God Be With You: A Song History

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"God Be with You Till We Meet Again" was written in 1880 by Jeremiah Eames Rankin (1828–1904), a Congregational minister then serving the First Congregational Church in Washington, D.C., where the hymn was first sung.[1][2] He later became president of Howard University.[1][3] Rankin built the text on the old meaning of the word "goodbye," a shortened form of "God be with ye."[2] He called it a hymn "deliberately composed" around that etymology.[1] The same farewell line frames every stanza, so the variation is confined to the lines in between.[3] It was first printed in Gospel Bells (Chicago, 1880), a book Rankin co-edited, and the 1883 edition extended it to eight stanzas.[1][2]

Small color lithograph card by Winslow Homer of a Civil War soldier saying good-bye to a woman

Winslow Homer, Life in Camp, Part 2: Good Bye, color lithograph, 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The familiar tune is by William G. Tomer (died 1896), a New Jersey schoolteacher and Union Army veteran who at different times also worked as a government clerk in Washington and directed the music at Grace Methodist Episcopal Church.[4] According to the notes on Hymnary.org, Rankin sent his first stanza to two composers, one well known and the other an obscure musician with little formal training, and chose the setting by the obscure one, Tomer.[1] The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology notes how the tune sets plain, chord-based verses against a refrain whose melody jumps about.[2] The evangelistic campaigns of Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey spread the song widely, and it became a common closing hymn for revivals, camp meetings and farewells.[1][3] Hymnary.org now counts it in more than 1,300 hymnals.[1]

A second tune came from England. For The English Hymnal of 1906, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the tune RANDOLPH as an alternative to Tomer's tune, which Hymnary.org's notes describe as overly sentimental.[5] Both tunes still appear in hymnals, and the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square has often ended its broadcasts with Rankin's hymn, which has also served as a benediction at many General Conferences of the Latter-day Saint church.[1][5][6]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "God Be with You till We Meet Again".
  2. Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: "God be with you till we meet again".
  3. Discipleship Ministries (United Methodist Church): "History of Hymns: 'God Be with You Till We Meet Again'".
  4. Hymnary.org: "William G. Tomer".
  5. Hymnary.org: "RANDOLPH (Vaughan Williams)".
  6. The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square: "The History and Lyrics to 'God Be With You Till We Meet Again'".