"Blessed Assurance"
19th century America was beginning to produce many hymn-writers, especially with the Gospel Movement of Moody and Sankey of late-19th-century. And their music-maker catapulting their ministry to fame was Fanny Crosby. Fanny became blind as an infant when incorrect medicine was applied to an eye-inflammation. As a devout Methodist Episcopal, and student at the NY Institute for the Blind before Braille was taught there, she began creating religious poems and hymns in her head and sometimes had to wait hours, creating more, before someone was available to take dictation; at one time, she was holding 40 hymns in her head! She wrote over 8,000 hymns and probably more because she used many pseudonyms, hymnbook editors not wanting it to look like all their hymns were by one person! “Rescue the Perishing,” “To God by the Glory” and “Blessed Assurance” are some of her most famous. Though most of her poems were composed first, then set to music by another (such as William Doane), “Blessed Assurance” was written to a piece of music by her friend Phoebe Knapp.
It featured in many children's hymnbooks, and by the early 20th-century was in 44% of American children's hymnals (Clapp-Itnyre, "The Legacy of Victorian Hymnody in Children’s British and American Hymnbooks, 1840-1940” p. 29).
Score: Hymn #24 from Favorite Hymns (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1933): #1 above.
Choir: Community Choristers, Hymn Camp 2025: Evensong concert #2 above.
This page has paths:
- Part 7: Early 20th-Century Hymns Alisa Clapp-Itnyre