Going Home -- Antonin Dvorak, William Arms Fisher and Ken Bible

 

Homesick. That is a one-word description that best sums up how the music-writer and the original lyricist felt about “Going Home”. Antonin Dvorak was from Bohemia (See here the flag of Bohemia, Dvorak’s native land, known in the present-day as the Czech Republic) and had some feelings of melancholy, something that one of his students, William Arms Fisher, heard not only in the music, but also from the great composer some 30 years after its inception. Later, a lyricist named Ken Bible modified some of Fisher’s words to give a hopeful Christian edge to the song’s message. Dvorak was missing his birthplace, and evidently found some scenery while on his journey through America in the late 19^th Century that accentuated an expression of his feelings of displacement, and his longing to reunite with family. It’s a longing that most people feel at least once, or most likely many times, while on Earth.

 

Dvorak had come to the ‘New World’ in America from the ‘Old World’ of Europe in 1892 to become director of a music conservatory in New York, where he would stay until 1895, a time that left him feeling vacant at times, but also energized with what he discovered. In that light, his music for the 9^th (New World) Symphony would emerge in 1893 as one of his most famous and well-received works. Part of the music was something called ‘Largo’, upon which his student William Fisher would later base the words for ‘Going Home’, nearly 30 years later (in 1922). Fisher shared that Dvorak missed Bohemia, and that this bit of gloom mingled with his experience in seeing the American continent’s prairie land horizons. The recent experience of native Americans in this area, as well as of negros and the slavery through which they had come – both heartrending in their history – spoke to Dvorak as he pondered his own mood. This deep wistfulness was evidently something that the great composer did not keep to himself, and Fisher likewise expressed it in his poetry, including the title words of the song that he said materialized easily from the first few notes of the Largo that his mentor had composed. That Dvorak died in 1904, some two decades before Fisher’s words for this classic hymn would arise, speaks of how enduring and affecting was the music that the composer created. It must have had somewhat of the same effect on Ken Bible, who added words many decades later (by the year 2000) to emphasize the Christian’s hope of seeing that ‘Jesus is the door’, that ‘He is waiting…’ along with friends to greet us in the afterwhile (v.1). He’s the ‘Morning Star’, the ‘Light’(v.2), and the ‘Smile’ (v.1) at the end of this life’s journey, according to Ken. It is comforting for grieving people, in the moments when they most likely hear this tune and its words sung.

 

The New World Symphony arrived on the Moon in 1969, via the astronaut Neil Armstrong (see Wikipedia article link below). What Armstrong wanted to emphasize was the novelty of the experience, as he planted the first human footsteps on the Earth’s planetary satellite. But what he found was a dust-like surface, barren of any life – like friends or family -- and therefore quite different from what he or any other human would consider a place like home. It certainly wasn’t the American prairie, or a Bohemian scene that would have resonated with Dvorak. What Dvorak, Fisher, and Bible have given us, instead, are music and words that evoke images of a place filled with good, with peace, and with people with whom to share it. He knows what we need in that moment of mortal transition, and He provides a serenity that comes from His nature exclusively. Find rest and reassurance in a reality that goes on forever – that’s what the tune and its words communicate. It really defies written description. Let’s just go with the auditory sensation, and that pinprick in the soul’s deepest part that Dvorak, Fisher, and Bible have made.            

 

See here for the song story: Story of Going Home

 

See here for background of the music and its composer: Wikipedia_Dvorak_9thSymphony

 

See site here for one author who wrote some alternate words for the song: KenBible.com | Nurturing Your Creativity & Your Life in Christ, and  LNWHymns.com (see About the Author on site)

 

See here for information on the song: San Francisco Symphony - DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Opus 95, From the New World Antonín Leopold Dvořák was born at

 

Check out this video for a very beautiful rendition of the song: Bing Videos

 

See here for information on the flag of Bohemia: File:Flag of Bohemia.svg - Wikimedia Commons. The following statement is associated with the image: I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:
I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Blest Be the Tie that Binds – John Fawcett

He must have thought he could leave, but the raw emotion of the moment took him by surprise. As he reflected on what had overwhelmed him a week earlier, John Fawcett poured out these emotions in six verses of “Blest Be the Tie that Binds” one day in 1772. Wainsgate, England (see its flag here) was his family’s home, and so they reversed themselves and discarded what would have undoubtedly been a more comfortable and financially prosperous tenure in the big city. Was there something else going on at Wainsgate that was like a magnet for John, his wife Mary, and their family, or was it just some perpetual sentimentality that bonded them like superglue to that church?  Was their experience perhaps a microcosm of another home and family one might encounter?

John Fawcett had a well-developed sense of appreciation for Christian fellowship and its personal impact on him by the time he wrote the six stanza-poem in 1772 that was eventually published some 10 years later. He was a child from a poor family, was apparently an orphan by the age of 12, and for a time worked long hours at something like slave labor. Converted at age 16, and then having begun by age 25 his first ministry at Wainsgate in northern England’s West Yorkshire county, he no doubt must have identified intrinsically with those whose hard-scrabble life mirrored his own. John’s preaching reputation nevertheless had earned him some notoriety, and an offer to switch to a much wealthier church in London. For his wife and young family, this must have initially seemed like a God-send after seven years in what someone might have derisively labeled ‘the boondocks’. Who wouldn’t have accepted, as the Fawcetts originally did? But, with their belongings packed and a church crowd gathered to bid them farewell, the hearts of John and Mary were pricked. Did someone perhaps read from the episode of Paul’s departure from Ephesus, to memorialize this sad event (Acts 20)? Was it the thought of leaving these poor folks deprived of not only their friendship, but also other considerations that gnawed at them? How would this Wainsgate group fare without the Fawcetts? In that moment, the Fawcetts concluded, and decided, to live out the truth of the aphorism ‘there are some things money cannot buy.’ As John later admitted, he had temporarily overlooked the other riches he and his family enjoyed there. They spent 54 years in Wainsgate, evidently because they sensed that the benefits of that poverty-stricken church outweighed the alternative in London. This place and people were home.

John originally entitled his poem “Brotherly Love”, and it says all I need to know about the Fawcetts’ choice that day in 1772. What was on their minds? The key word is ‘our’. Our hearts (v.1). Our Father’s throne, our ardent prayers, our fears, our hopes, our aims, our comforts, our cares (v.2). Our mutual burdens (v.3). Our courage (v.5). You get the feeling John and Mary had just completed a mental, or rather heart-level, survey of what they’d been doing with this group for seven years. And, they must have thought this home was too valuable to dismiss so easily. Would the new crowd in London have grown on them too? You think they missed an opportunity? Look at what they already had. Our is what we all aim for up there, isn’t it? In 1772, John and Mary Fawcett had it, and decided to keep it. Start acquiring it now, if you can’t say our.

The following website has all six original verses, and copy of the song story: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/b/b/t/bbtttb.htm

 

See the song story in these sources also: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990; 101 Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1982; and A Treasury of Hymn Stories, by Amos R. Wells, Baker Book House, 1945.  

See this link for picture and background on the church where the composer wrote the hymn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainsgate_Baptist_Church