I Will Arise: A Song History

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The hymn behind "I Will Arise" is Joseph Hart's "Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy," joined to a refrain that came later and from another source. Hart (1712–1768) was a London-born independent Calvinist preacher.[1] He printed the text in 1759 in his Hymns, &c., Composed on Various Subjects as seven six-line stanzas without music, under the heading "Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ."[2] Later editors reworked the words many times.[3]

Etching of a father bending to embrace his kneeling, ragged son on the steps of a house while servants look on from the doorway

Rembrandt van Rijn, Return of the Prodigal Son, 1636, etching. Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The refrain is one of the short camp-meeting choruses that American singers attached freely to whatever longer hymn suited them.[1] Sources differ on when it joined Hart's words: Hymnary.org dates the refrain to 1802,[3] and C. Michael Hawn, citing hymnologist Ellen Jane Lorenz, reports it in Southern hymnbooks by 1811.[1] Chris Fenner's more detailed tracing finds that the 1802 camp-meeting refrain was a different one; he follows the "I will arise" lines to Caleb Jarvis Taylor's Spiritual Songs (Lexington, Kentucky, 1804), where they formed the second half of a stanza, and to an 1806 Philadelphia collection that recast them as a chorus.[2]

The tune most often used, RESTORATION, is an anonymous pentatonic melody first printed in William Walker's shape-note Southern Harmony in 1835, where it carried John Newton's "Mercy, O Thou Son of David."[2][4] Once matched with Hart's words it was often renamed ARISE, after the refrain and its link to the prodigal son story.[4] Hints of the later combination show up in Joseph Hillman's The Revivalist (1868), possibly reflecting oral practice, but the earliest printing Fenner knows of that sets text, refrain and tune together is Charlie D. Tillman's Revival No. 3 (Atlanta, 1899), now the most familiar setting.[2] In the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp, RESTORATION (No. 312b) is sung to Robert Robinson's "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" rather than to Hart's hymn.[5] Fernando Ortega has recorded the hymn with Amy Grant,[6] and mountain dulcimer players will find it, as "I Will Arise," in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam Gospel Edition.[7]

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Sources

  1. Discipleship Ministries (C. Michael Hawn): "History of Hymns" (Joseph Hart's hymn).
  2. Hymnology Archive (Chris Fenner): Joseph Hart's 1759 hymn and its refrains.
  3. Hymnary.org: Joseph Hart text (1759).
  4. Hymnary.org: "RESTORATION (Southern Harmony)".
  5. Fasola.org: "312b Restoration (Second)".
  6. AllMusic: "Fernando Ortega".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Gospel Edition".