Great Christian Hymns How Can I Keep From Singing? How Can I Keep From Singing? (also known by its incipit My Life Flows On in Endless Song) is a Christian hymn with music written by American Baptist minister Robert Wadsworth Lowry. The song is frequently, though erroneously, cited as a traditional Quaker hymn. The original composition has now entered into the public domain, and appears in several hymnals and song collections, both in its original form and with a revised text. Though it is not, in fact, a Quaker hymn, twentieth-century Quakers adopted it as their own and use it widely today. During the 20th century, this hymn was not widely used in congregational worship. Diehls index to a large number of hymnals from 1900 to 1966 indicates that only one hymnal included it: the 1940 edition of The Church Hymnal of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (hymn no. 265). The United Methodist Church published it in its 2000 hymnal supplement, The Faith We Sing (hymn no. 2212), giving credit for the lyrics as well as the tune to Robert Lowry. The Faith We Sing version changes some of the lyrics and punctuation from the 1868 version. Pete Seeger learned a version of this song from Doris Plenn, a family friend, who had it from her North Carolina family. His version made this song fairly well known in the folk revival of the 1960s. Seegers version omits or modifies much of the Christian wording of the original, and adds Plenns verse above. The reference in the added verse intended by Seeger and by Plenn—both active in left-wing causes—is to witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (Seeger himself was sentenced to a year in jail in 1955 as a result of his testimony before the Committee, which he did not serve due to a technicality). Most folk singers, including Enya, have followed Seegers version. In the late 1970s and early 80s, How Can I Keep From Singing was recorded by Catholic Folk musician Ed Gutfreund (on an album called From An Indirect Love), and the music was published in a widely used Catholic Hymnal called Glory and Praise, and was popular among Catholic liturgical music ministers, especially those who used guitar. In this, and in an 1993 recording by Marty Haugen, Jeanne Cotter, and David Haas, the quatrain beginning: No storm can shake my inmost calm ... is used as a repeated refrain. https://youtube/watch?v=5uc1smOOs7A
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:25:33 +0000
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