Meyer Lyon

Meyer Lyon, also known professionally as Leoni, was a Jewish cantor and public singer in eighteenth-century London. Hymnological sources identify him with the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place, where Thomas Olivers heard him sing Yigdal around 1770. Lyon also appeared on the London stage, illustrating the unusual overlap between synagogue music and professional theatrical singing in his career. He later served as a chazan in Jamaica and died there in 1797.

Lyon’s role in “The God of Abraham Praise” is best described as arranger, transmitter, or provider of the synagogue melody rather than as the securely documented original composer of the tune. Olivers obtained from him the melody associated with the Yigdal he had heard and named the resulting hymn tune LEONI after Lyon’s professional name. Some hymnals therefore credit the music as a traditional Hebrew or synagogue melody adapted or arranged by Meyer Lyon.

The tune is also occasionally called YIGDAL. Its association with Olivers’s text dates from the hymn’s earliest history, making the relationship between source text, synagogue melody, Jewish cantor, and Methodist paraphraser unusually close.