Hopson’s The Creative Use of the Piano in Worship. There’s also a good piano arrangement in Hal H. This can be solved by setting the text to a different tune, such as the Getty tune “When Trials Come.” An arrangement of this tune with a brilliant fiddle turn-around, as arranged by Ben Dykstra at Calvin College in 2009 can be found on the Calvin Worship Symposium vimeo site, under Symposium 2011, Friday Morning Worship.Ĭelebration Hymnal #526 has a great arrangement for piano on the final verse, as well as an optional choral ending. One of the challenges of using this tune with a worship band and drummer is the ambiguity between the pick and the downbeat. Bradbury for Mote’s hymn text, and first published in 1864. The most commonly used tune is SOLID ROCK, composed by William B. Mote’s original text consisted of six verses today’s modern hymnals generally contain the first four verses (the new first verse is made from the first 2 lines of verse 2, and the last 2 lines of verse 1), and verse 6 with a modified first line, from “When I shall launch in worlds unseen” to “When he shall come with trumpet sound.” Tune: Almost two centuries later, we continue to sing these words of hope and assurance, our declaration that in the midst of all trials and storms, we will cling to the rock that is our Savior. The wife enjoyed them so much she asked for a copy, and Mote went home to finish the last two verses and sent it off to a publisher, saying, “As these verses so met the dying woman’s case, my attention to them was the more arrested, and I had a thousand printed for distribution” ( Lutheran Hymnal Handbook).

Later that week, he visited his friend whose wife was very ill, and as they couldn’t find a hymnal to sing from, he dug up his newly written verses and sang those with the couple. As Edward Mote was walking to work one day in 1834, the thought popped into his head to write a hymn on the “Gracious Experience of a Christian.” As he walked up the road, he had the chorus, “On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand All other ground is sinking sand.” By the end of the day, he had the first four verses written out and safely tucked away in his pocket.

In christ alone the solid rock lyrics