Hymn of the Day: “Eternal Father Strong to Save” ELW 756
Text: William Whiting (1825-1878)
Tune: MELITA John B. Dykes (1823-1876)

William Whiting wrote this hymn in 1860 for one of his students who was about to sail to America. It was revised and included in the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) "for those at sea." The first stanza originally began, "O Thou who bidd'st the ocean deep" and has sometimes been found with "Almighty Father" rather than "Eternal Father." Evangelical Lutheran Worship uses the same altered versions of Whiting's four stanzas that Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) used. This hymn has found wide usage in English-speaking countries as the sailor's hymn and has been allied to the state almost as much as to the church. In the United States it is inscribed over the chancel of the Naval Academy chapel at Annapolis, was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's favorite hymn, was sung at his funeral in 1945, and was played by the Navy Band as John F. Kennedy's body was carried up the steps of the Capitol building to lie in state in 1963.

William Whiting was born in Kensington, England, the son of a grocer, and moved with his family to Clapham, where he went to school. In 1841 he enrolled at the Winchester Training Institute, and in 1842 he became master of the Winchester College Choristers' School, serving there until he died. He was an active participant in civic and church life and became honorary secretary to the Winchester-Hursley branch of the English Church Union, which supported the Catholic cause in the Church of England. Besides hymns, he wrote two books of verse: Rural Thoughts (1851) and Edgar Thorpe, or the Warfare of Life (1867).

The tune, MELITA, is named after the island where Paul was shipwrecked (Acts 28:1 KJV; modern Bible translations have “Malta”). It is a fitting name for a tune associated with a text about safety on the seas. MELITA was composed by John B. Dykes especially for this text in 1861, and they were published together in Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Offertory: “Aria” Georg Böem (1661-1733)

The son of an organist-schoolmaster, Georg Böhm went to study at the University of Jena in 1684 and left probably in 1690. In 1698 he became organist at the Church of St. Johannis in Lüneburg, where he remained for the rest of his life and where the young J.S. Bach doubtless heard him play. Although Böhm wrote numerous cantatas and sacred songs, he is chiefly remembered for his keyboard works, in which he deploys differing styles for harpsichord and organ. His harpsichord suites are in the manner of J.J. Froberger, but his organ works are more important. Some of his toccatas, preludes, fugues, and postludes for organ are brilliant, and his treatment of chorale melodies in organ partitas was truly original and exercised a strong influence on Bach.

Opening Voluntary: “Pleading Savior,” Emma Lou Diemer (1927)

A beautiful old American hymn tune, PLEADING SAVIOR is the setting for a half-dozen lyrics by Protestants and Catholics and even Orthodox. The tune was written by Joshua Leavitt and first published by Deodatus Dutton in The Christian Lyre in 1833, then again in The Plymouth Collection in 1855 where the words "There the Savior stands a-pleading" were the first words of the lyric. The English editors called it SALTASH after a town in Cornwall.

Emma Lou Diemer played the piano and composed at a very early age and became organist in her church at age 13. Her great interest in composing music continued through College High School in Warrensburg, MO, and she majored in composition at the Yale Music School (BM, 1949; MM, 1950) and at the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D, 1960). She studied in Brussels, Belgium on a Fulbright Scholarship and spent two summers of composition study at the Berkshire Music Center. She taught in several colleges and was organist at several churches in the Kansas City area during the 1950s. From 1959-61 she was composer-in-residence in the Arlington, VA schools under the Ford Foundation Young Composers Project, and composed many choral and instrumental works for the schools. She was consultant for the MENC Contemporary Music Project before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland where she taught composition and theory from 1965-70. In 1971 she moved from the East Coast to teach composition and theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At UCSB she was instrumental in founding the electronic/computer music program. In 1991 she became Professor Emeritus at UCSB. She is an active keyboard performer (piano, organ, harpsichord, synthesizer), and has given concerts of her own music at Washington National Cathedral, St. Mary's Cathedral and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

Closing Voluntary: “Fanfare,” R. Mark Otterstad

“Fanfare” was written by Mr. Otterstad in 1963, while he was a student at St. Olaf College.