What Song Played While The Titanic Was Sinking
Melissa Hassel
The hymn is well known, among other uses, as the alleged last song the band on RMS Titanic played before the ship sank and as the song sung by the crew and passengers of the SS Valencia as it sank off the Canadian coast in 1906.
The verse was written by the English poet and Unitarian hymn writer Sarah Flower Adams at her home "Sunnybank", in Loughton, Essex, England, in 1841. It was first set to music by Adams's sister, the composer Eliza Flower, for William Johnson Fox's collection Hymns and Anthems.[4]
In the United Kingdom, the hymn is usually associated with the 1861 hymn tune "Horbury" by John Bacchus Dykes, named for a village near Wakefield, England, where Dykes had found "peace and comfort".[5][6] In the rest of the world, the hymn is usually sung to the 1856 tune "Bethany" by Lowell Mason. British Methodists prefer the tune "Propior Deo" (Nearer to God), written by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) in 1872.[7] Sullivan wrote a second setting of the hymn to a tune referred to as "St. Edmund". Mason's tune has also penetrated the British repertoire.[8]
Other 19th century settings include those by the Rev. N. S. Godfrey,[17] W. H. Longhurst,[18] Herbert Columbine,[19] Frederic N. Lhr,[20] Thomas Adams,[21] Stephen Glover,[22] Henry Tucker,[23] John Rogers Thomas,[24] and one composed jointly by William Sterndale Bennett and Otto Goldschmidt.[25] In 1955, the English composer and musicologist Sir Jack Westrup composed a setting in the form of an anthem for four soloists with organ accompaniment.[26]
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" is associated with the sinking of the RMS Titanic, as some survivors reported that the ship's string ensemble played the hymn as the vessel sank. For example, Violet Jessop said in her 1934 account of the disaster that she had heard the hymn being played;[27] Archibald Gracie IV, however, emphatically denied it in his own account, written soon after the sinking, and wireless operator Harold Bride said that he had heard "Autumn",[28] by which he may have meant Archibald Joyce's then-popular waltz "Songe d'Automne" (Autumn Dream).[27] Feature films based on the Titanic disaster depict the band playing various versions of the hymn or other music. The 1929 film Atlantic, and the 1943, 1953, and 1997 films titled Titanic all used the "Bethany" version. The 1996 miniseries Titanic also features the hymn. The 1979 miniseries S. O. S. Titanic featured "Autumn" instead. The 1958 film A Night to Remember used the "Horbury" version.[7]
The hymn even made its way briefly onto the operatic stage. The singer Emma Abbott, prompted by "her uncompromising and grotesque puritanism" rewrote La traviata so that Violetta expired singing not Verdi's Addio del passato, but "Nearer My God to Thee".[39]
Another tale, surrounding the death of US President William McKinley in September 1901, quotes his dying words as being the first few lines of the hymn. At 3:30 pm, in the afternoon of 14 September 1901, after five minutes of silence across the nation, numerous bands across the United States played the hymn, McKinley's favorite, in his memory.[40] It was also played by the Marine Band on Pennsylvania Avenue during the funeral procession through Washington and at the end of the funeral service itself,[40] and at a memorial service for him in Westminster Abbey, London.[41] The hymn was also played as the body of assassinated American President James Garfield was interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, and at the funerals of former U.S. Presidents Warren G. Harding[42] and Gerald R. Ford, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands
The Confederate army band played this song as the survivors of the disastrous Pickett's Charge (in the Battle of Gettysburg) returned from their failed infantry assault.[43] The Rough Riders sang the hymn at the burial of their slain comrades after the Battle of Las Guasimas.[44] A film called Nearer My God to Thee was made in 1917 in the UK. "Nearer, My God, to Thee" is sung at the end of the 1936 movie San Francisco.[45] In the Max Ophls 1952 film, Le Plaisir, the French version of the hymn, 'Plus prs de toi, mon Dieu,' is sung to the Bethany tune at a first communion service in a country church, causing a group of prostitutes in the congregation to collapse in tears over their lost innocence.[46][47] The title of the hymn is also the title of a painting by physician Jack Kevorkian.[48] William F. Buckley mentions in the introduction to his 1998 book, Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, that the title was inspired by "Nearer My God to Thee".[49]
CNN co-founder Ted Turner, at the launch of the channel in 1980, promised: "We won't be signing off until the world ends. ... We'll be ... covering it live. ... [And] when the end of the world comes, we'll play 'Nearer My God to Thee' before we sign off." Turner commissioned a video recording of the hymn for this purpose, played by a military marching band, which he sometimes played for reporters. In 2015, the video, tagged in CNN's database as "[Hold for release] till end of world confirmed", was leaked on the Internet.[50]
Among other recordings, Doris Day included the song on her 1962 album You'll Never Walk Alone. A season 3 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street is entitled "Nearer My God to Thee".[51] The song is also played in episodes of the TV series Orphan Black[52] and sung in the TV miniseries Midnight Mass during the final scene of Episode 7, along with a piano arrangement heard throughout the series.[53]
Playing to the tragic end, the entire valiant band of Titanic was lost in the tragedy of April 15th 1912. But what were there songs that they played as their final soundtrack? In the best guesses I can, based on the period they died in, and survivor's accounts I will tell you the songs that they could have played that fateful night.
12:10 The band sets up their instruments in the first class lounge, all 8 of them assembled together, Theodore Brailey on the flute and Percy Taylor on piano, with George Krins on viola. John Woodward and Roger Bricoux are playing cellos, and John Clarke is on the String Bass. Wallace Hartley and John Hume play the violins.
To this contributes the ending in which, instead of offering gratification of any kind, Bryars, staying true to his studies of philosophy, lets the voice (and the ensemble) slowly dissolve from the physical sphere of sound waves while fading into the psychological and spiritual sphere of brainwaves.
This Episcopal hymn, then, becomes a basic element of the music and is subject to a variety of treatments. Bride did not hear the band stop playing and it would appear that the musicians continued to play even as the water enveloped them. My initial speculations centred, therefore, on what happens to music as it is played in water. On a purely physical level, of course, it simply stops since the strings would fail to produce much of a sound (it was a string sextet that played at the end, since the two pianists with the band had no instruments available on the Boat Deck). On a poetic level, however, the music, once generated in water, would continue to reverberate for long periods of time in the more sound-efficient medium of water and the music would descend with the ship to the ocean bed and remain there, repeating over and over until the ship returns to the surface and the sounds re-emerge.[iii]
You can enter only once. In comments, simply give me one cool fact about the Titanic, but make it cool. Ordinary facts that everyone knows are worth one entry. Incredibly cool facts are worth three entries, and the rest are in the middle for two entries.
Fun Fact: People believe that J.P. Morgan planned the sinking of the Titanic to kill some of his rivals, the millionaires Jacob Aster, Isidor Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim, all who did in fact die. J.P. Morgan even had tickets to sail on the Titanic but mysteriously canceled just days before it left.
Milton Hershey, the same man invented Hershey chocolate, was traveling with his wife in Europe in 1912. They had booked tickets on the Titanic, but last minute business caused them to cancel days before it set sail. If they had traveled on the Titanic, they would have likely died, and chocolate as we know it today might be very different.
In the iconic side view of the Titanic, there are four black and cream funnels. However, only three were needed to release steam from the boilers. Even though it was not used, the designers concluded it would appear more aesthetic and impressive to add the fourth one.
Hi Mrs. Nielsen! One pretty surprising fact I found about the Titanic was that 3/4 of the funnels on the ship were real. The fourth one was just there for aesthetics. It made the ship look more beautiful and symmetrical. Instead of blowing smoke out of it, it was mostly used as an air vent.
A lot of third class passengers could have purchased a second class ticket, but they chose to save the money for starting a life in America. Even though they were 3rd class accommodations, they were more than adequate. For instance, they had real mattresses, whilst other liners used straw mattresses.
Hello!
This was a fact I did not know, so I hope you find it equally interesting. Charles Joughin was one of the survivors. The main reason he survived was because of the alcohol in his system. He was completely drunk when The Titanic sank!! The alcohol kept his body temperature higher than normal, thus helping him to survive! I just think this is crazy! He must have had some important work to do. ?
Not about the actual Titanic, but Rose in the movie was based on a real artist named Beatrice Wood who had a sort-of scandalous love triangle with her contemporaries Duchamp and Roch and I just sort of love that.
I learned that there are several conspiracy theories regarding the Titanic. According to Cosmoschronicle.com, one theory is that the Titanic was sunk to create the U.S. Federal Reserve. As someone mentioned earlier, a book was written, 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic, that chronicled the sinkning of the fictional ship Titan in eerily the exact same way the Titanic ended up sinking. The captain of the Titanic was well known, and apparently would never have sailed on a ship that had so little safety measures and precautions that the Titanic did. Also, the author of the book about the Titan was poisoned a few years after the Titanic sank (scary!). Some of the very wealthy people on board the Titanic opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve. A group of people who desperately wanted a Federal Reserve are said to have orchestrated the sinking of the ship to murder their opposition. Also, the guy who funded the building of the ship cancelled his voyage on it (which saved his life). There are so many conspiracies about this, but I thought this was the most interesting.
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