Music Notes 8-11-24

This week we have all four of our wonderful section leaders assisting with the service, and we welcome back Kylie, who has been buried in the “Cone of Silence” – taking time off from singing while her vocal cords healed.

How Great Thou Art took quite a while to get here, and went through several versions before ending up in the form we all know.  The poem "O Store Gud" (O Great God) was written in 1885 by Swedish poet Carl Boberg in Mönsterås, Sweden.  He said at the time that it was a paraphrase of Psalm 8.  The poem was then matched to an old Swedish folk tune and sung in public for the first time in 1888.  It was then translated into German as "Wie groß bist Du" (How Great are You) by wealthy Baptist nobleman Manfred von Glehn, after which it became very popular in Germany.  In 1912 it became “Великий Бог” (Great God in Russian), produced by Ivan S. Prokhanov, called “The Martin Luther of Russia”.  The first English translation was written by E. Gustav Johnson, who was a professor at North Park College in Illinois, in 1925.  The version we know began its life when Stuart K. Hine heard the Russian version while on an evangelical mission to the Ukraine in 1931.  He began translating it and using it in his evangelical services, adding the 4th verse after the 2nd World War in 1948.  It became a monster, however, when it was discovered in London in 1954 by the Billy Graham Crusade.  They sang it for the 1st time in Toronto in 1955, but when they took it to Madison Square Gardens in 1957, they sang it over 100 times, because the people wouldn’t let them stop.  

Craig Courtney is one of the dominant forces in the world of church anthems.  He is currently the Executive Music Editor for Beckenhorst Press in Columbus, Ohio, and was the protégé of the founder, the legendary John Ness Beck.  What his resume doesn’t tell you is how he started composing (I got this information one day over coffee with him).  He was a staff piano teacher at the famous Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.  Sitting in his cubicle, day after day, waiting for piano students to arrive (or not), he began to improvise and noodle.  This brought about his first big publication, Thy Will Be Done (which we happen to have in our library).  He sent that to John Ness Beck, founder of Beckenhorst Music Publications, and the rest is history.  This week’s anthem is an arrangement of a true classic, How Great Thou Art.  There’s always a danger when you work with a song from that generation – How Great Thou Art, Shall We Gather At The River, Old Rugged Cross, and so on – that the Wisconsin factor can get out of hand…they can get really cheesy.  But in the hands of a master, it becomes dignified and meaningful.  His treatment of this old classic is both wonderful to sing and to listen to.  Enjoy.

Now Thank We All Our God is a popular Christian hymn. Catherine Winkworth translated it from the German Nun danket alle Gott, written around 1636 by the Lutheran pastor Martin Rinkart. Its hymn tune, Zahn No. 5142, was published by composer Johann Crüger in the 1647 edition of his Lutheran hymnal Praxis Pietatis Melica. Martin Rinkart was a Lutheran pastor who came to Eilenburg, Saxony, at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. The walled city of Eilenburg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenburg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.  Rinkart was a prolific hymn writer. In Rinkart's Jesu Hertz-Buchlein (Leipzig, 1636), "Nun danket alle Gott" appears under the title "Tisch-Gebetlein", as a short prayer before meals.  Composer Johann Crüger was active during the 1600’s, living most of his adult life in Berlin, working as a teacher in a Gymnasium (basically, a college prep high school) and as cantor at the Nicolaikirche, the oldest church in Berlin.  In addition to numerous concert works and editing the hymnal Praxis Pietatis Melica, the most important Lutheran hymnal of its time, he also wrote the tune to Johann Franck’s hymn Jesu, Meine Freude (in English, Jesus, My Joy), and Rinkart’s Nun danket alle Gott, which was set to it’s now standard harmonization by Felix Mendelssohn in 1840 when he used it for the chorale for his Symphony #2.  Translator Catherine Winkworth was born in London and spent a year in Dresden, Germany, where she took an interest in German hymnody.  She published several books of translations of classic German hymns, including From Heaven Above to Earth I Come (Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her, Martin Luther, 1534), Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, Philipp Nicolai, 1599), How Brightly Beams the Morning Star! (Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, Nicolai, 1597), and the Christmas hymn A Spotless Rose (Es ist ein Ros entsprungen), known in our hymnal as Lo, How A Rose E’re Blooming. According to The Harvard University Hymn Book, Winkworth “did more than any other single individual to make the rich heritage of German hymnody available to the English-speaking world”.