Ellen Jane Lorenz Porter
1907 - 1996
Biography
Ellen Jane Lorenz Porter, born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1907, was a church musician, editor, composer, scholar, and influential advocate for handbells. She entered the family publishing business in 1932 and served it for decades, helping shape music intended for ordinary congregations and choirs. Handbell Musicians of America credits her as an early champion of handbell repertoire; she also wrote vocal, organ, and instrumental music and received numerous commissions. Her study with Nadia Boulanger and later graduate work complemented a career grounded in the daily practice of sacred-music publishing.
Lorenz arranged the anonymous American camp-meeting melody THE LAMB for the version published as hymn 300 in The United Methodist Hymnal. The hymnal dates her arrangement to 1980, marks the meter as irregular, and prints the setting in B minor. A 1991 United Methodist music supplement explains that the chorus may be sung as a two-part round and may also be appended to common-meter hymns, preserving a characteristic camp-meeting practice. Lorenz therefore stands as arranger rather than original tune composer: she shaped inherited melodic material for late twentieth-century worship. Her setting helps singers hear the tune's spare revival character while giving it a stable notated form suitable for congregational, choral, or responsive use.
Lorenz arranged the anonymous American camp-meeting melody THE LAMB for the version published as hymn 300 in The United Methodist Hymnal. The hymnal dates her arrangement to 1980, marks the meter as irregular, and prints the setting in B minor. A 1991 United Methodist music supplement explains that the chorus may be sung as a two-part round and may also be appended to common-meter hymns, preserving a characteristic camp-meeting practice. Lorenz therefore stands as arranger rather than original tune composer: she shaped inherited melodic material for late twentieth-century worship. Her setting helps singers hear the tune's spare revival character while giving it a stable notated form suitable for congregational, choral, or responsive use.