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Person Results

Tune Identifier:"^fierce_was_the_billow_wild_sweney$"
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John R. Sweney

1837 - 1899 Person Name: Jno. R. Sweney Composer of "[Fierce was the billow wild, dark was the night]" in Always Welcome John R. Sweney (1837-1899) was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and exhibited musical abilities at an early age. At nineteen he was studying with a German music teacher, leading a choir and glee club, and performing at children’s entertainments. By twenty-two he was teaching at a school in Dover, Delaware. Soon thereafter, he was put in charge of the band of the Third Delaware Regiment of the Union Army for the duration of the Civil War. After the war, he became Professor of Music at the Pennsylvania Military Academy, and director of Sweney’s Cornet Band. He eventually earned Bachelor and Doctor of Music degrees at the Academy. Sweney began composing church music in 1871 and became well-known as a leader of large congregations. His appreciators stated “Sweney knows how to make a congregation sing” and “He had great power in arousing multitudes.” He also became director of music for a large Sunday school at the Bethany Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia of which John Wanamaker was superintendent (Wanamaker was the founder of the first major department store in Philadelphia). In addition to his prolific output of hymn melodies and other compositions, Sweney edited or co-edited about sixty song collections, many in collaboration with William J. Kirkpatrick. Sweney died on April 10, 1899, and his memorial was widely attended and included a eulogy by Wanamaker. Joe Hickerson from "Joe's Jottings #9" used by permission

St. Anatolius. of Constantinople

? - 458 Person Name: St. Anatolius Author of "Peace, It Is I" in Always Welcome Anatolius, one of the Greek hymn-writers. No details are known of him. From the fact that he celebrates martyrs who died in the 6th and early part of the 7th century, it is certain that he is not to be identified (as by Neale) with the patriarch who succeeded Flavian in 449, and afterward procured the enactment of the famous canon of the Council of Chalcedon, which raised Constantinople to the second place among the patriarchal sees (Dict. of Ch. Biog., i. p. 110). A letter is said to exist showing that he was a pupil of Theodore of the Studium (759-826). More than a hundred hymns, all of them short ones, are found in the Mensea and Octoechus. From this account, derived from Anth. Graec. Garm. Christ, p. xli, it will be seen that his poems cannot be considered "the spring-promise" of the age of the Canons (Neale). A few of his hymns have been translated by Dr. Neale in his Hymns of the Early Church, and Dr. Littledale, in the Offices of the Hymns of the Early Church: ("Fierce was the wild billow") and ("The day is past and over"). [Rev. H. Leigh Bennet, M.A.] -- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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