Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Hymn of the Month -- Wonderful Peace



This song was written in 1889, with the lyrics written Warren D Cornell, and the music composed by George Cooper. They were at a Methodist camp meeting in Wisconsin at the time. According to George Sanville's Forty Gospel Hymn Stories (1943) this is how it happened:
One day while seat­ed in the tent, Mr. Cor­nell, fol­low­ing a per­i­od of deep in­tro­spect­ion, wrote down the thoughts with which his mind had been bus­ied. They lat­er proved to be parts of this hymn, “Won­der­ful Peace.” Sink­ing again into in­tro­spect­ive rum­in­a­tion, he arose, un­wit­ting­ly dropped the writ­ten vers­es on the tent floor and went out. When Mr. Coop­er en­tered the tent an hour or two later he dis­cov­ered the pa­per. He was fas­cin­at­ed by the theme and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing vers­es. It so fit­ted his own think­ing that he filled in and com­plet­ed the po­em. Then sit­ting down at the or­gan he com­posed the mel­o­dy as it has since been sung.

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