The beautiful Easter day
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The beautiful Easter day is an originally Dutch Easter song . Jürgen Henkys created the German version in 1983, which was included in the Evangelical Hymnal .
history
The song has a "complicated history". The oldest is the cheerful, bright Dur - melody under the chorales Canto Buchs by their melismatic form of a baroque Aria occupies and its range a special position. It comes from Dirk Raphaelszoon Camphuysen's successful work by Stichtelycke Rymen in 1624 , a collection of his sacred songs. Here she is accompanied by a song that looks at the love that pure belief in God has produced ( De Liefde, voort brought / Door reyn geloof aen Gode ) based on 1 Cor 13 : 1–13 LUT . The effective, fourfold repetition in the chorus is connected here in the first stanza with the word boven : Maer Liefde gaet te boven, te boven, te boven, te boven (But love goes up / even higher). The final repetition is a joyful glissando spread over nine notes .
In 1684 this melody was combined with a then new Easter song. The poet Joachim Oudaen (1628–1692) had compiled a collection of rhyming psalms for Mennonites , David's Psalms, Nieuwelyk op Rym-maat , which had added an appendix to the script uerlyke chants with twelve biblical hymns , including the six- strophic Easter song Hoe groot de vrugten zijn ( How big the fruits are ). The text is an interpretation of a passage from the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians ( 1st Cor. 15: 12-23 LUT ), in which Paul describes the risen Christ as a firstfruits gift , which establishes hope and eternal life for the church. In the first three stanzas the refrain Waar Christus niet verreezen, verreezen, verreezen, verreezen (if Christ had not arisen, arisen, arisen, arisen ), in verses 4 to 6: Nu Christus is verreezen, verreezen, verreezen, verreezen (Now (but) Christ risen, risen, risen, risen).
The song was soon forgotten, probably also because its melody was no longer perceived as suitable for congregational singing in Mennonite communities. It was rediscovered in Great Britain in the late 19th century as part of the new appreciation of old carols (see Piae cantiones ). In 1894 the Anglican priest and hymnologist George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934) published a shorter, three- verse English version under the title This joyful Eastertide ( This joyful Easter time ) in his collection Carols for Easter and Ascension with a sentence by Charles Wood . He must have known Oudaan's text; the melody was named Vrugten or Vruechten in this context . Woodward lengthened the chorus by one line and combined the two statements of the chorus in Oudaen: Had Christ, that once was slain, ne'er burst his three-day prison, Our faith had been in vain: but now hath Christ arisen, arisen, arisen, arisen (If Christ, who was once killed, had never broken his three-day prison, our faith would be in vain: but now Christ is risen, risen, risen, risen). This Joyful Eastertide has been included in the Oxford Book of Carols and numerous English-language hymn books of various denominations. At least four different English arrangements or adaptations were made, the last one being How rich, at Eastertide by Fred Pratt Green (1981).
It was not until the late 1970s that the song was rediscovered in the Netherlands. This is how it became known to Jürgen Henkys , who has translated many songs from Dutch. His free adaption is based on both versions by Oudaan and Woodward. It first appeared in the Potsdam Church in 1984 and in 1986 in a publication by the Association of Evangelical Church Choirs with the title 36 New Songs . In the Evangelical Hymnbook , introduced in 1994 , it is among the Easter songs as No. 117; As an alternative weekly song , it is assigned to Quasimodogeniti on the Sunday after Easter . In the hymn book of the Evangelical Reformed Churches in German-speaking Switzerland from 1998, it has the number 486.
content
In its German version: The beautiful Easter day! You people, come into the light! the song is a powerful, stirring reaffirmation of the Easter message that Christ is risen. In his transmission, Henkys profiles the people from 1 Cor. 15,12–23 LUT based on the basic conceptual structure of the if - then , by using exactly the same sentence structure three times, we believed / fought / hoped in vain . He uses images from the Easter story like the stone and women. The fourfold increase in the chorus, which Henkys brings back to one line, is now connected with the word arisen : But now it has arisen, arisen, arisen, arisen.
The song should not be sung too slowly, but “with verve and enthusiasm”.
literature
- Willem Nijenhuis: Een Nederlands doopsgezind paaslied uit de 17e eeuw en zijn lotgevallen in Engeland. In: Medelingen (Inst. V. Liturgiewetenschap Groningen) 13 (1979), pp. 38-60
- Wim Kloppenburg: 117: The beautiful Easter day. in: Gerhard Hahn, Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch. Issue 1, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000 ISBN 3-525-50319-9 , pp. 92-94
Web links
- Sheet music in the public domain of The Beautiful Easter Day in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kloppenburg (Lit)., P. 92
- ↑ Kloppenburg (Lit)., P. 92
- ↑ Not a Dutch folk love song , as often read
- ^ Entry in the Nederlandse Liederenbank
- ↑ Verantwoording (Dutch), Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (dbnl), accessed on April 23, 2020
- ↑ Joachim Oudaen , Biografisch Portaal van Nederland , accessed on April 23, 2020
- ↑ text
- ↑ Kloppenburg (Lit)., P. 93
- ↑ Entry on the melody in hymnary.org, accessed on April 23, 2020
- ↑ See entry on the text on hymnary.org, accessed on April 23, 2020
- ^ Entry on How rich, at Eastertide at hymnary.org, accessed April 23, 2020
- ↑ Hans-Christian Drömann (ed.): 36 new songs. Kassel: Bärenreiter 1986
- ↑ Liturgical texts for Quasimodogeniti on kirchenjahr-evangelisch.de , accessed on April 23, 2020
- ↑ Text and melody on the ground floor
- ↑ Kloppenburg (lit.), p. 94