Stories behind the stories

Professor Podles continues his survey of classic hymns, many from the Anglican tradition, and short biographies of people who wrote them.

Sigh...

 I remember one Catholic musician, seeing the horrors we are forced to sing post Vatican II, quip that we should throw out the newfangled mundane stuff and replace it with the Methodist hymn book. That sounds about right.

Podles series makes one long for this again.

A day ago, I quipped that too many of those who preach the psychobabble of love and forgiveness maybe should go to the depths of hell to try to save those living in their own self chosen hell.

So we see this about the lady who wrote the lyrics of this hymn (set to a Finnish melody)

Anna Letitia Waring (or Anna Laetitia Waring) (19 April 1823 – 10 May 1910) was a Welsh poet and hymn-writer...Anna was pious, reserved, and given to “good works”. Anna became involved in philanthropic work, particularly as a supporter of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society. According to her friend Mary S. Talbot, Waring “visited in the prisons of Bridewell, and at Horfield, Bristol, for many years...

  -

----he also goes to note the source of the melody.

Often hymns are put to older tunes, or written by someone else. So you might have the same lyrics to different melodies, or several hymns sung to the same melody.

If you note, the song is labled "NYLAND", not Waring. And he explains why:

NYLAND, named for a province in Finland, is a folk melody from Kuortane, South Ostrobothnia, Finland. In fact, the tune is also known as KUORTANE. NYLAND was first published with a hymn text in an appendix to the 1909 edition of the Finnish Suomen Evankelis Luterilaisen Kirken Koraalikirja....

----------------------------
for the background on secular poets and writes, NPR has a podcast by Garrison Keillor: The Writer's almanac.

mp3

Today's poem is "Lives of Great Composers" by Dana Gioia... but today's commentary is about several others, starting with the founder of MAD magazine, and including the author of Look Homeward Angel...

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

--------------------------------------
The National Review is doing a podcast series on "Great Books". It is quite basic, with a conservative bent.

This one is about Xenophon's march to the sea, aka the ten thousand, and discusses leadership lessons. MP3

------------------------

if you prefer less literary podcasts, Freakonomics has a podcast about the origin of potato chips and why we eat beef, not cow.

MP3