Before the Throne of God Above music by Vikki Cook
November 11th, 2007 by Matt Heerema | Posted in New Music, Song Selection
Bob Kauflin has an insightful post on his blog: Worship Matters about the song “Before the Throne of God Above. I think it’s worth a read on a couple levels.
- The song is not public domain!
- Some good thoughts on the flow of music in worship
- Good thoughts about instrumentation and arrangements in music for worship.
Give it a read.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under New Music, Song Selection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I first played piano in public worship 40 years ago, so I’ve given some thought to what is “decent and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40). One reason I suspect there is copyright confusion, leading to Mrs. Cook’s music appearing on someone else’s CD without attribution, is that online information is unclear. For example, I downloaded “Before the Throne of God Above” from an online music store (which I won’t name), and it says “Words and music by Vikki Cook and Charitie Bancroft”. If I didn’t know better, I would suppose that Cook wrote the words and Bancroft wrote the music, when the opposite is true.
It also says “Copywrite 1997…Used by Permission”, which obviously does not include Bancroft’s lyrics, which she composed in 1863 during the Civil War).
Nor do I understand what’s so hard about imitating good hymnbooks, and clearly stating who composed the words, and who composed the music, and adding a tune name. Dates of composition, both of lyrics and music, would also be helpful, so we could easily tell what is in the public domain when a copyright is claimed.