Colin Gibson - Knowing the Song: A Companion to the Publications of the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust from 1993 to 2009 Together with the New Zealand Supplement to With One Voice (1982)

Knowing The Song

A Companion to the Publications of the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust from 1993 to 2009
Together with the New Zealand Supplement to With One Voice (1982)

By
Colin Gibson

Published by
The New Zealand Hymnbook Trust
in association with Philip Garside Publishing Ltd

This book is dedicated to

John and Shirley Murray

1929-2017 and 1931-2020

Copyright 2021 Colin Gibson

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Email Colin at:
colin.gibson22@icloud.com

Published by:
The New Zealand Hymnbook Trust
in association with
Philip Garside Publishing Ltd

ePub edition.
ISBN 978-1-98-857278-9

Produced and distributed by:

Philip Garside Publishing Ltd
PO Box 17160
Wellington 6147
New Zealand
books@pgpl.co.nz www.pgpl.co.nz

Front cover photograph:
Pohutukawa tree blossom
Alexander GarsideGarside Imaging

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

The compiler of any Companion of this nature owes much to others, without whose help it could not have been prepared .

John and Gillian Thornley, joint Managers of The New Zealand Hymnbook Trust, and the Editorial Board of the Trust agreed to commission this Companion in 2010, and since that time John and Gillian have been in continuous communication, offering information from Trust files and sharing the pleasures and challenges of the work. In the final stages of the book they provided invaluable close editorial oversight. Earlier files of the Trust were also readily made available to me by its previous chairperson, John Murray. In many ways, the Companion is a tribute to the Trust and its leaders, under whose dynamic direction a large and significant body of creative work by New Zealand poets and musicians, together with a representative selection of Mori and Pacific Islands religious choral music, has been assembled and brought to publication. David Bush, former General Secretary of the Methodist Church of Aotearoa New Zealand Te Haahi Weteriana O Aotearoa, was instrumental in securing financial backing for publication from the F.A. Parker Bequest.

I further owe a large debt of gratitude to those many writers, composers, translators, arrangers and family members who have responded to requests for biographical and other information. New Zealand hymn writers Marnie Barrell, Jillian Bray, Barry Brinson, Felicia Edgecombe, Bonnie Low, Shirley Erena Murray, Rosemary Russell and Bill Wallace have been particularly generous in this respect. Without their help it would have been impossible to construct any adequate record of contemporary New Zealand hymn writing as represented in the publications of the Trust.

All hymnbook Companions draw on the work of earlier scholars. For overseas hymn writers and the hymn writers of the past, most of them appearing in the New Zealand Supplement to With One Voice , I have drawn on many Companions prepared for other hymnals as primary sources of information. In particular I want to record my appreciation of the comprehensive and detailed scholarly work of Professor Wesley Milgate, author of Songs of the People of God: a Companion to the Australian Hymnbook/With One Voice (Collins Liturgical, 1982) and its sequel and much-thumbed Companion to Together In Song: Australian Hymn Book II , by the Reverend Dr DArcy Wood (The Australian Hymn Book, 2005), which built on Milgates materials. Of almost equal importance has been Carlton R. Youngs Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Abingdon Press, 1993) and Dr I-toh Lohs pioneering Hymnal Companion to Sound the Bamboo: Asian Hymns in their Cultural and Liturgical Contexts (GIA, 2011). Other American, Canadian and English Companions I have consulted in preparing this one are listed in the appendix, Writing about New Zealand Hymns .

An important additional resource has been The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology , launched on-line in 2013, whose materials I have been able to access during its compilation, thanks to the generosity of Professor Dick Watson, its genial General Editor, with Co-Editor Dr Emma Hornby. And like most hymn book editors and commentators I have occasionally drawn on the first great scholarly history of hymn writing, John Julians monumental Dictionary of the Origin and History of Christian Hymns of all Ages and Nations (revised edition, John Murray, 1907). Although his Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand Music makes practically no mention of church music , John Mansfield Thomsons Biographical Dictionary of New Zealand Composers , Victoria University Press (1990), has been a useful resource for some New Zealand hymn composers. So too has A Panorama of Christian Hymnody , by Erik Routley, edited and expanded by Paul A. Richardson, GIA Publications (2005).

It would have been impossible to create adequate entries for the hymns of Shirley Erena Murray, unquestionably New Zealands greatest hymn writer and richly represented in the publications of the Trust, without the assistance of her American publishers, Hope Publishing Company and its management and editorial staff. The company has generously granted The New Zealand Hymnbook Trust permission to reprint information about the writing and content of individual hymns supplied to them by the author and published in the collections of Shirley Murrays hymns brought out by Hope Publishing (see under Individual Author Collections in the Appendix, A Finding List of New Zealand Hymnody ).

The staff of the Hewitson Library, Knox College, Jo Smith, archivist for the Methodist Church of New Zealand, Stuart Strahan, former Librarian, and the staff of the Hocken Library, University of Otago, the archival staff of the University of Otago, and the staff of the Dunedin Public Library, which holds a major archive of New Zealand and world-wide hymn writing, have responded patiently and generously to my many requests. Christina Schneider (USA) supplied photocopies of an out-of-print Hymn Society of America pamphlet. I owe a special debt of gratitude for the support of Anthony Tedeschi, former Chief Reference Librarian at the Dunedin Public Library. The SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music website has provided an invaluable and reliable database of New Zealand composers biographies and lists of their works.

A number of university students, friends and acquaintances have contributed information or carried out research on my behalf. They include Marguerite Bennet, Janet Newdick, Alice Peterson, Colin Scarf, Wayne te Kaawa and Leah Taylor. John and Jillian Thornley and more recently Marnie Barrell have scrupulously exercised the tedious but vital task of checking the accuracy of the text and Philip Garside has brought the publication to completion with praiseworthy professional efficiency. But my chief debt of gratitude is to my wife, Jeanette Gibson, who uncomplainingly surrendered hours of her husbands time to the completion of this book and played a significant role in the unrewarding business of proofreading its contents. To her this book and the labours which brought it into existence are dedicated.

Colin Gibson
August 2021

Introduction

A Companion of this kind is only as useful as its readers find it to be, so this Introduction sets out to provide guidance and advice to those seeking the information it provides.

First, a word of warning. Since this is the first time such a comprehensive Companion to a large body of New Zealand writing and musical composition has been prepared it will inevitably have deficiencies and contain errors. It is intended to be an on-going source of information, and the Editor will gratefully receive any new information or corrections, as well as suggestions for additions. These may be sent to Professor Colin Gibson, 28 Mitchell Avenue, Mornington, Dunedin 9011, New Zealand, or emailed to