![]() Reverend Matthew J. Watts, the pastor of the Grace Bible Church in Charleston, West Virginia, says that for slaves, a song like “Amazing Grace” would have been particularly meaningful. “There were choruses and refrains that people could learn quickly,” Loftis says. Songs were important to these meetings - although not always exactly as they were written. Revival leaders frequently switched out melodies and borrowed verses from other hymns. The hymn wasn’t particularly popular in England, according to Deborah Carlton Loftis, executive director of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. But she says in the United States, it became well-known during the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s when thousands of people - white and black - would gather for outdoor revival meetings. (Newton didn’t speak out against slavery until 1788.) The hymn opened with a powerful line: “Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) That sav’d a wretch like me!” And it drew on Newton’s own experience as a slave trader - specifically, from a near-death experience he’d had decades earlier, when the slave ship he was on encountered a violent storm, prompting him to convert to Christianity. John Newton was an Anglican priest in England in 1773, when he debuted a hymn to his congregation called “Faith’s Review and Expectation.” “It seems kind of like an all-purpose, hopeful song,” says Steve Turner, author of “ Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song.” But while the song has a universal message, its origins are much more complex.įor one, while the song is a well-known anthem of the civil rights movement, its original text was written by a former slave trader. "Something magical happens when they sing it," Turner says.“Amazing Grace” is a hymn that’s recognizable to almost every American, regardless of religious background. Many of the musicians Turner has talked to offer similar testimony to the sweet sound of a hymn that has become an heirloom. In her forward to Turner's book, Judy Collins says the song has the "power to transform" and to heal. military forces were mired in an unpopular war in Vietnam. It was another time of turbulence as U.S. The song reached the pop charts in the United Kingdom and the United States when Judy Collins released her version in 1971. "Amazing Grace" has been featured on more than 1,100 albums. ![]() The collective trauma of the Civil War helped to solidify the song's popularity. Turner also notes that the song makes an appearance in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which came to be embraced by abolitionist forces as an indictment of plantation life and slavery. I was blind but now I see.' It seems to be the definitive song of the personal conversion experience." Turner attributes the early popularity of "Amazing Grace" in America to the religious revivalism of that period and to the power of the first verse.] In America, Newton says, "the conversion experience is more prominent and more important, and this is the absolute perfect song to accompany a conversion of that sort. That same year a South Carolina singing instructor named William Walker published a widely popular hymn book combining the now-familiar tune with Newton's words. was married to the words of John Newton," Turner says. And "Amazing Grace" continued to be associated with a number of different tunes throughout much of the 19th century. Turner says that in Newton's day, the song would have been sung "to another song that fit its meter" - if it were sung at all. Newton supplied the lyrics, but the tune sung today arrived much later. Turner says it was a meaning Newton - with his sordid history and personal tale of redemption - could take to heart. He understood grace to mean God's unmerited favor to lost souls. When Newton put the internal rhyme "amazing grace" together, it wasn't purely for poetic reasons. Turner tells NPR's Liane Hansen it was written without "ceremony" in an attic room where Newton wrote weekly hymns to amplify the message of his sermons. "Amazing Grace" was first heard on New Year's Day in 1773. Steve Turner's book Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song tells the story of composer John Newton's conversion from slave trader to abolitionist, and traces the evolution of the song from its composition in 1772 as a hymn with no set tune to the version familiar today. ![]() While "Amazing Grace" is among America's most well-known and oft-recorded pieces of music, the song's history is as remarkable as its popularity. Steve Turner and The Church Mission Society, London. John Newton, composer of Amazing Grace, from a painting by John Russell.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |