Author: Joseph Hart

Hart, Joseph, was born in London in 1712.  His early life is involved in obscurity.  His education was fairly good; and from the testimony of his brother-in-law, and successor in the ministry in Jewin Street, the Rev. John Hughes, "his civil calling was" for some time "that of a teacher of the learned languages."  His early life, according to his own Experience which he prefaced to his Hymns, was a curious mixture of loose conduct, serious conviction of sin, and endeavours after amendment of life, and not until Whitsuntide, 1757, did he realize a permanent change, which was brought about mainly through his attending divine service at the Moravian Chapel, in Fetter Lane, London, and hearing a sermon on Rev. iii.  10.  During the next two years ma… Go to person page >

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Tune

MARTYRDOM was originally an eighteenth-century Scottish folk melody used for the ballad "Helen of Kirkconnel."  Hugh Wilson (b. Fenwick, Ayrshire, Scotland, c. 1766; d. Duntocher, Scotland, 1824) adapted MARTYRDOM into a hymn tune in duple meter around 1800.  A triple-meter version of the tune was fir…

MANOAH was first published in Henry W. Greatorex's Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1851).  This anthology (later editions had alternate titles) contained one of the best tune collections of its era and included thirty-seven original compositions and arrangements by compiler Greatorex as well as m…

NEW BRITAIN (also known as AMAZING GRACE) was originally a folk tune, probably sung slowly with grace notes and melodic embellishments.  Typical of the Appalachian tunes from the southern United States, NEW BRITAIN is pentatonic with melodic figures that outline triads.  It was first published as a hy…