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Text Identifier:"^o_blessed_blessed_sounds_of_grace$"

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O blessed, blessèd sounds of grace

Author: William Maclardie Bunting Appears in 4 hymnals Used With Tune: DOWNS

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DOWNS

Appears in 244 hymnals Composer and/or Arranger: Lowell Mason Incipit: 13565 54356 15451 Used With Text: O blessed, blessèd sounds of grace
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[O blessed, blessed sounds of grace]

Appears in 1 hymnal Composer and/or Arranger: T. P. Macmillan Used With Text: O Come To-Day

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O Come To-Day

Author: W. Bunting; J. C. Hymnal: The Gospel Trumpeter #180 (1907) First Line: O blessed, blessed sounds of grace Refrain First Line: O sinner, come, O come to-day Languages: English Tune Title: [O blessed, blessed sounds of grace]
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O blessed, blessèd sounds of grace

Author: William Maclardie Bunting Hymnal: Hymn Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South #776 (1889) Languages: English
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O blessed, blessèd sounds of grace

Author: William Maclardie Bunting Hymnal: Hymn and Tune Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Round Note Ed.) #776 (1902) Languages: English Tune Title: DOWNS

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Lowell Mason

1792 - 1872 Composer of "DOWNS" in Hymn and Tune Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Round Note Ed.) Dr. Lowell Mason (the degree was conferred by the University of New York) is justly called the father of American church music; and by his labors were founded the germinating principles of national musical intelligence and knowledge, which afforded a soil upon which all higher musical culture has been founded. To him we owe some of our best ideas in religious church music, elementary musical education, music in the schools, the popularization of classical chorus singing, and the art of teaching music upon the Inductive or Pestalozzian plan. More than that, we owe him no small share of the respect which the profession of music enjoys at the present time as contrasted with the contempt in which it was held a century or more ago. In fact, the entire art of music, as now understood and practiced in America, has derived advantage from the work of this great man. Lowell Mason was born in Medfield, Mass., January 8, 1792. From childhood he had manifested an intense love for music, and had devoted all his spare time and effort to improving himself according to such opportunities as were available to him. At the age of twenty he found himself filling a clerkship in a banking house in Savannah, Ga. Here he lost no opportunity of gratifying his passion for musical advancement, and was fortunate to meet for the first time a thoroughly qualified instructor, in the person of F. L. Abel. Applying his spare hours assiduously to the cultivation of the pursuit to which his passion inclined him, he soon acquired a proficiency that enabled him to enter the field of original composition, and his first work of this kind was embodied in the compilation of a collection of church music, which contained many of his own compositions. The manuscript was offered unavailingly to publishers in Philadelphia and in Boston. Fortunately for our musical advancement it finally secured the attention of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, and by its committee was submitted to Dr. G. K. Jackson, the severest critic in Boston. Dr. Jackson approved most heartily of the work, and added a few of his own compositions to it. Thus enlarged, it was finally published in 1822 as The Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music. Mason's name was omitted from the publication at his own request, which he thus explains, "I was then a bank officer in Savannah, and did not wish to be known as a musical man, as I had not the least thought of ever making music a profession." President Winchester, of the Handel and Haydn Society, sold the copyright for the young man. Mr. Mason went back to Savannah with probably $500 in his pocket as the preliminary result of his Boston visit. The book soon sprang into universal popularity, being at once adopted by the singing schools of New England, and through this means entering into the church choirs, to whom it opened up a higher field of harmonic beauty. Its career of success ran through some seventeen editions. On realizing this success, Mason determined to accept an invitation to come to Boston and enter upon a musical career. This was in 1826. He was made an honorary member of the Handel and Haydn Society, but declined to accept this, and entered the ranks as an active member. He had been invited to come to Boston by President Winchester and other musical friends and was guaranteed an income of $2,000 a year. He was also appointed, by the influence of these friends, director of music at the Hanover, Green, and Park Street churches, to alternate six months with each congregation. Finally he made a permanent arrangement with the Bowdoin Street Church, and gave up the guarantee, but again friendly influence stepped in and procured for him the position of teller at the American Bank. In 1827 Lowell Mason became president and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society. It was the beginning of a career that was to win for him as has been already stated the title of "The Father of American Church Music." Although this may seem rather a bold claim it is not too much under the circumstances. Mr. Mason might have been in the average ranks of musicianship had he lived in Europe; in America he was well in advance of his surroundings. It was not too high praise (in spite of Mason's very simple style) when Dr. Jackson wrote of his song collection: "It is much the best book I have seen published in this country, and I do not hesitate to give it my most decided approbation," or that the great contrapuntist, Hauptmann, should say the harmonies of the tunes were dignified and churchlike and that the counterpoint was good, plain, singable and melodious. Charles C. Perkins gives a few of the reasons why Lowell Mason was the very man to lead American music as it then existed. He says, "First and foremost, he was not so very much superior to the members as to be unreasonably impatient at their shortcomings. Second, he was a born teacher, who, by hard work, had fitted himself to give instruction in singing. Third, he was one of themselves, a plain, self-made man, who could understand them and be understood of them." The personality of Dr. Mason was of great use to the art and appreciation of music in this country. He was of strong mind, dignified manners, sensitive, yet sweet and engaging. Prof. Horace Mann, one of the great educators of that day, said he would walk fifty miles to see and hear Mr. Mason teach if he could not otherwise have that advantage. Dr. Mason visited a number of the music schools in Europe, studied their methods, and incorporated the best things in his own work. He founded the Boston Academy of Music. The aim of this institution was to reach the masses and introduce music into the public schools. Dr. Mason resided in Boston from 1826 to 1851, when he removed to New York. Not only Boston benefited directly by this enthusiastic teacher's instruction, but he was constantly traveling to other societies in distant cities and helping their work. He had a notable class at North Reading, Mass., and he went in his later years as far as Rochester, where he trained a chorus of five hundred voices, many of them teachers, and some of them coming long distances to study under him. Before 1810 he had developed his idea of "Teachers' Conventions," and, as in these he had representatives from different states, he made musical missionaries for almost the entire country. He left behind him no less than fifty volumes of musical collections, instruction books, and manuals. As a composer of solid, enduring church music. Dr. Mason was one of the most successful this country has introduced. He was a deeply pious man, and was a communicant of the Presbyterian Church. Dr. Mason in 1817 married Miss Abigail Gregory, of Leesborough, Mass. The family consisted of four sons, Daniel Gregory, Lowell, William and Henry. The two former founded the publishing house of Mason Bros., dissolved by the death of the former in 19G9. Lowell and Henry were the founders of the great organ manufacturer of Mason & Hamlin. Dr. William Mason was one of the most eminent musicians that America has yet produced. Dr. Lowell Mason died at "Silverspring," a beautiful residence on the side of Orange Mountain, New Jersey, August 11, 1872, bequeathing his great musical library, much of which had been collected abroad, to Yale College. --Hall, J. H. (c1914). Biographies of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

W. M. Bunting

1805 - 1866 Person Name: William Maclardie Bunting Author of "O blessed, blessèd sounds of grace" in Hymn and Tune Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Round Note Ed.) Bunting, William Maclardie, son of Dr. Jabez Bunting, a well-known Wesleyan minister, was born at Manchester, Nov. 23,1805, and educated at the Wesleyan Schools at Woodhouse Grove, and Kingswood, and at St. Saviour's Grammar School, Southwark. In 1824 he entered the Wesleyan Ministry, and continued in active circuit work for twenty-five years. Failing health then compelled him to retire upon the Supernumerary list, when he took up his residence in London, and died there on Nov. 13, 1866. In addition to editing the Select Letters of Agnes Bulmer, &c, 1842, and engaging in other literary labours, he contributed hymns to the Methodist Magazine (under the nom de plume of Alec) from time to time, and specially 43 to Dr. Leifchild's Original Hymns, 1842. Of these Dr. Leifchild rejected 8, and abbreviated 2. In 1842 these 10 hymns were published as An Instrument of Ten Strings, strung in aid of the Wesleyan Missions, By Alec. Other hymns by him were included in his Memorials, &c, published by the Rev. G. S. Rowe in 1870. Although a few of these hymns have come into common use, they have failed as a whole to command public attention. Those in common use are:— 1. Blessed are the pure in heart, They have, &c. Purity. 2. Blest Spirit! from the Eternal Sire. Holy Spirit. 3. Dear is the day which God hath made. Sunday. 4. Father, our child we place. Holy Baptism. 5. Holy Spirit, pity me. Lent. 6. O blessed, blessed sounds of grace. After Sermon. 7. O crucified, triumphant Lord. Holy Baptism. 8. O God, how often hath Thine ear. Renewing the Covenant. Written in 1824, and given in the Supplement to the Wesleyan Hymn Book 1830. This is the best known of his hymns. 9. Thou doest all things well. God all in all. Most of these hymns are in the revised Wesleyan Hymn Book, 1875; Nos. 1-4 and 6 were in Dr. Leifchild's Original Hymns, 1842, and all are in the Memorials, 1870. -- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) ================== Bunting, William Maclardie, p. 193, ii. Of his hymns named here, Nos. 1-4, and 6, were in Leifchild's Original Hymns, 1842: as also, "We love to call creation Thine." (Missions.) The hymn, "Rites cannot change the heart," in the American Methodist Episcopal Hymnal, 1878, begins with stanza iii. of No. 4, "Father, our child we place." His hymn, No. 9, "O God, how often hath thine ear," was written at the age of 15, and was first published in the Methodist Magazine for Jan. 1824. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)

John Clements

Person Name: J. C. Author (Refrain) of "O Come To-Day" in The Gospel Trumpeter