The Rev. Tertius van Dyke, son of the author, has given us the story of how this great hymn was written. In 1907 his father, Henry, was on a preaching mission to Williams College (Massachusetts), and a guest in the home of the president, Mr. Garfield. Coming down to breakfast one morning, Van Dyke placed a manuscript on the table and said, “Here is a hymn for you. Your mountains were my inspiration. It must be sung to the music of Beethoven’s ‘Hymn to Joy.’” Obviously he was deeply moved by the beauty of God’s power in nature, and penned these lines so that others, too, could capture a portion of his spiritual experience. It was printed in his Poems, 1911, and in The Hymnal (Presbyterian) that same year.

One of the most distinguished literary men of his generation, Henry van Dyke was born November 10, 1852, in German town, Pennsylvania, and received his education at Princeton College, a B.A. in 1873, and an M.A. in 1876. He graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1877. He began his career as pastor of United Congregational church, Newport, Rhode Island, and went to the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York in 1883, were he gained a wide reputation as a powerful preacher. Moving to Princeton University in 1900, he taught English literature; his home, Avalon, became a stopping place for writers from both sides of the ocean. 

Elected moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1902, he became a close personal friend of President Woodrow Wilson and was appointed minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. A partial list of his honors includes lecturer, University of Paris; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; the degree of D.C.L., awarded by Oxford University; commander, Legion of Honor; Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Laws, awarded by several universities in the United States. His fame rested solidly on the book he wrote, the most successful of which was The Other Wise Man. His final contribution to the Presbyterian Church was his work on the Committee to Revise the Book of Common Worship, published in 1933. He died April 10, 1933;

The tune HYMN TO JOY was adopted from the melody of the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, 1824, by Edward Hodges (1796-1867) in 1846. Hodges came to America from England in 1838, and was organist for more than 20 years in nEw York, first at St. John’s Episcopal Chapel and then at Trinity Church. (The tune had appeared early in Elam Ives, Jr.’s Mozart Collection, 1846, where it was set to three different texts.)

Ludwig van Beethoven never wrote a hymn tune as such, but several have been adapted from his large works. Born December 16, 1770, at Bonn, Germany, into a musical family, he showed his genius early. At age 12 he studied with Neefe, the court organist, sometimes paying there and in the royal theater. His teacher said of him: “He plays the clavier very skillfully and with power, reads at sight very well, and — to put it in a nutshell — he plays chiefly The Well-tempered Clavichord of Bach. Whoever knows this collection of preludes and fugues in all the keys —which might be called the nun plus ultra of art — will know what tis means.”

Beethoven met and took a few lessons from Mozart at age 17, and later also studied with Haydn. In 1792 he settled in Vienna, where most of his magnificent instrumental masterpieces were composed. He was know as the “Napoleon of the piano,” and his skill on this instrument gave him access to the best court and social circles. Always confident of his gifts as a composer, he built on the conventions of those who preceded him and forged ahead into new territory in romantic expression and dynamic devices.

He first noticed symptoms of deafness in 1798, at age 28. For a while he was defiant, realizing how this would affect his life as a musician, where, ordinarily, hearing is everything. He said, “ I have often cursed the Creator for exposing His creatures to the merest accident, so that often the most beautiful buds are broken or destroyed thereby. Only think that my noblest faculty, my hearing, has greatly deteriorated.” After years of struggle with doctors and “cures,” he resigned himself that nothing could be done and became submissive. At the same time he found that his creative power as a composer was in no way impaired; in fact, it may have gained strength and vitality. Some of his greatest works were written during this time, including the cantata The Mount of Olives, a Mass in C, the Missa Solemni, his last piano sonatas, and string quartets. A mere list of his prodigious output fills 20 pages in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. On the occasion of his conducting the premier performance of the Ninth Symphony, from which this hymn tune is taken, Beethoven was totally deaf. One of the soloist had to turn him around so he could see the wild applause and hat-waving of the enthusiastic audience. He died March 26, 1827.