Treasure 83: Hymns and the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation in 1517: A Panel Presentation with Janet Wootton, Martin Leckebusch, and Alan Gaunt – An Article from Bulletin 293, Autumn 2017

To mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation we asked three members to contribute short talks on its relation to hymns. Martin Leckebusch and Alan Gaunt had written translations of Lutheran texts, and Janet Wootton had written about women hymn writers of the Reformation, in particular, Elisabeth Creutziger.

The talks were followed by a panel discussion.

Martin Leckebusch

If you toss a pebble into a lake, there is no telling how far the ripples will spread. If you utter just a few words in a canyon or a cave, there is no knowing how widely the echoes will be heard. If you share your thoughts on Twitter, there is no way of guessing how many times they will be re-tweeted. This is a little part of the story of one hymn, and how it has reached far beyond its origins, and continues to resonate today.

The story begins with Martin Luther in the early 16th century. Luther, of course, was at one time a monk, and tortured by spiritual despair in spite of his discipline and devotion. During his thirties, in the latter half of the 1510s, Luther made two great steps forward. One was the recognition that the Christian’s righteousness before God is Christ’s righteousness, imputed to the believer through faith. The second was Luther’s challenge to many of the practices of the Church in his day. These he documented in a pamphlet of ‘95 Theses’, which, it is said, he nailed to the church door in Wittenberg. From these two seeds came much of what we now call the Reformation.

Luther left behind enough theology to spawn new denominations and traditions. The work of translating all his writings into English continues: the Concordia series, being published in the USA, will eventually run to 82 volumes^[1]. He also left behind new traditions of hymnody and a total of around forty original texts, revised texts, paraphrases and translations, some of them still sung today. It is certainly evident that by the end of his life (He died in 1546, at the age of 62.) Martin Luther had thrown no mere pebble, but something more like a boulder, into the lake of Christendom.

Among the numerous leaders greatly influenced by Luther was a second Martin, Martin Rinckart.^[2], born forty years after Luther’s death. Rinckart became a clergyman and served for many years in his home town, Eilenburg in Saxony. Rinckart’s years of ministry were marked by war, famine and pestilence on a near-apocalyptic scale. The war was the Thirty Years’ War, concluded by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the year before Rinckart’s death. Famine came with war. Many refugees fled to the relative security found within Eilenburg’s walls, and on occasion Rinckart successfully negotiated with the besieging Swedish army to secure better terms for his people. The worst of the pestilence was in 1637, when plague swept through the city. Thousands died, including Rinckart’s own wife and all the other pastors in the town. At times Rinckart was conducting funerals at the rate of forty a day.

Now, though, Martin Rinckart is best known for a hymn text he originally wrote as a table grace for household use in the midst of those turmoils of war: ‘Nun Danket alle Gott’. This text was first published around 1636, but by the time of the Peace of Westphalia a dozen years later it was already widely known and used. It is sung almost exclusively to the tune NUN DANKET, written around 1647 and attributed to Johann Cruger, a tune used by J.S. Bach in several cantatas, and in the 19th century harmonised by Felix Mendelssohn. (A couple of other tunes have been tried, most notably the bouncy up-tempo GRACIAS by Geoffrey Beaumont (1903-70), one of the leaders of the 20th Century Church Light Music Group; but none has displaced the Cruger melody.)

As far as the English-speaking world is concerned, we are indebted (as for many German-language hymns) to Catherine Winkworth, who was born in 1827 in London, and who lived much of her life in Manchester before moving to Bristol in the early 1860s. However, having spent a year in Dresden when she was around nineteen, in the company of her sister and living with an aunt, Catherine Winkworth went on to produce two volumes of hymn texts translated from German, Lyra Germanica (published in 1855) and Lyra Germanica, Second Series (1858). Her subsequent work included The Chorale Book for England (1863) which set various texts to German tunes, and Christian Singers of Germany (1869), a study of German religious poetry and poets (including hymn writers) from the Middle Ages onwards. It was, sadly, a mere three years after the emergence of this book that Catherine Winkworth died suddenly, aged only fifty.

Nevertheless, the heritage she left is impressive. My edition of HymnQuest lists around eighty hymnals containing ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation’. ‘Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness’ is in over twenty, and ‘Christ the Lord is risen again’ in twice that number. ‘All my heart this night rejoices’ features in around thirty- five collections. But our focal text here – ‘Now thank we all our God’ – is listed in over a hundred books, and usually set to NUN DANKET.

Catherine Winkworth was by no means the only translator to make ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ available to a wider constituency – nor the first to do so.

Given it was a Swedish army that besieged Eilenburg in Rinckart’s day, there is a pleasing irony that one of the earliest translations of his great hymn was into Swedish: as early as 1695 a Swedish hymnal included ‘Nu tacka Gud, allt folk’ by Jesper Swedberg (1653-1735), bishop of Skara. (Swedberg was also the father of the philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, founder of the Swedenborgian movement.) This book replaced the first ever Swedish hymn book, produced a year earlier by the same bishop but soon denounced by some as heretical. Swedberg’s translation was retained in Swedish-language books even in the 1980s. A Norwegian book from the same decade includes ‘Nå la oss takke Gud’, a translation dated 1717; within a generation of that date, an unknown translator had provided the Danish ‘Nu takker alle Gud’. Another early translation is apparently the Slovak ‘Nuž Bohu de-kujme’, attributed to Daniel Sinapius-Horcička (1640-88).

Moving into the nineteenth century we have the Dutch ‘Dankt, dankt nu alien God’, its first two verses the work of Johannes Riemens Sr., with its third by Johannes Elias Schröder. Coming to the twentieth century, the French ‘Rendons tous grâce à Dieu’ dates from the 1930s, as does the Afrikaans ‘Korn dank nou almal God’, translated by J. Baumbach, a text still used, with slight changes, in the current (2001) hymnal Liedboek van die Kerk.^[3]. A second French version, dating from around 1950, is ‘Louons Ie Créateur’ by Flossette du Pasquier (b.1922). Meanwhile a Polish Lutheran pastor, teacher and song writer named Pawel Sikora (1883-1972) produced a version for his language entitled ‘Dziękujmy Bogu Wraz’. Sikora either wrote or translated around five hundred songs, helped prepare many evangelical song books, and fulfilled a calling of service among poor and disabled people alongside church ministry not only in Poland itself but also in places now found in the Czech Republic and Ukraine.

The twentieth century saw the publication of no fewer than four Welsh versions of Rinckart’s text^[4] : ‘Diolchwn oll i Dduw / â’n lleisiau a’n calonnau’, translated by J. T. Lewis (1845–1923); ‘Diolchwn oll i Dduw / â llaw a llais a chalon’ by J. Henry Jones (1909–1985); Ifor L. Evans’ (1897–1952) ‘Diolchwn bawb i Dduw’; and ‘Rhown glod i’r Arglwydd Iôr’, the work of Enid Parry (1911–1998). All were written for, and published with, NUN DANKET

Rinckart’s hymn has also reached Finnish (the delightfully-titled ‘Nyt Herraa kiittäkäät’); Indonesian (‘Sekarang Bersyukur’); Yoruba, in Nigeria (‘A f’Ope f’Olorun’); Croatian (‘Sad Boga hvalite’); and Spanish. The last of these is the work of the German-born missionary Fritz Fliedner, born in 1845 and also known by the more Spanish name of Federico Fliedner. Following work as a nurse in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Fliedner gained a PhD at Tubingen, and after ordination became a chaplain at the German embassy in Madrid. His further studies included both Spanish and medicine; he was involved in the beginnings of the Iglesia Evangélica Española (the Spanish denomination which comprises a union of Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and Congregationalists); he worked in Bible translation, founded schools and orphanages, and established a large publishing house. Fliedner also wrote various biographies, with his subjects including Martin Luther, Elizabeth Fry and David Livingstone; some of these may have been chosen because Fliedner’s wife was Scottish. Among his contributions to hymnody were some thirty original texts plus a handful of translations including ‘Di boca y corazón’, from Rinckart. Fliedner died in 1901.

From Federico Fliedner we come to Dr Martin Tel of Princeton Theological Seminary, USA^[5]. Martin Tel is one of the editorial team producing a bilingual Spanish/English hymnal, due for publication in the USA either next year or possibly in 2019. Both Fliedner’s and Winkworth’s translations of ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ will be included; but since these translators each made some adaptations and included their own emphases, the editors of this book wanted a new English-language version from Fliedner’s work, to enable bilingual congregations to worship together using the same flow of thought.

With this in mind, Martin Tel invited me to contribute an English versification of a literal translation of Fliedner’s Spanish text based on Rinckart’s German original … and that is the text which is before us today. Interestingly, the new book will also include a Spanish-language version of Catherine Winkworth’s text, ‘Den gracias al Señor’, translated by Georgina Pando-Connolly (b.1946). It is also good to note that the co-publishers of this new book are the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and GIA Publications; the former, recognisably in the reformed tradition while the latter is predominantly a Catholic publisher. Hymns cross boundaries.

The story also reinforces, quietly, how hymns and hymn writers do not belong in an ivory tower of “pure” worship. Rinckart’s careful negotiations at the Eilenburg sieges, Sikora’s work among people with disabilities, and Fliedner’s involvement in schools and orphanages all represent hymn writers with a social conscience. So also does Catherine Winkworth, who did not receive higher education herself but who was an active campaigner on women’s education (among other issues) and who belonged to the committee which established what is now Bristol University.

As a writer of hymn texts, I found some interesting challenges in the new disciplines involved in producing this text (along with one or two other versifications submitted for the same project). Not only were there the usual checks of rhyme, metre, theology, vocabulary, style and so on; translation adds questions about faithfulness to the original text (in this case, actually to Fliedner’s work rather than Rinckart’s) in both content and format. In practice, much of this amounts to a trade-off between closeness to the source text (in style and content) and producing something which flows smoothly in the target language. The flow of thought in the original is easier to retain when the translation is less constrained by structure and especially by rhyme. For this text, however, I was able to take advantage of the more compact expression in English compared to Spanish, which made it feasible to retain Fliedner’s structure of rhymes on every line.

So we have another new ripple from the Reformation: a hymn whose roots go back almost five centuries, and whose visible origins date from at least three hundred and seventy-five years ago. Yet still those words have the potential to engage and inspire both writers and worshippers. I hope you will find that this new text does not leave too strong a feeling of meeting an old friend in a different context from usual and wearing unexpected clothing. The text is, of course, set to NUN DANKET.

Lift heart and voice to heaven,
with gratitude confessing
the peace and wholeness given
by God’s unfailing blessing:
on him our lives depend,
whose will directs our way,
whose kindness knows no end,
whose comfort crowns each day.

Our Father, hear our prayer,
and fill our hearts with laughter;
keep us within your care
both here, Lord, and hereafter.
May your peace hold us fast;
enrich us with your grace,
until, when life is past,
we see you face to face.

To God the Father, sing,
the author of creation!
Let joyful praises ring
to Christ, for our salvation!
And may the Spirit’s name
be honoured and adored –
the Three whom we acclaim,
one God, one gracious Lord.^[6] 

Alan Gaunt

I really don’t know why I’m standing here, except that this is the five-hundredth year since Luther’s ninety-five Theses, and I happen to have attempted a translation of Luther’s best known hymn, ‘Ein Feste Burg’, which is supposed to be based on Psalm 46: though with all its talk of the ancient prince of hell, all sorts of devils, and the fact that the hymn, in German and other languages, has been used as a battle hymn, it hardly seems to do justice to the psalm, which doesn’t mention Satan or devils, but does speak of the Lord who makes wars cease to the ends of the earth, breaks the bow and shatters the spear: The God, in fact, it seems to me, who is not so much against devils, as human beings, who take up arms against each other.

Well, Luther may not have taken the psalm completely to heart when he advocated the hatred of the Jews in such a way that I feel he could almost have contributed to the Nazi holocaust.

Be that as it may, I don’t reckon much to my translation of’Ein Feste Burg’ and, as far as I know the only hymn book that has used it is Baptist Praise and Worship, (1991). Our own United Reformed book certainly didn’t include it, and I was on the editorial committee! We chose Stephen Orchard’s translation, and I don’t recall pressing too hard for my own! I’m not even sure why I decided to attempt the translation anyway. Perhaps because I thought at the time I could make a better job of it than Thomas Carlyle. But I didn’t! Make a better job of it, I mean. And I’m not just saying that: it isn’t false modesty. I really believe it!

But my translation is dedicated to Joe Seremane. I had been present when he spoke about his experiences as an imprisoned black man in South Africa. Wetshotsile Joseph Seremane retired in 2010 as the federal Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance: a mixed-race party and the country’s main opposition party.

He started his career as a school teacher but then was barred from teaching because of his involvement in politics. He was a political prisoner on Robben Island from 1963 to 1969, and then further detained without trial from 1976 to 1978, and several times between 1982 and 1984. He became the Director of Justice and Reconciliation for the South African Council of Churches, and Chief Land Claims Commissioner after the 1994 advent of democracy. He was elected MP for the Democratic Alliance in 1998. He rejected the politics of race and was seen as the most prominent black figure in the multi-racial party.
Hearing him speak I remember being tremendously impressed, particularly by his most Christian attitude to the people who had tormented him in his various times in prison. He was, and is, a real Christian, who, I am sure, would go along with Psalm 46, with its reference to the God who ‘makes wars to cease to the end of the earth.’

So, my translation of Luther’s hymn was dedicated to Joe Seremane: a man of peace. But would I attempt to translate it now? When asked to be here for this occasion, I did begin a new attempt. But No!

I can’t remember when I last chose any translation of this hymn: I don’t like its Satan and its devils as an idea. I would much rather concentrate on the evils that human beings do, as they have for thousands of years: yes, and still do, in the name of the God of Love: even Luther himself. And yet, I think I do still thank God that Luther began something five hundred years ago, that might yet, if we continue to pray and live for it, still happen: real and true peace between all Christians; the real and true unity of the Church, and total Christian love for all humanity!

It was only when I got the programme for the Conference that I really grasped the title of this session, Hymns and the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation in 1517. What would I say to that? I think I would say that the sort of hymn that we ought to be thinking about now, could be summed up in the words of my own hymn, ‘We pray for peace…’

Perhaps we can now sing my not exactly amazing translation of ‘Ein Feste Burg’, mindful of its dedication to a man of courage and peace, Joe Seremane, and remembering Psalm 46: ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…who makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.’ ‘The Kingdom shall not fail us!’

God is our refuge and defence,
whose shield and weapons round us,
ensure our safe deliverance
from evils that confound us.
The old foe still intends
to gain his ruthless ends,
determined on his course
and armed with cunning force:
on earth he has no equal.

Though we may strive with all our might,
we face complete destruction;
the one true man takes up our fight,
whom God himself has chosen.
You ask us, ‘Who is this?’
Why, Jesus Christ! He is
the Lord of Hosts own Son,
our God, the only one
who triumphs in the battle.

If devils lurked on every side,
all eager to devour us,
we still should not be terrified:
they cannot overpower us.
The peevish prince of lies,
however hard he tries,
is impotent to hurt
and has his just desert:
the slightest word can fell him.

They must allow God’s word to stand,
and fall inert before it.
We trust the issue to his hand,
who gives us his own Spirit.
And though they take away
all we hold dear today:
wealth, honour, life or kin;
we know they cannot win.
The kingdom shall not fail us.^[7]

Janet Wootton

The development of hymnody and the singing of hymns is one of the great gifts of the Reformation to Christian, and, indeed, global culture. The impact of the printing press on the dissemination of the Scriptures in the vernacular is well known. But it can be argued that hymn-singing was even more influential. Christopher Boyd Brown estimates that there were about two thousand different hymn collections published in the 16th century, which means that there were more hymn books in circulation than Bibles.

Hymns, as well as Bibles, were available for the first time in the vernacular. And hymn singing puts the singer into a different relationship with the text from reading or hearing. To sing is to utter words, to own them. And singing is repetitive, so that the words become familiar. They are embedded in the consciousness. This is enhanced by the power of music. And, crucially, hymn singing is generally collective, even democratizing. This was no longer professional Cathedral music, sung by monks and choirs, but belonged to the ordinary people of the congregation.

Luther recognized the power of popular hymnody. He wrote to Georg Spatulin: ‘Following the example of the prophets and fathers of the church, I intend to make vernacular psalms for the people, that is, spiritual songs so that the Word of God even by means of song may live among the people.’^[8] Thus hymns were vehicles of Reformation theology, but also modelled Reformation praxis. Where the learned treatises brought the radical theology of the Reformation to clerics and scholars, hymns put the same radical theology into the mouths and minds of lay people.

In this, Luther was building on existing traditions of popular vernacular hymns, and the movement was supported by other writers, compilers and composers. In the late 1520s, Katharina Schütz Zell, wife of Matthew Zell, produced a collection of hymns from the Unitas Fratrum, heirs to the persecuted Hussites, and forebears of the Moravian churches, whose singing so warmed the hearts of the Wesleys. This was in response to a real sense of bereavement at the loss of liturgical music. Her preface records the popular lament: ‘do you want us never to sing? Must we become wooden blocks and stones?’^[9] Crucially, the collection was printed as a series of pamphlets, which were easy to carry and use.

The hymn that is the focus of my contribution to the theme of Hymns and the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, is an example of a Jesuslied, a Jesus-song, expressing the Christological centre of Reformation theology. Its author was Elisabeth Creutziger or Cruciger (1504-1535). She was born in East Pomerania, a part of Europe that is now in North East Germany and Poland. She was converted from the Roman Catholicism of her upbringing to an Evangelical faith, and married Caspar Creutziger, at that time a student in Wittenberg. He began his ministry in Magdeburg, and Elisabeth was involved in the Magdeburg Enchiridion, another small ‘handbook’ for ease of access and use.

She wrote ‘Herr Christ der Einige Gottes Sohn’ in the winter of 1523-24. Robin Leaver, a great admirer of Creutziger, comments on the fundamental importance of the text: ‘since the heart of Reformation theology involved what was then a “new” understanding of the person and work of Christ, the importance of this first Lutheran Christological hymn can hardly be overestimated.’^[10] It became part of the Luther chorale tradition, and appears in the Herrnhuter Gesangbuch, the collection of the Unitas Fratrum which attracted Katharina Schütz Zell’s attention.

Herrnhut was the community established by Nicholas von Zinzendorf for Hussite and other refugees from persecution. The composition and singing of hymns formed a central part of the community’s life, with regular Singstunde, or singing festivals, much favoured by Zinzendorf himself. Through contributions to Herrnhut’s musical life, women as well as men played a role in leadership. The 1735 Gesangbuch, with an additional twelve appendices published up to 1747, includes texts by 35 women writers, including Creutziger – about 11% of total of 312 authors.^[11]

Creutziger’s text is characteristic of Lutheran hymnody, in taking an older Latin text as its starting point. The Latin text runs to ten verses, celebrating the incarnation of Christ, and his place as the focus of praise by creation, and Church. The text begins:

Corde natus ex parentis
Ante mundi exordium,
Alpha et O cognominatus,
Ipse Fons et Clausula
Omnium que sunt, fuerunt,
Queque post futura sunt,
Seculorum seculis.

It exists in a translation by John Mason Neale and Henry Williams Baker, both high church Anglicans, which preserves the meaning and theology of the original.

Of the Father’s love begotten
ere the worlds began to be,
he is Alpha and Omega,
he the source, the ending he,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see,
evermore and evermore.^[12]

Creutziger does not follow the Latin metre, as was the practice of later translators from Latin into English, such as John Mason Neale and Henry Williams Baker, instead setting her text to a popular contemporary tune, in common with other Lutheran writers of the time. Theologically, she takes the Latin hymn as her starting point, but quickly changes the emphasis from incarnation to redemption, and the response from universal praise to personal salvation.

Herr Christ, der einge Gottes Sohn,
Vaters in ewigkeit,
Aus seinem herz’n entsprossen:
gleichwie geschrieben steht:
Er ist der morgensterne,
sein’n glan; strekt er so ferne
für andern sternen klar.

Für uns ein mensch gebohren
im lezten theil der zeit;
der mutter unverlohren
ihr iungfräulich keuschheit:
den tod für uns zerbrochen,
den himmel aufgeschlossen,
das leben wiederbracht.

Lass uns in deiner liebe
und erkäntnis nehmen zu:
dass wir im glauben bleiben
und dienen im geist so;
dass wir hier mögen schmecken
dein’ süssigkeit im herzen,
und dürsten stets nach dir.

Du schöpfer aller dinge,
du väterliche kraft,
regie’rst von end zu ende
kräftig aus eigner macht:
das herz uns zu dir wende,
und kehr ab unsre sinne,
dass sie nicht irren von dir.

Ertödt uns durch dein’ güte;
erwek uns durch dein’ gnad:
den alten menschen kränke,
das der neu leben mag
wohl hier auf dieser erden,
den sin und all begehrden
und g’danken haben zu dir.^[13]

Her hymn has been translated, first by Catherine Winkworth, though it doesn’t appear in her Lyra Germanica, but in the later compilation by William Sterndale Bennett, The Chorale Book for England. She concentrates on its incarnational rather than its atonement theology, by translating only verses 1, 3 and 4. This produces a text which combines the passionate faith that Winkworth so admires in the German hymns with a Christology that is closer to the Latin hymn.

O Thou, of God the Father
The true Eternal Son,
Of whom ʼtis surely written
That Thou with Him art one;
Thou art the bright and Morning Star,
Beyond all other radiance
Thy glory streams afar.

O let us in Thy knowledge
And in Thy love increase,
That we in faith be steadfast
And serve Thee here in peace;
That so Thy sweetness may be known
To these cold hearts, and teach them
To thirst for Thee alone.

Maker of all! who showest
The Father’s love and might,
In heaven and earth Thou reignest
Of Thine own power and might;
So rule our hearts and minds, that we
Be wholly Thine, and never
May turn aside from Thee.^[14]

More recently, Carl Daw has published a translation of the first two verses, confining his attention to the fullness of the Christ event, from incarnation to resurrection, but omitting Creutziger’s powerful reflection on the worshipper’s response.

From God alone begotten,
Christ came forth from glory,
Love’s own eternal offspring,
theme of sacred story:
this brightest star of morning
still shines, the heavens adorning
with the light of God’s peace.

Joined with our human nature,
born as time was waning,
hope for sinners who ponder
God in glory reigning:
death’s power was shattered for us,
heaven’s gates unlocked before us,
life restored and made new.^[15]

At the conference, we sang Carl Daw’s translation to the Lutheran tune to which the Creutziger text was originally set. After consultation with Carl Daw, we used an early version of the tune, which had not been ironed out into the more regular form in which we are used to singing Lutheran hymns. We sang accompanied by a recorder quartet, led by John Hartley, who had also harmonized the tune.

So the Hymn Society Conference of 2017 took its place in the long story of a hymn, which for a while was prominent in the hymnody of the Reformation. And, in exploring these three texts, we not only celebrated the half millennium since they were first sung, but embarked on the next five hundred years of Christian hymnody.

Martin Leckebusch, Alan Gaunt, Janet Wootton.

[1] https://search.cph.org/ministry/Luther’s-Works.

[2] Sometimes spelled ‘Rinkart’

[3] With thanks to Elsabe Kloppers for this information

[4] I am indebted to Rhidian Griffiths for these details 

[5] Langer, S.K., Philosophy in a New Key. A Study in the Symbolism

[6] Martin E. Leckebusch from the Spanish Di boca y corazón, Fritz Fliedner (1845-1901), based on Martin Rinkart (1586-1649)

[7] Alan Gaunt (born 1935) from the German of Martin Luther (1483-1546) © 1991 Stainer & Bell Ltd. Reprinted by kind permission.

[8] Liturgy and Hymns, vol. 53 of Luther’s Works, ed. Ulrich S. Leopold Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, p. 512, cited in Robin Leaver, Elisabeth Creutziger: The Magdeburg Enchiridion 1536 and Reformation Theology, The Kessler Reformation Lecture, October 18 1994 Occasional Publications of the Pitts Theological Library., 1995, p. 4.

[9] Cited in Elsie Anne McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, vol. 2, The Writings: A Critical Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1999) p. 56.

[10] Leaver, Elisabeth Creutziger, p. 9.

[11] The edition with appendices was reprinted in 1981 as Nicolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf Herrnhuter Gesangbuch: Christliches Gesang-Buch der Evangelischen Brüder-Gemeinen von 1735, mit einem Vorwort von Erich Beyreuther und Gerhard Meyer un einer Einleitung, ‘Zinzendorf und seine Gesangbücher als Ausdruck barocken Lebensgefühls’ von Gerhard Meyer, Hildesheim: Ols, 1981.

[12] Corde natus ex parentis Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-c.410), translated John Mason Neale (1818-1866), Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877)

[12] Elisabeth Cruciger (c.1500-1535)

[14] Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878), The Chorale Book for England, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1863, no. 155.

[15] Translated Carl P Daw, Jr (born 1944) from the author’s collection, A Year of Grace © 1990 Hope Publishing Company. Words © 1990 Hope Publishing Company, 380 S. Main Place, Carol Stream, IL 60188. Used by permission.

---

If you wish to print this out please open the PDF file here.

© The Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland
For anyone who enjoys, sings, plays, chooses, introduces, studies, teaches or writes hymns…
The Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland.