Hand
LSB #572 In the Shattered Bliss of Eden
LSB #597 Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying
LSB #599 O Gracious Lord, with Love Draw Near
LSB #612 As Rebels, Lord, Who Foolishly Have Wandered
LSB #635 O Gracious Lord, I Firmly Am Believing
LSB #638 Eat This Bread
LSB #640 Thee We Adore, O Hidden Savior
LSB #667 Saints, See the Cloud of Witnesses
LSB #736 Consider How the Birds Above
LSB #753 All for Christ I Have Foresaken
LSB #756 Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me
LSB #762 There Is a Time for Everything
LSB #827 Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling
LSB #860 Gracious Savior, Grant Your Blessing
LSB #871 Greet the Rising Sun
LSB #884 Lord, Support Us All Day Long
LSB #914 Light of Light, O Sole-Begotten
LSB #930 All Your Works of God, Bless the Lord
LSB #932 Jesus Sat with His Disciples
LSB #933 My Soul Rejoices
LSB # 936 Sing Praise to the God of Israel
LSB #941 We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God
Needless to say, we’ll be hearing more from Rev. Starke in the future here on this blog.
Born in 1955, Starke holds his Masters of Divinity from Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, as well as three honorary doctorates (one each from Concordia University, Irvine, Concordia Seminary, St Louis, and Concordia University Wisconsin). Hymnary.org credits him with some 42 hymn texts (though the actual number of his compositions far exceeds that, and stood at some 175 twelve years ago), and I don’t think it’s a stretch to credit him as the Lutheran hymnwriter of our time - his output is simply that vast, diverse, and popular. Concordia Publishing House has collected his hymns into two volumes: O Sing of Christ: The Hymns of Stephen P. Starke, Volume 1, and Marvel at the Mercy: The Hymns of Stephen P. Starke, Volume 2. This interview, now nearly a dozen years old, as well as this similarly-aged interview from The Lutheran Witness give an excellent glimpse into Rev. Starke’s background and some thoughts on his work.
Pastor Starke is now retired and lives in Michigan.
The Text
This text first appeared in Hymnal Supplement ‘98. It opens with an expression of the unbounded joy brought by proclamation of the resurrection: “All the earth with joy is sounding: Christ has risen from the dead!” What follows are a series of scenes in which Christ is the superlative: He is “the greater Jonah” in the first verse, and “Stronger He, the strong man binding,” in the second verse.
The third verse comes in two halves: the first reminds us of the Incarnation - of Christ’s sharing in our humanity. This is then contrasted sharply with the image of the risen Christ, “Crowned with radiant exaltation,” which through His victory is shared with “all our fallen race.”
The final verse (really the final two verses) almost sound like they could live happily in an Ascension service, and so form a bridge from Easter into the Ascension festival. The joy that all the earth is sounding with in this hymn will be mirrored on Thursday as Christ rises “Up through endless ranks of angels, / Cries of triumph in His ears.” (LSB #491)
The Tune
We have two eminent personages to meet today. The first, of course, was Rev. Starke. The second is the composer of this soaring Anglican hymn, Herbert Howells.
Born near the Forest of Dean in southwestern England in 1892, Howells was the son of a builder who played the organ at a nearby Baptist church on the weekends. Herbert himself began his musical career by filling in for his father occasionally, before moving on as a chorister and unofficial assistant organist at the local Anglican parish at the age of 11.
A local lord, the 1st Viscount Bledisoe, took an interest in the young boy’s musical career, and thus paid for Howells’ formal music lessons with Herbert Brewer, then organist of Gloucester Cathedral. Gloucester Cathedral being the site of the annual Three Choirs Festival, Howells had the good fortune to witness the premier of Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis there in September 1910, and was able to sit next to the great composer and share his score of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with him during the festival’s performance of that piece.
Howells then moved on to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied with some of the great names in late Victorian and Edwardian church music, among them Charles Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry, and Charles Wood. By this time he had found his feet as a composer, and his Mass in the Dorian Mode had its London debut at Westminster Cathedral very shortly after he arrived at the RCM.
In 1915 he was diagnosed with the previously incurable malady known as Grave's’ disease. This had the unintended side effect of excluding him from the conscription then in force on account of the First World War, and may arguably have saved his life in that regard (the Great War consumed many of his classmates at the RCM). He was administered a new treatment for his disease (consisting of twice-weekly injections of radium in his neck), which allowed him to eventually recover.
By 1920, Howells had joined the faculty of the Royal College of Music, and five years later he would also become Director of Music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School.
In 1935, tragedy struck, when Howells’ 9-year-old son Michael contracted polio, dying in London three days later. The event would haunt Howells periodically for the rest of his life. Indeed, his Cello Concerto, which he had been working on the time of the boy’s death, was never completed.
Howells is considered a landmark composer in modern church music, with a large following among aficionados of organ and choral music in particular. Besides his various orchestral and other works, his Psalm Preludes, published in two volumes of three preludes each, as well as his Three Rhapsodies and Master Tallis’s Testament are considered towering achievements of modern organ composition. His choral works vary widely in complexity and modernity, nearly all of them showing some influence of the Tudor and Renaissance English choral tradition that was making a major comeback at the time. Among his greatest works in this category are the Collegium Regale (a set of canticles), the Gloucester Service, the St. Paul’s Service, his Requiem, and the Hymnus Paradisi.
Howells was also a talented composer of hymntunes, including the one we consider today. This tune originally set Robert Bridges’ translation of Joachim Neander’s German hymn “Meine Hoffnung stehet feste,” which became “All My Hope on God Is Founded.” A mutual friend of both the poet and the composer had suggested the text to Howells, who, as the story goes, found the request in his mail while eating breakfast one morning, and composed the tune right there on the spot, “while I was chewing bacon and sausage,” as Howells remembered it.
The tune was renamed MICHAEL after the aforementioned death of the composer’s son of the same name in 1935.
Howells died in 1983, and is interred in Westminster Abbey.
The tune is quintessentially English, and has that rousing, harmonically powerful quality to it that seems to define English hymntunes (and indeed, English music) of this period. There is a power - a gravitas - to this music, borne of empire. Indeed, to my ears, the repeated Cs above an F major chord, along with the dotted rhythm that begins the tune are very reminiscent of the introduction to Hubert Parry’s nationalistic English hymn “Jerusalem.” Much like “Jerusalem,” the tune soars seems to soar, with dotted rhythms and long notes carrying the momentum into the descending scalar passages. This is really big, potent music, and it commands attention.
Settings of this hymn and/or tune may be found in:
For organ:
Concordia Hymn Prelude Library, Vol. 7
Alternate harmonizations:
Noel Raswthorne: 400 Last Verses