Edward Shippen Barnes
1887 - 1958
Presbyterian
Biography
Edward Shippen Barnes was an American organist, composer, editor, and church musician. Born in Sea Bright, New Jersey, he studied at Yale University with Horatio Parker and Harry Jepson, then continued advanced musical study in Europe, including work in Paris with Vincent d’Indy, Abel Decaux, and Louis Vierne. His career included organist appointments at the Church of the Incarnation and Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica, California.
Barnes composed substantial organ music, including organ symphonies, and was also active as an editor and writer on church music. His connection with This Is My Father’s World is not as the originator of TERRA BEATA. Rather, hymnals identify him as the harmonizer or arranger of a 1926 setting of Sheppard’s adaptation. That harmony, copyrighted in 1927 and now public domain in the United States, was adopted in a number of later hymnals.
Barnes’s role illustrates an important distinction in hymn history: the folk melody, Sheppard’s 1915 adaptation, and Barnes’s later harmonization are separate layers in the musical transmission of the hymn.
Barnes composed substantial organ music, including organ symphonies, and was also active as an editor and writer on church music. His connection with This Is My Father’s World is not as the originator of TERRA BEATA. Rather, hymnals identify him as the harmonizer or arranger of a 1926 setting of Sheppard’s adaptation. That harmony, copyrighted in 1927 and now public domain in the United States, was adopted in a number of later hymnals.
Barnes’s role illustrates an important distinction in hymn history: the folk melody, Sheppard’s 1915 adaptation, and Barnes’s later harmonization are separate layers in the musical transmission of the hymn.
Hymns by Edward Shippen Barnes
Angels We Have Heard on High
Role: Composer
O Come, Let Us Worship
Role: Composer
This Is My Father's World
Role: Composer