Beneath a burning sky,
Long for a cooling stream at hand
And they must drink or die.
THE TUNE.
Many of the earlier pieces assigned to this hymn were either too noisy or too tame. The best and 60 / 36 longest-serving is “Lanesboro,” which, with its expressive duet in the middle and its soaring final strain of harmony, never fails to carry the meaning of the words. It was composed by William Dixon, and arranged and adapted by Lowell Mason.
William Dixon, an English composer, was a music engraver and publisher, and author also of several glees and anthems. He was born 1750, and died about 1825.
Lowell Mason, born in Medfield, Mass., 1792, has been called, not without reason, “the father of American choir singing.” Returning from Savannah, Ga., where he spent sixteen years of his younger life as clerk in a bank, he located in Boston (1827), being already known there as the composer of “The Missionary Hymn.” He had not neglected his musical studies while living in the South, and it was in Savannah that he made the glorious harmony of that tune.
He became president of the Handel and Haydn Society, went abroad for special study, was made Doctor of Music, and collected a store of themes among the great models of song to bring home for his future work.
The Boston Academy of Music was founded by him and what he did for the song-service of the Church in America by his singing schools, and musical conventions, and published manuals, to form and organize the choral branch of divine worship, has no parallel, unless it is Noah Webster's service to the English language.
Dr. Mason died in Orange, N.J., in 1872.