S. M. Bixby: hymn tunes for choir and Sunday school

About S. M. Bixby

Bixby was born on 27 May 1833 in Haverhill, New Hampshire, and made his money outside music. In the late 1800s he founded S. M. Bixby & Co., which manufactured shoe blackings, and he died on 11 March 1912 in Fordham, New York. Music was the other half of his life: he was a Sunday-school superintendent and choir leader, and he compiled The Church and Home Hymnal (1893), Evangel Songs (c. 1894), Gloria Deo (Funk & Wagnalls, 1901) and Bixby's Home Songs.

The catalogue's titles are the tune names from those books. Gloria Deo's metrical index lists Alexander, Alberti, Palmer, Scripture, Service, Morning Prayer, Pardon, Agnew and Choice, and the pages carrying Alexander, Alberti, Palmer, Scripture, Service, Moosilauk, Main and Pardon credit the music to Bixby. The metres travel with the names — Alexander and Alberti are double common metre, Service short metre, Mildred long metre — which is how a choirmaster matches a text to a tune.

The scores are short. About 33 minutes across 52 items averages under forty seconds, so these are single-stanza settings rather than full hymns with several verses. Lyrics are recorded for 29 entries; the rest are tune pages whose text the file does not carry. Eleven sit at complexity index 2 and none higher, so a parish choir that reads four-part harmony will not be stretched.

Listening and playing notes

These are four-part hymn tunes, so the soprano line is the melody and everything else is accompaniment: keep the inner parts quiet and let the tune carry. Because most items last well under a minute, rehearse the first two bars and the final cadence rather than the middle. Match the text to the metre before you sing — Alexander and Alberti take double common metre, Service short metre — and resist a slow tempo, which turns a dance-like hymn into a dirge. On the organ, use light registration and clear articulation.

Selected scores

1. Alexander (Bixby)

   The most-viewed tune here. Gloria Deo indexes Alexander as a double common-metre tune and the page credits the music to Bixby.

2. Service (Bixby)

   A short-metre setting; in Gloria Deo the tune carries a text by James Montgomery alongside Bixby's name.

3. Mildred

   A long-metre tune, indexed at page 156 of Gloria Deo and page 109 of the 1893 Church and Home Hymnal.

4. Palmer (Bixby)

   An 11s tune named for Ray Palmer, whose hymn text it sets in Gloria Deo; the page again names Bixby.

5. Main

   In the 1893 hymnal Main carries a children's hymn, 'Jesus, hear a little child', under Bixby's 1892 copyright.

6. Alberti

   Another double common-metre tune, credited to Bixby in Gloria Deo and one of the longer items at about 38 seconds.

7. Pardon

   An 8s & 5s tune, a metre rare enough in hymnals that the text has to be chosen to fit it; about 31 seconds.

8. Scripture

   Common metre. The 1893 hymnal sets 'How shall the young secure their hearts' to this tune.

9. Morning Prayer (Bixby)

   Double short metre, indexed at page 342 of Gloria Deo; about 38 seconds, one of the longest files in the collection.

10. Moosilauk

    A peculiar-metre tune; the 1893 hymnal sets 'Light of Light, enlighten me' to it. The name is that of the New Hampshire mountain.