Charlotte Alington Barnard

Charlotte Alington Barnard, née Pye, was an English poet and composer born at Louth, Lincolnshire, in 1830. She studied music with William Henry Holmes and became a remarkably successful Victorian writer of parlor ballads. Publishing chiefly under the pseudonym “Claribel,” she produced about one hundred songs as well as volumes of verse. Her better-known works included “I Cannot Sing the Old Songs,” “Five O'Clock in the Morning,” and “Come Back to Erin.”

Barnard's melody now used for “Give of Your Best to the Master” was not written for Howard B. Grose's hymn. It originated decades earlier with the secular song “Take Back the Heart,” first published in 1864, with words attributed to Mrs. George Gifford. The tune was subsequently reused for Grose's Christian text and became known in hymnals as BARNARD.

Barnard married Charles Cary Barnard, a clergyman, and continued composing while raising a family. Grove Music Online notes both her prolific output and unusual commercial success in the Victorian ballad market. She died at Dover in 1869, more than thirty years before Grose's hymn appeared, making the familiar text-and-tune pairing necessarily a later editorial or hymnal association.