John Bacchus Dykes (10 March 1823 – 22 January 1876)
was an English clergyman and hymnwriter. He was born in
Hull, England, the fifth child and third son of William
Hey Dykes, a ship builder, later banker,and Elizabeth,
daughter of Bacchus Huntington, a surgeon of
Sculcoates, Yorkshire, and granddaughter of the Rev.
William Huntington, Vicar of Kirk Ella. His paternal
grandparents were the Rev. Thomas Dykes, LL.B., and
Mary, daughter of William Hey. He was also a cousin of
the Rev. George Hunt...(+)
John Bacchus Dykes (10 March 1823 – 22 January 1876)
was an English clergyman and hymnwriter. He was born in
Hull, England, the fifth child and third son of William
Hey Dykes, a ship builder, later banker,and Elizabeth,
daughter of Bacchus Huntington, a surgeon of
Sculcoates, Yorkshire, and granddaughter of the Rev.
William Huntington, Vicar of Kirk Ella. His paternal
grandparents were the Rev. Thomas Dykes, LL.B., and
Mary, daughter of William Hey. He was also a cousin of
the Rev. George Huntington. Dykes was a younger brother
of the poet and hymnwriter Eliza Alderson, and wrote
tunes for at least four of her hymns.
By the age of 10, he was de facto assistant organist
– there is no record of any formal appointment – at
St John's Church in Myton, Hull, where his paternal
grandfather (who had built the church) was vicar and
his uncle (also Thomas) was organist. He also played
the violin and the piano.
Although his paternal grandfather and his father had
been firmly of an evangelical persuasion, Dykes
migrated to the Anglo-Catholic, ritualist, wing of the
Church of England during his Cambridge years. Although
never a member of the Cambridge Camden Society, his
later life showed him to be clearly in sympathy with
its central tenets, as he was with those of the Oxford
Movement. He was a member of the Society of the Holy
Cross. At this time, antagonism between the evangelical
and Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church of England was
heated and sometimes violent. The seminal case
concerned the Brighton-based Rev. John Purchas
(1823–72) who, as a consequence of a Privy Council
judgment which bore his name, was compelled to desist
from such practices as facing east during the
celebration of Holy Communion, using wafer bread, and
wearing vestments other than cassock and surplice.
Another clergyman, the London-based Alexander
Mackonochie (whose worship style Lord Shaftesbury had
characterised as being "in outward form and
ritual…the worship of Jupiter or Juno") was pursued
through the courts until the pressure proved too much
and he resigned his living in 1882. Although Dykes's
treatment at the hands of the evangelical party, which
included his own Bishop, Charles Baring, was largely
played out locally, Baring's refusal to license a
curate to help the overworked Dykes in his
ever-expanding parish, led the latter to seek from the
Court of Queen's Bench a writ of mandamus, requiring
the Bishop to do so. Against the expectations of many
senior legal figures, including the Attorney-General,
Dr. A. J. Stephens, Q.C., whose services Dykes had
retained, the Court, led by puisne judge Sir Colin
Blackburn, Q.C., refused to interfere in what they saw
to be a matter of the Bishop's sole discretion. Dykes's
defeat was followed by a gradual deterioration in his
physical and mental health, necessitating absence
(which was to prove permanent) from St. Oswald's from
March 1875. Rest and the bracing Swiss air proving
unavailing, Dykes eventually went to recover on the
south coast of England where, on 22 January 1876, he
died aged 52. Touchingly, he shares a grave with his
youngest daughter, Mabel, who died, aged 10, of scarlet
fever in 1870. Dykes's grave is now the only marked
grave in what, in recent years, has been transformed
into a children's playground.
Dykes published numerous sermons, book reviews and
articles on theology and church music, many of them in
the Ecclesiastic and Theologian. These display
considerable erudition and wit (not to mention a
penchant for damnation by faint praise and a fondness
for litotes and gentle sarcasm), especially on the
topics of the Apocalypse, the Psalms, Biblical
numerology and, unsurprisingly, the function of music
and ritual in the service of the church. However, he is
best known for over 300 hymn tunes he composed.
Although Dykes reveals that he composed a number of
tunes specially for use in Durham Cathedral's Galilee
Chapel, of far greater significance was his speculative
submission in 1860 of six tunes to the music editor
(W.H. Monk) of a new venture: Hymns Ancient and Modern.
Of the six were: MELITA, (Eternal Father, strong to
save, used at the funerals of J F Kennedy and Sir
Winston Churchill).
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bacchus_Dykes)
Although originally written for Choir (SATB), I created
this Interpretation of the Minuet & Variations from the
Sonata in G Major for Woodwind Trio (Flute, Oboe &
Bassoon).
SHEET MUSIC