This his hymn, to be sung at the close of the Communion service, addresses what should happen to Christians in the real world as a result of the renewal they have just experienced in the service. Under the nom de plume “J. Clifford Evers,” it first appeared in People’s Mass Book, 1964. In an altered form it was included in Lutheran Book of Worship, 1978.

Omer Westendorf was born on February 24, 1916; he spent most of his life in Cincinnati, Ohio. His education was at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned the B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees. At age 20 he was appointed organist-choirmaster at St. Bonaventure Church; he has held that for more than 40 years! His ability and versatility have resulted in the following posts, honors, and accomplishments: director of Bonaventure Choir, a group that does radio, television, recording, and concert work; music teacher at several schools; founder and president of World Library of Sacred Music and World Library Publications; consultant on liturgical music; lecturer on aspects of church music; hymn writer and compiler of four hymnals, including People’s Mass Book, 1964, the first hymn and service book in the language of the people, decreed by Vatican Council II; consultant on the publication of Armed Forces Hymnal; and author of Music Lessons for the Man in the Pew, designed to help ordinary people learn how to read music from a score. In 1976 his hymn “Gift of Finest Wheat” won first prize over 200 submitted in a contest to obtain an official hymn for the forty-first International Eucharistic Congress. His article “The State of Catholic Hymnody” appeared in The Hymn in April 1977.

THE ASH GROVE (see SDAH 560), an eminently singable Welsh folk melody, is here arranged for unison voices by Leland Bernhard Sateren. He was born of Norwegian parents at Everett, Washington, on October 13, 1913. After graduating from Augsburg College in 1935, he taught high school music at Moose Lake, Minnesota. His graduate study was at the University of Minnesota, where he was music director of the radio station on campus. From 1946 to 1979 he was professor of music and director of the Augsburg Choir at Augsburg College, Minneapolis. (He is now serving in that position, emeritus.) Sateren has had a long and distinguished career as a musician in the Lutheran Church, serving on the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship from 1967 to 1978, the year Lutheran Book of Worship was published. He has been much sought after as choral clinician, adjudicator, teacher, lecturer, and choir festival director, both in the United States and abroad. Twice he made major studies of the famous choirs of America and Europe. As a composer he is prolific, having written more than 300 choral works. A number of his articles on choirs, choral singing, and hymnology have appeared in professional magazines. Special honors conferred on him include D.H.L. from Gettysburg College; D.Mus. from Lakeland College; King Olav of Norway in 1971; and the first the St. Olaf Medal, conferred F. Melius Christiansen Memorial Award of the Minnesota chapter of the American Choral Directors Association, 1974. During the 1975-1976 academic year he served on the faculty of the Conservatory of Music, Bergen, Norway, as choral director and teacher of conducting and composition. Since retirement in 1979, his schedule is filled with composing, arranging, writing, translating (he has just completed a new biography of Edvard Grieg), conducting in America and Europe, adjudicating, and lecturing, without, as he says, “having committee meetings, exams to give, papers to correct, a college music department to administer, rehearsals to conduct, recitals to attend, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed, but which required 48-hour days!” SDAH also has Sateren’s tune REGWALL, with “As Saints of Old,” SDAH 556. For a four-part harmony version of THE ASH GROVE, see SDAH 560.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.