Please turn your hymnals to number 139 and join with the clarinets in, “Glory be to God the Father”.
Number: 139
First Line: Glory Be to God the Father
Name: ST. NICHOLAS.
Meter: 8 7, 8 7.
Tempo: In moderate time
Music: Johann Cruger, 1598-1662
Text: Horatius Bonar, 1808-89
Clarinet Arrangement: 139-GloryBeToGodtheFather
In my opinion, there is nothing that sounds better on a bunch of clarinets than a good minor dirge.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
Both Bonar and Cruger had more than their share of beauty, tragedy, and hardship to capture in song.
Horatius Bonar [pronunciation?] (19 December 1808 – 31 July 1889), a contemporary and acquaintance of Robert Murray M’cheyne was a Scottish churchman and poet. He is principally remembered as a prodigious hymn-writer.
The son of James Bonar, Solicitor of Excise for Scotland, he was born and educated in Edinburgh. He came from a long line of ministers who have served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland. One of eleven children, his brothers John James and Andrew Alexander were also ministers of the Free Church of Scotland. He had married Jane Catherine Lundie in 1843 and five of their young children died in succession. Towards the end of their lives, one of their surviving daughters was left a widow with five small children and she returned to live with her parents.
In 1853 Bonar earned the Doctor of Divinity degree at the University of Aberdeen.
Bonar’s wife, Jane Catherine Bonar, died in 1876. He died 31 July 1889. They are buried together in the Canongate Kirkyard in the lair of Alexander Bonar, near the bottom of the eastern extension.
Johann Crüger (9 April 1598 – 23 February 1662) was a German composer of well-known hymns. He was also the editor of the most widely used Lutheran hymnal of the 17th century, Praxis pietatis melica.
In 1628, he married the widow of a city councilman. During the Thirty Years’ War, Crüger and his family endured many hardships including hunger.[2] He fell ill with plague, and almost died of that disease, losing five children and his wife in 1636. In 1637, having recovered from the disease, he got married a second time, to the 17-year-old daughter of an innkeeper, with whom he had fourteen children, most of whom died at a young age.[2] One of his daughters married the court painter Michael Conrad Hirt, who made a portrait of Crüger in 1663.[1] Crüger died in Berlin.
