Performing Arts

If there can be Mostly Mozart events, why not one that's Exclusively Wesley?

Such an event will in fact occur Sunday, when some 420 United Methodist choir members from the area will perform hymns with texts written by Charles Wesley in a concert at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

"The most familiar would be 'O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,' and that's the name of this event," said David R. Davidson, who will be conducting.

The occasion is the 300th anniversary of Charles Wesley's birth. Proceeds will benefit the building fund of St. Paul United Methodist Church in Dallas.

Charles Wesley was the brother of John Wesley, regarded as the key figure in the founding of Methodism. Both were renowned preachers in their native England, but Charles also wrote more than 6,000 hymn texts.

Christianity Today magazine calls him the "greatest hymn writer of all time," and no one could dispute that he's right at the top, having written such enduringly popular hymns as "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" and "Rejoice! the Lord Is King."

"Wesley's hymns are passionate and straightforward," said John Thornburg, a Dallas hymn writer. "They are a wonderful combination of head and heart, the cerebral and the emotional. As Wesley put it himself, 'Let us unite the two so long disjoined: knowledge and vital piety.' "

The singers for Sunday's concert will come from the choirs at Highland Park United Methodist, Christ United Methodist and Custer Road United Methodist in Plano, Lovers Lane United Methodist and First United Methodist in Richardson.

Festival Brass will provide accompaniment. The program will last about an hour and 15 minutes, and the audience will be invited to sing along for about half of it.

Though it's a little early for Christmas music, Mr. Davidson said the concert will definitely include a Wesley hymn that has become a standard for that season – "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."Plan your life

At 6 p.m. Sunday at the Morton

H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

$5 to $25. 214-523-2250, www.hpumc.org/towerarts

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