FOUNDATION
The anonymous tune FOUNDATION first appeared in Joseph Funk’s A Compilation of Genuine Church Music (1832) as a setting for this text (there it was called PROTECTION). The tune was also published with the text in Southern Harmony and Sacred Harp. The ancestors ofJoseph Funk (b. Lancaster County, PA, 1778; d. Mountain Valley, a.k.a. Singers Glen, VA, 1862) were German Mennonites who had settled in eastern Pennsylvania. Around 1780 the Funk family moved to the Shenandoah Valley close to Harrisonburg, Virginia. Funk became a farmer and a teacher in a schoolhouse on his property. An itinerant singing-school teacher and music publisher, he also issued the monthly music journal Southern Musical Advocate and Singer’s Friendbefore the Civil War (the journal was continued later by his sons). Funk published Choral-Music (1816) and A Compilation of Genuine Church Music (1832). The revised twenty-fourth edition (1980) is still in use by Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley today. Funk’s life was the focus of Alice Parker’s opera Singers Glen (1978). The harmonization is by Dale Grotenhuis (PHH 4). There are several options for singing: congregation throughout, soloists on the middle stanzas, or in canon. Like many folk tunes, FOUNDATION is pentatonic and should be sung with vigor. It can be sung either in two-part canon (two measures apart) or in four parts (one measure apart). Try having the choir’s men and women sing in canon on the inner stanzas, perhaps following a soloist. For the fi [Liturgical Use] Many occasions of worship that focus on redemption and providence; as a hymn of comfort for those in difficult or tragic circumstances; baptism; profession of faith; prior to reading of Scripture.
Stanza Arc
The narrative or theological arc traced by this tune's stanzas: From the unshakeable foundation of God's Word (1-2) through divine presence in all circumstances (3-5) to the absolute certainty of God's faithfulness (6). Progressive reassurance moving from doctrinal assertion to experiential comfort to ultimate promise.