Theodore Baker is someone I would have really liked to have met. He was a musicologist, which means he practiced professionally what I do as a hobby…what I love to do as a hobby. He compiled an encyclopedia, the Biographical Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1900, a work that is apparently still in print over 100 years later. But, Baker was not yet done. I might have sat on my laurels at that point, but Baker was still fruitful at his love two or three decades later, in 1927 when he developed (some say translated) the song “Christ, We Do All Adore Thee” that came in part from a French song (“Les Sept Paroles du Christ” or the English version “The Seven Last Words of Christ ”), thereby adding to the encyclopedia he had written. He was 76 at this point in his life, retired, and probably looking toward his eternal reward, which he went to receive in 1934.
Baker was an American by birth, but spent his education and retirement abroad. His start in adult life provides encouragement to those of us who have been on the more-than-four-year-college-degree plan. Baker thought he’d be a businessman and pursued study as such initially, but then radically altered direction toward music. He played the organ in Massachusetts for a while, and then went to Germany to study and obtain a doctorate in music by 1882. His dissertation was on Seneca Indian (Native Americans) music, so he was thinking of his homeland while in Germany. He returned and was the G. Schirmer Music Company’s editor in the U.S. for over 30 years, and then retired to Germany following the conclusion of his professional career in 1926.
How does one sum up a life spent producing an encyclopedia, and then far beyond that? He could have said ‘read my encyclopedia…’, but perhaps this song “Christ, We Do All Adore Thee” tells us the reply of this septuagenarian instead. Look at what occupied the mind of this learned historian in this simple song attributed to him in 1927. It’s an adoration address to Him, one that repeats and swells, and finally whispers its main theme. It’s sort of how a believer’s life might be encapsulated, as a once vibrant and strong voice wanes with age. Yet, belief persists, even in an aging, worn body. Baker could look back, but I have the sense that he wasn’t thinking about the past, but instead was thinking and feeling awestruck by what lay just ahead. In God’s epoch, perhaps that’s what I should be doing much earlier. What do you think?
Two great blogs and two other sites listed below are encyclopedic in their depth about hymns, including “Christ We Do All Adore Thee”, and the translator-composer Theodore Baker:
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