THE TUNE.
The composer of the music for the “Jewel Hymn"* was George F. Root, then living in Reading, Mass.
* Comparison of the “Jewel Hymn” tune with the old glee of “Johnny Schmoker” gives color to the assertion that Mr. Root caught up and adapted a popular ditty for his Christian melody—as was so often done in Wales, and in the Lutheran and Wesleyan reformations. He baptized the comic fugue, and promoted it from the vaudeville stage to the Sunday School.
A minister returning from Europe on an English steamer visited the steerage, and after some friendly talk proposed a singing service—it something could be started that “everybody” knew—for there were hundreds of emigrants there from nearly every part of Europe.
“It will have to be an American tune, then,” said the steerage-master; “try ‘His jewels.’”
The minister struck out at once with the melody and words,—
When He cometh, when He cometh,
—and scores of the poor half-fare multitude joined voices with him. Many probably recognized the music of the old glee, and some had heard the sweet air played in the church-steeples at home. Other voices chimed in, male and female, catching the air, and sometimes the words—they were so easy and so many times repeated—and the volume of 366 / 316 song increased, till the singing minister stood in the midst of an international concert, the most novel that he ever led.
He tried other songs in similar visits during the rest of the voyage with some success, but the “Jewel Hymn” was the favorite; and by the time port was in sight the whole crowd of emigrants had it by heart.
The steamer landed at Quebec, and when the trains, filled with the new arrivals, rolled away, the song was swelling from nearly every car,—
When He cometh, when He cometh,
To make up His jewels.
The composer of the tune—with all the patriotic and sacred master-pieces standing to his credit—never reaped a richer triumph than he shared with his poet-partner that day, when “Precious Jewels” came back to them from over the sea. More than this, there was missionary joy for them both that their tuneful work had done something to hallow the homes of alien settlers with an American Christian psalm.
[George Frederick Root], Doctor of Music, was born in Sheffield, Mass., 1820, eldest of a family of eight children, and spent his youth on a farm. His genius for music drew him to Boston, where he became a pupil of Lowell Mason, and soon advanced so far as to teach music himself and lead the choir in Park St. church. Afterwards he went to New York as director of music in Dr. Deems's Church of the 367 / 317 Strangers. In 1852, after a year's absence and study in Europe, he returned to New York, and founded the Normal Musical Institute. In 1860, he removed to Chicago where he spent the remainder of his life writing and publishing music. He died Aug. 6, 1895, in Maine.
In the truly popular sense Dr. Root was the best-known American composer; not excepting Stephen C. Foster. Root's “Hazel Dell,” “There's Music in the Air,” and “Rosalie the Prairie Flower” were universal tunes—(words by Fanny Crosby,)—as also his music to Henry Washburn's “Vacant Chair.” The songs in his cantata, “The Haymakers,” were sung in the shops and factories everywhere, and his war-time music, in such melodies as “Shouting the Battle-cry of Freedom” and “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching” took the country by storm.