George William Warren
1828 - 1902
Episcopal Church
Biography
George William Warren was born in Albany, New York, on August 17, 1828, and died in New York City on March 17, 1902. He received his general education at Racine College in Wisconsin and developed as a musician largely through private study. After church appointments in Albany and Brooklyn, he became organist of St. Thomas Church, New York City, in 1870. He remained there for thirty years and helped shape the musical life of a prominent Episcopal parish.
Warren composed service music, anthems, carols, organ pieces, and hymn tunes. His publications included Warren's Hymns and Tunes as Sung in St. Thomas Church, issued in 1888. Hymnary indexes more than thirty tunes under his name, although NATIONAL HYMN is the one most widely transmitted. Its ceremonial profile reflects Warren's experience as an organist and director of large church occasions.
Contemporary evidence places NATIONAL HYMN in 1892. It was sung at St. Thomas Church on October 10 during an Episcopal observance of the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival and was printed in The Churchman that year before appearing in The Church Hymnal in 1894. A later recollection by Daniel Crane Roberts connected the tune with a centennial of the United States Constitution, but that chronology conflicts with the documented 1892 evidence. Warren wrote the tune for Roberts's already existing text; he did not compose the hymn's words or its original 1876 musical setting.
Warren composed service music, anthems, carols, organ pieces, and hymn tunes. His publications included Warren's Hymns and Tunes as Sung in St. Thomas Church, issued in 1888. Hymnary indexes more than thirty tunes under his name, although NATIONAL HYMN is the one most widely transmitted. Its ceremonial profile reflects Warren's experience as an organist and director of large church occasions.
Contemporary evidence places NATIONAL HYMN in 1892. It was sung at St. Thomas Church on October 10 during an Episcopal observance of the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival and was printed in The Churchman that year before appearing in The Church Hymnal in 1894. A later recollection by Daniel Crane Roberts connected the tune with a centennial of the United States Constitution, but that chronology conflicts with the documented 1892 evidence. Warren wrote the tune for Roberts's already existing text; he did not compose the hymn's words or its original 1876 musical setting.