Hymn #119: My Soul Gives Glory to My God | First Congregational Church

Miriam Therese Winter (b. 1938) paraphrased the “Canticle of Mary” (also known as the Magnificat) while she was a doctoral candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1978. She later created a new fifth stanza and recorded the hymn with this tune on the album “Woman Song” in 1987.

Miriam Therese Winter is a Medical Mission sister who has been writing religious songs since Vatican II, a council that greatly liberated worship and hymnody in the church. Her most recent publication, Songlines (1996), presents one hundred of her songs from several decades of hymnwriting.

MORNING SONG has been traced to John Logan’s Sixteen Tune Settings (1812), where it was called CONSOLATION. Since then, it has been reprinted in a large number of nineteenth-century hymnals and is one of few American tunes to be included in recent British hymnals.

Kentucky Harmony was a local hymnbook published in 1816, combining the work of a number of other hymnals. It was produced by Ananias Davisson for use in Presbyterian churches. The hymnal used shape notes, a method of musical notation developed to help untrained singers.