Yield Not to Temptation -- Horatio R. Palmer

For the moment, Horatio was tired of theory. He asked himself ‘How did one expect to manage events – or could one, really, without making mistakes born of temptation?’ That thought crossed Horatio Richmond Palmer’s mind in the mid-1800s, and so he jotted down his answers in “Yield Not to Temptation”, in order to add some practical words to what someone might conceptually offer as advice for the person seeking to live right. Horatio was involved in many other efforts on that day in Chicago, but something sprang into his brain without warning, and experience taught him that the moment should not be cast aside. Musical ideas were gifts, this musician sensed intrinsically. Was the subject one that had been stuck in neutral, then suddenly coalesced, with the unpredictable aid of something else that was on his plate that moment? Even Horatio might say ‘I don’t know – I just listened to my insides.’

Horatio Palmer was a 34-year old in 1868, who was in what he himself might have called a midwestern interlude, surrounded by long stretches of time in the New York area. He’d moved to Chicago after growing up and beginning his musical career in the Rushford Academy in New York. He began singing at age seven, but perhaps another event in his childhood further imprinted his character. His mother died when he was three (though at some point his father re-married, giving Horatio a stepmother), so could one say that the church and the choir directed by his father (Anson) became a kind of surrogate family? Perhaps that was why he stayed nearby for his further education and first position as a teacher and musical director (also at Rushford). By 1868, he had moved to the windy city and was employing his musical acumen at a Baptist church as its choir director. ‘Yield Not…’ came to him quite abruptly one day as he worked on a rather tedious subject of ‘Theory’, by his own admission. He swiftly recorded the music and first two verses, and also a third that was later revised with the aid of a friend. Palmer offers no other details, but we can surmise from our own experiences that what he describes is plausible. The mind can do one thing and conjure up something else – the two things being unrelated, seemingly. His subject, temptation, must have been lodged somewhere inside his being, apparently just waiting for the right nourishment. One can imagine that it had begun with a conversation, perhaps a spiritual message, some time before without offering an immediate resolution. Was he subconsciously mulling over this issue, some unhealthy compulsion that bothered him or others? Could this be true, even in a church crowd where Horatio found himself? That’s life, right? No one’s immune.

Though Horatio had returned to New York by 1873, he’d sustained something in the Midwest that was with him on either side of that time. He organized or directed many other choral efforts over the following few decades, as he did first at Rushford. His interlude in Chicago was not a departure from his musical upbringing, nor from his deeper beliefs, we can presume. And, temptation was not something he found just in Chicago, undoubtedly. Yet, Horatio had an epiphany there about its solution, or at least a way to recognize it and try to avoid it. Watch out for dark thoughts (v.1), avoid some people if necessary and keep a rein on my own tongue (v.2); at the same time, be thoughtful, kind, and truthful (also v.2). How’s that list rank on the difficulty scale? Try out what he said, and see if they still work today.

See more information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.  Also, see Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.

See biography of the composer here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/p/a/l/palmer_hr.htm

The following website has a soundtrack and the lyrics for the song: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/y/i/e/yieldnot.htm

Angry Words (Love One Another) -- Horatio Richmond Palmer

This 33-year-old music director must have heard and directed enough choral sounds that he really appreciated the female voice. That much could be said of Horatio Richmond Palmer when one discovers that he was the most likely author of the music and the words for something most commonly known as “Angry Words” (also may be known as “Love One Another”). What would cause an experienced, gifted musical director to use such a negative-sounding title? Others who later appreciated the song’s message perceived the title was downbeat, and so put a different spin on it by changing its label. Were there women who played an important role in Palmer’s life in 1867? Were there some disagreeable words – a dispute – that had erupted in Palmer’s world? (Maybe the Disputa by Raphael, shown here, is a celestially symbolic one, representing what Palmer sought to avoid [the elders debate the significance of the Communion in Disputa.]) Let’s see.

Horatio Palmer’s upbringing and his development, following his birthmother’s premature death,  owed much to how and who helped fill a gap in his life. His father was a single parent after Horatio’s mother died when he was three. By seven, Horatio was singing with the church choir that his father, Anson, directed. Horatio also apparently had a stepmother at some point (according to a comment this blogger received for a Sept. 18, 2011 entry made on another Palmer composition, ‘O Lord, Our Lord), but it seems likely that the church was playing a significant role in his young life. That he devoted his professional life to music seems to confirm how essential this mentorship at a young age was for Palmer. Over the next twenty to thirty years, Horatio continued to develop and take on musical enterprises, including choral music like his father. After directing a musical academy in New York for a decade, Palmer moved to Chicago and was director of a church choir when he was in his early 30s, and it was there he may have written “Angry Words”. The song’s expressions suggest someone or group, or perhaps Palmer himself, had regretted some hasty, ill-tempered remarks. If it wasn’t Palmer, could it have been an anonymous ‘DKP’, whose initials appear attributed to the song in some hymnals? Or, what is the role of the ‘Sunday School Teacher’, also alternately associated with the song in many hymnals? Could the song’s emphasis on the female voices indicate their importance to Horatio and the song message? Horatio also exhibits this female-voice inclination in some of his other works (see the 18 September 2011 blog entry), so one wonders if Palmer had learned some significant lessons from them along the way.  Over a century after its initial publication, a women named Betty Bender wrote another verse, shown in some hymnals, in 1992.  

The intended audience of  “Angry Words” is as important as whomever may have contributed to its composition. ‘Children’ in one repeated section of the song suggests kids may have been of most concern to Horatio. But, none of us ever really stop being children, especially when we argue. And, some anger is justifiable; even Jesus and His father have been angry, we read. Just pick up your bible and find these episodes. But, you’ll see the love episodes there, too. Perhaps Horatio was thinking that our angry episodes come too easily, versus God’s. Do your love expressions come as easily as His?  

The following sites show Palmer as the author, or his composition history:

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/a/n/g/angrywor.htm

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/p/a/l/palmer_hr.htm

 

Site for Betty Bender, possibly the one associated with the song?: http://www.theicn.org/Templates/TemplateDefault.aspx?qs=cElEPTExMQ==