Carl Boberg

Carl Gustaf Boberg

"How Great Thou Art" lyricist Carl Boberg (1859 August 16 – 1940 January 17) was a Swedish poet, writer, and legislator best known for writing the original Swedish lyrics of "O Store Gud" (O great God, the hymn per se being known universally in English by its common title "How Great Thou Art"). Born in Mönsterås, Sweden, near Kalmar, Boberg was a carpenter’s son, worked briefly as a sailor and served as a lay minister. He was the editor of a weekly Christian newspaper, Sanningsvittnet (Witness of the Truth), from 1890 until 1916. Boberg served in the Swedish Parliament for 20 years from 1912 to 1931. He published more than 60 poems, hymns and gospel songs, including a collaboration with Swedish hymnist Lina Sandell. However, it is How Great Thou Art, one of the most recorded hymns ever, that has preserved Carl Boberg’s name in history. ^[1]

Origin of How Great Thou Art

Boberg wrote the poem "O Store Gud" in 1885 with nine verses. The inspiration for the poem came when Boberg was walking home from church near the village of Kronabäck, Sweden, and listening to church bells. A sudden awe-inspiring storm gripped Boberg’s attention, and then just as suddenly as it had made its violent entrance, it subsided to a peaceful calm which Boberg observed over Mönsterås Bay.

Boberg first published "O Store Gud" in the Mönsterås Tidningen (Mönsterås News) on 1886 March 12 and later sold the rights to the Svenska Missionsförbundet (see Mission Covenant Church of Sweden). Inexorably the poem became matched to an old Swedish folk tune^[2] and sung in public for the first known occasion in 1888; in 1891 Boberg published the tune together with the words in Sanningsvittnet. These versions were all in 3/4 time. In 1894 the Svenska Missionsförbundet sångbok (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Missionsf%C3%B6rbundets_s%C3%A5ngbok_1894) published "O Store Gud" in 4/4 time as it has been sung ever since (cf. Time signature).

Translation and migration of the song

After 1894 the song made a most remarkable multinational odyssey. It was first translated from Swedish to German by Manfred von Glehn (who heard the hymn in Estonia) and became popular in Germany, where "Wie groß bist Du" is the common title. Eventually, the German version traveled to the Soviet Union where a Russian version managed to get published in 1927 by Ivan S. Prochanov.

British missionary Stuart K. Hine first heard the song while on a mission to the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, near the Poland border, in 1927. Hine made his lucid and smooth English translation in the late 1930s, one verse being creatively rendered in English as follows:

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,

Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died to take away my sin.

Hine eventually brought the hymn to England at the conclusion of his mission. The poem became popular in each country that it reached. British missionaries began to spread the song around the world to former British colonies in Africa and India in approximately its current English version (see mention of changes below made by Manna Music).

In a small village near Deolali, India, Dr. J. Edwin Orr of the Fuller Theological Seminary discovered the song being sung by a choir of the Naga tribe near Burma. From there it returned with Orr to the United States. Hine sold the song in the mid-1950s to Manna Music of Burbank, California. The Manna Music editors changed "works" and "mighty" in Hine's translation to "worlds" and "rolling" respectively; with these changes the song was popularized as the “signature song” of the 1950s Billy Graham Crusades. The Manna Music version is the one widely sung in English-language churches.^[3]

Although lyrics often suffer in translation, "O Store Gud" remarkably picked up pathos and convergence with the melody and harmony as the hymn migrated from Swedish to German to Russian to English. "O Store Gud" became more popular in Sweden after the dissemination of "How Great Thou Art" in English. Many churchgoing Swedes are more familiar with the English translation than with the indigenous Swedish.

"How Great Thou Art" was ranked second, after Amazing Grace, on a list of the favorite hymns of all time in a survey by Christianity Today in 2001. George Beverly Shea's recording of the beloved hymn ranks number 204 on the top recordings of the 20th century according to the Recording Industry Association of America. In English the first line is "O Lord, my God"; and the hymn may appear with that heading, especially in British hymnals, where first-line citation is the dominant practice.^[4] English-language hymnals prevailingly indicate the tune title as the Swedish first line, O STORE GUD.

See also the Wikipedia article on " "How Great Thou Art" (hymn).

References

^ These and other facts are detailed by Forrest Mason McCann (1997), Hymns & History: An Annotated Survey of Sources (Abilene, TX: ACU Press), ISBN 0-89112-058-0, pp. 224-225, 360, 584.
^ Numerous musicologists (see, e.g., http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst-Wessel-Lied) have pointed out that the metrical pattern and chord progressions of "O Store Gud" are similar to those of the "Horst Wessel Lied" (first line "Die Fahne hoch"), which the Nazis customarily added to "Deutschland über Alles" (the German national anthem). Informed opinion overwhelmingly denies that Horst Wessel composed the tune, the view which became legally exclusive in Nazi Germany. A likely explanation is that Wessel heard the tune from World War I veterans of the German Navy, where numerous such melodies had circulated in the fleet. In metrical pattern and chord progressions "O Store Gud" is similar to scores of tunes prevalent in the folk traditions of Scandinavia and the Baltic region during the decades preceding World War I. Although "O Store Gud" and "Horst Wessel Lied" both have a 10.11.10.11 metrical pattern in the verses, "O Store Gud" switches to 10.8.10.8 in the refrain, whereupon "Horst Wessel Lied" either repeats the 10.11 of the last two lines of the verse as the refrain or even has no refrain.
^ Copyright information, together with indication that Hine finalized his English translation in 1949, cited from Forrest Mason McCann & Jack Boyd, editors, (1986), Great Songs of the Church Revised (Abilene, TX: ACU Press), ISBN 0-915547-90-2, Item 60.
^ See, e.g., Albert E. Winstanley & Graham A. Fisher, editors, (1995), Favourite Hymns of the Church (Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: Eye-Opener Publications), ISBN 0-9514359-1-4, Item 14, which contains two verses that Hine translated from Boberg and that are generally omitted from hymnals published in the United States:

O when I see ungrateful man defiling
This bounteous earth, God's gifts so good and great;
In foolish pride, God's holy Name reviling,
And yet, in grace, His wrath and judgment wait.

When burdens press, and seem beyond endurance,
Bowed down with grief, to Him I lift my face;
And then in love He brings me sweet assurance:
'My child! for thee sufficient is my grace'.

External links

[1] These and other facts are detailed by Forrest Mason McCann (1997), Hymns & History: An Annotated Survey of Sources (Abilene, TX: ACU Press), ISBN 0-89112-058-0, pp. 224-225, 360, 584.

[2] Numerous musicologists (see, e.g., http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst-Wessel-Lied) have pointed out that the metrical pattern and chord progressions of "O Store Gud" are similar to those of the "Horst Wessel Lied" (first line "Die Fahne hoch"), which the Nazis customarily added to "Deutschland über Alles" (the German national anthem). Informed opinion overwhelmingly denies that Horst Wessel composed the tune, the view which became legally exclusive in Nazi Germany. A likely explanation is that Wessel heard the tune from World War I veterans of the German Navy, where numerous such melodies had circulated in the fleet. In metrical pattern and chord progressions "O Store Gud" is similar to scores of tunes prevalent in the folk traditions of Scandinavia and the Baltic region during the decades preceding World War I. Although "O Store Gud" and "Horst Wessel Lied" both have a 10.11.10.11 metrical pattern in the verses, "O Store Gud" switches to 10.8.10.8 in the refrain, whereupon "Horst Wessel Lied" either repeats the 10.11 of the last two lines of the verse as the refrain or even has no refrain.

[3] Copyright information, together with indication that Hine finalized his English translation in 1949, cited from Forrest Mason McCann & Jack Boyd, editors, (1986), Great Songs of the Church Revised (Abilene, TX: ACU Press), ISBN 0-915547-90-2, Item 60.

[4] See, e.g., Albert E. Winstanley & Graham A. Fisher, editors, (1995), Favourite Hymns of the Church (Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: Eye-Opener Publications), ISBN 0-9514359-1-4, Item 14, which contains two verses that Hine translated from Boberg and that are generally omitted from hymnals published in the United States:

O when I see ungrateful man defiling
This bounteous earth, God's gifts so good and great;
In foolish pride, God's holy Name reviling,
And yet, in grace, His wrath and judgment wait.

When burdens press, and seem beyond endurance,
Bowed down with grief, to Him I lift my face;
And then in love He brings me sweet assurance:
'My child! for thee sufficient is my grace'.

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