On water rivers Babylon
On water rivers Babylon is the name formed from the initial words of a chant from the Reformation period and its melody. While the text has largely been forgotten today, the melody is still widespread through organ pieces and with the text of the Paul Gerhardt chorale Ein Lämmlein goes and carries the guilt ( EG 83).
Chorale
The chant is a textual paraphrase of Psalm 137 . It first appeared in Strasbourg in 1525 in the now-lost text Das third part Straßburger kirchen ampt . According to Martin Bucer's instructions, the book contained only metrical psalms as hymns in addition to an agenda . Organist Wolfgang Dachstein is considered the author of the text and melody . The song quickly caught on: in 1531 it appeared in a Nuremberg hymnbook, and in 1545 Martin Luther included the song in his so-called Babstsches hymnal . From there it was first adopted in almost all German hymn books. In 1544 Georg Rhau created two polyphonic arrangements for his collection of New German Spiritual Chants for the Common Schools ; Sigmund Hemmel used the text in the 1550s in his four-part setting of the entire psalter with the melody in the tenor, printed in 1569. Miles Coverdale arranged for an English translation early on .
text
1. By the rivers of water Babylon,
We sat in pain;
When we thought of Sion,
We wept with all our hearts;
We hung up with heavy courage
The organs and the harps well
On their trees of the willows,
Those inside are in their land,
We
had to suffer much shame and shame from them every day.
2. Those who held us prisoner for a long time
So hard in the same places
Wanted
a song from us
With even mocking words
And looked in the sadness
A happy song in our sorrow
Oh, we'd better sing
A hymn of praise, a little song
from the poems from Zion,
That happy sounds.
3. How should we in such coercion
And misery, now present,
sing a song to the Lord
even in foreign lands?
Jerusalem, I forget yours,
So will God, the righteous, my
forgetting in my life,
If I don't stay mindful
My tongue clings to the top
and stick to my throat.
4. Yes, if I do not
honor you with all my diligence, Jerusalem,
In the beginning of my joy,
praise From now and ever more, remember
the children of Edom very much,
On the day of Jerusalem, O Lord
, Who say
in malice:
Tear off, tear off at all
times , destroy them to the ground,
we want to break the ground!
5. The despicable daughter of Babylon,
broken and destroyed,
blessed is he who will give you the reward,
And to you who return,
your arrogance and mischief will be great,
And measure yourself with such a measure
as you have measured us;
Blessed are those
who grasp your children
and knock them against a stone,
So that yours will be forgotten!
use
An early heading clarifies how the Reformation-minded circles identified their situation with that of the Psalm: "A lament and vow psalm about the suppression of true worship by ungodly tyrants and a serious desire to restore the true worship."
In the Protestant church ordinances of the 16th century, the chant was assigned to the proprium of the 10th Sunday after Trinity . This Israel Sunday commemorates the people of Israel and the destruction of the temple in a special way.
The chorale was used in particular in Magdeburg :
"After the cruel destruction of our city of Magdeburg on May 10, 1631 (by Tilly ), which is probably more terrible than that of Troy and Jerusalem, the high council, in agreement with the clergy, ordered that every year on this day a solemn lament Feasts of repentance, prayer and thanksgiving are to be held, and this so great misery should never be forgotten. On this day of remembrance the congregation appears in large numbers, as it is fair, in the house of God, humble prayers are recited to the Lord, and then the congregation sings the deeply melancholy Psalm 137 by Wolfgang Dachstein with its wonderful melody. A corresponding sermon follows, and so this service does not end without many plentiful tears, as with Israel. "
In 1645 Franz Tunder created a sacred concerto for one voice, five strings and continuo , which is now part of the repertoire of baroque vocal music.
In the course of the 18th century, however, the text disappeared from the hymn books. The song with quite a few awkward passages and without the full New Testament transfiguration did not return to this later and until today.
However, this did not apply to the melody with its characteristic pentatonic motif, which, with 84 notes, is one of the most extensive hymn melodies . Soon after its creation, it was praised as melodia suavissima ( Latin : sweetest melody ). In the 17th century, a whole series of texts were written in clay: Poems on water rivers, the best-known certainly A little lamb goes and is to blame for Paul Gerhardt .
Organ music
The melody, which was widespread and popular in the 17th century, served as the basis for a whole series of organ pieces. One of the best known and historically most important is a chorale fantasy by the Hamburg organist Johann Adam Reincken . It comprises 320 bars; a performance lasts about 19 minutes. Each line is composed in different ways, and Reincken uses all the stylistic devices of the North German Organ School . Reincken's reputation prompted the young Johann Sebastian Bach during his stay in Lüneburg to visit him in Hamburg in 1701 in order to be trained in organ playing with him. Bach was deeply impressed by Reincken's improvisations on the chorale “An Wasserflüssen Babylon”. Only in 2005 was a handwritten copy of Bach's copy of Reincken's An Wasserflüssen Babylon discovered in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library .
Later, during his time in Köthen , Johann Sebastian Bach came to Hamburg again in 1720 to apply for the position of organist at St. Jakobi. In this context he played the organ of the Katharinenkirche for two hours. At the request of the audience, he is said to have improvised for almost half an hour over An Wasserflüssen Babylon , which prompted the aged Reincken to praise: I thought this art had died; but I see that it is still alive in you.
A connection between this visit and Bach's own version of the chorale, the third of the eighteen chorales ( BWV 653), was previously assumed in Bach research, but is more doubtful today. Originally in five parts and with a double pedal, Bach probably revised it in Weimar to make it a four-part version that is easier to play. He revised this version again and expanded it by six bars with a renewed use of the first chorale line for the publication. A choral version can be found in the four-part choral movements (BWV 267).
literature
- Elke Axmacher, Michael Fischer: 83 - A little lamb goes and is to blame . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 5 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-50326-1 , pp. 60–70 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- Eduard Emil Koch : History of the hymn and hymn of the Christian, especially the German Protestant church. Volume 8: Second main part: The songs and ways. 3rd edition, revised by Richard Lauxmann. Belser, Stuttgart 1876 ( digitized version), pp. 526-528
Web links
- Text with modern translation (German) and commentary (French)
- Charles Sanford Terry : Bach's Chorals. Part III: The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works. Vol. 3.
- On versions of the melody in Alsatian hymn books
Individual evidence
- ↑ after Fischer (Lit.), p. 70
- ^ Charles Sanford Terry: Bach's Chorals. Part III: The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works. Vol. 3.
- ↑ Modernized spelling, for a verbatim edition see Philipp Wackernagel : The German church song from the earliest times to the beginning of the 17th century. Volume III ( digitized version ), No. 135
- ↑ Koch (Lit.), p. 527
- ↑ Koch (lit.) p. 127
- ↑ Recordings and a. by Netherlands Bach Society , Rheinische Kantorei
- ^ Koch (lit.), p. 528
- ↑ Fischer (Lit), p. 70
- ↑ See VD 17
- ↑ in the reports he is described as almost a hundred years old ; But this is based on Johann Mattheson's presentation of the year of birth, which has now been recognized as incorrect ; Reincken was actually 77 years old.
- ↑ Bach documents , ed. from the Leipzig Bach Archive, Volume 3, Leipzig 1972, p. 84.
- ↑ Martin Geck: Bach. Life and work . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2000, ISBN 3-498-02483-3 , p. 555
- ↑ Konrad Küster (Ed.) Bach Handbook. Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel 1999, ISBN 3-7618-2000-3 , p. 576.