The best time of the year is mine

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First page of Luther's preface to the publication Lob vnd preis der loblichen Kunst Musica by Johann Walter, which was later set to music for the song The best time in the year is mine

The best time of the year is mine is an evangelical spiritual song in praise of music as a gift from God. The text comprises the last 16 lines of a 40-line poem by Martin Luther to "Frau Musika". The first topic is the usefulness and beauty of music, especially singing, and then more generally the praise of God.

The song was given different melodies. The melody that Karl Lütge derived from an older melody in 1917 is included in the Evangelical Hymnal (No. 319). In older hymn books it was only represented in regional parts.

Emergence

Title page of the publication Lob vnd preis der loblichen Kunst Musica by Johann Walter , published in 1538

The text was created as a foreword to the publication Lob vnd preis der loblichen Kunst Musica by the composer and cantor Johann Walter , who had also published the first Protestant choral hymn book a few years earlier. The work was a poem of praise for music, in which the music-theoretical views of Luther and Walther flowed. It was first published in 1536, but at that time still without Luther's contribution. Two years later, in 1538, the text was reprinted by the publisher Georg Rhau . Presumably a music festival took place in Wittenberg in the spring of this year, for which Rhau published two collections of four-part choral compositions and the Praise and Prize of the Laudable Art Musica . As part of this second publication, Martin Luther wrote the praise poem of “Frau Musica” on herself as an occasional work . The reformer headed his preface with "Preface to all good hymn books" and gave it the subtitle "Frau Musica". The version of Lob vnd preis der loblichen Kunst Musica , published in 1538, is still available in several prints and was republished in 1938 as a facsimile print . Luther's poem was also printed in the Wittenberg hymn book of 1543 edited by Joseph Klug .

Martin Luther's autograph with the text of the poem Musica

A handwritten version of the text is known from Luther himself. This autograph is not headed with "Frau Musica", but only with "Musica" and shows some small linguistic and orthographical differences from the print. It is assumed that Luther read the text once more before it was published and made the minor changes to his original text in this context. A short time after its creation, the manuscript itself was in the possession of a Veit Dietrich, who had probably received it from Luther himself or from the publisher Georg Rhau. Dietrich stuck it into a five-volume parchment songbook in his possession, namely on the front cover of the volume with the tenor voices . The volumes were later transferred to the Nuremberg City Archives , from which they disappeared between 1820 and 1850 due to embezzlement . Despite intensive research, Luther's manuscript could not be found again until the 20th century. Only after the death of the Bohemian entrepreneur Ernst Adler in 1938 did it come to light again in his estate.

Structure and content

The poem consists of 40 lines rhymed in pairs with no stanza structure, a common narrative style of the time. Like the rest of Walter's publication, the text consists of four-part iambics , which when presented with a strictly accented, metrically correct presentation do not always match the actual accentuation of the words and therefore sometimes sound 'unclean'. Luther himself did not, however, attach particular importance to the fixed rules of poetry.

At the beginning Ms. Musica introduces herself. The personification of the seven liberal arts as female characters was a common medieval practice that Luther adopted. Ms. Musica extols her power over “anger, quarrel, hatred, envy and sadness” (lines 7 and 10) and all “works of the devil” (line 15) and shows this with the biblical examples of Saul and David ( 1 Sam 16, 14-23  LUT , lines 17-20) and Elischa ( 2 Kings 3:15  LUT , lines 21-24). From line 12 (“that such a joy is not a sin”), however, the poem is in the third person , so the grammatical subject is now joy.

Only with line 25 “The best time” does Ms. Musica's first-person speech become visible again. "The best time of the year", spring, belongs to her because then the songbirds, especially the nightingale as the best singer, can be heard, which stand for a happy life that trusts the Creator. Luther said in a sermon about the Sermon on the Mount : "Do as a bird, sing, be happy and let worry, learn to believe." The singing and jumping of the nightingale is already praise of God, in which Frau Musica - and the singers of the song - tune in (closing verses). The text for the setting of the poem was taken from these last verses from lines 25 to 40; the 16 lines have been divided into four stanzas. Due to the omission of the first part and the title, there is no reference in the musical version to the personification of the music, as the performance of which the work was originally structured. The saying “The best time of the year is mine” thus becomes a statement of the singing.

The text takes up essential elements of the music theory of Luther, who rated the value of spiritual singing extremely high.

The text Vorrhede on all good hymn books. Fraw Musica by Martin Luther in the Weimar complete edition of his works; in it the final verse "The best time in the jar is mine"

text

Before all joys on earth
Can't nobody get any finer
because I give with me singing
and with some sweet blades.
There cannot be an evil courage here,
where do journeymen sing well,
there remains no anger, quarrel, hatred or envy,
all heartache must give way,
Avarice, care, and whatever else is tough,
goes there with all sadness,
also everyone is probably free,
that such joy is not a sin,
but also pleases God a lot
because all the joy of the whole world.
To the devil it destroys his work
and prevents much evil murder '.
This testifies to David the king's deed,
who often defended Saul
with good, sweet harp playing,
that he did not fall into great murder.
To the divine word and truth
she makes the heart still and ready.
These things did Elisha known
since he found the spirit through the harp.
The best time of the year is mine
there all birds sing.
Heaven and earth is full
a lot of good singing, that's probably.
First the dear nightingale
makes everything happy everywhere
with their lovely singing,
she must always have that thanks.
Rather, the dear Lord God,
who made them
to be the right singer,
a master of music.
She sings and jumps to him day and night,
His praise doesn't make you tired:
My singing also honors and praises him
and thank him forever.

Melodies and arrangements

Setting of "The best time of the year is mine" by Arnold Mendelssohn

Early revisions to the beginning of the 20th century

The interest in making a song out of the 16 closing lines of Luther's rhymed preface has been documented since the second half of the 19th century. Mostly it was not about church hymns in the strict sense, but about folk songs about music or nature.

In the 1860s, the folk song researcher Ludwig Erk published a four-part set for male choirs of his own pen, in which the text of the melody of the song The day begins and is underlined by Melchior Vulpius (1609; original text by Michael Weisse 1531). In the period that followed, Vulpius' original choral setting was often printed with The Best Time underlaid, which often led to the false assumption that Vulpius himself set Luther's text to music. The text excerpt can also be found in the German song library from 1894, published by Ludwig Erk and Franz Magnus Böhme , but without the melody.

In the course of the youth music movement at the beginning of the 20th century, song versions became increasingly popular. Arnold Mendelssohn created a three-time melody in 1905, plus a four-part movement. With her, the song was included in the "spiritual folk songs" of the German Evangelical Hymnal .

Setting by Karl Lütge (1917)

Setting of “The best time in the year is mine” by Karl Lütge (1917); Theorem by Peter Gerloff

To commemorate the Reformation in 1917, Karl Lütge chose a melody model for the text, which was common in several variants in the 16th century, and brought it into the form that is usual today. As a template for the melody he chose on the one hand a version with the text Sing today and rejoice, Christendom from the second edition of the hymn book of the Bohemian Brethren from 1544, and on the other hand a version with the text When we are in dire straits from the second Edition of the Strasbourg hymn book 1572. Lütge's immediate model was the print of both melodies in the compilation of Johannes Zahn published in 1889 . Lütge's own ingredient are above all the joyful eighth melisms .

In Lütge's version, “The best time in the year is mine” appeared in Otto Riethmüller's song book Ein neue Lied (1932), among others . As early as the 1920s it appeared in several regional sections of the German Protestant hymnal , in 1950 it was in some regional editions of the developed as his successor Evangelical Church hymnal added. In the current Evangelical Hymnbook , which was introduced in the 1990s, it appears for the first time in the main section as EG 319. It also appeared in various other (youth) hymn books and free church song books.

Further edits

Choral movements based on Karl Lütge's melody were created by Heinrich Poos , Martin Schlensog , Karl Marx , Heinrich Spitta , Georg Götsch , Hans Chemin-Petit , Hans Lang and Volker Wangenheim , among others .

Walther Hensel created a new choral setting based on Vulpius' melody .

Reception during the Reformation anniversary 2017

For the Reformation anniversary in 2017 , Deutschlandfunk made the song the title of a radio night dedicated to Luther's songs and music derived from them. “The best time of the year is mine” was broadcast in sentences by Ernst Pepping and Arnold Mendelssohn.

literature

Web links

Commons : The best time of the year is mine  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Vorrhede to all good hymn books  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In some hymn books the text is also spelled The best time of year is May 'n . This well-intentioned correction, which corresponds to a supposed spring theme of the text, not only fails to recognize that the wording of Luther's text is actually “mine”, but also that the text is taken from a verbatim speech by “Frau Musica”. Cf. Günter Balders: Luther's songs in free church reception. In: Volker Spangenberg (Hrsg.): Luther and the Reformation from a free church perspective . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8471-0133-8 , pp. 9–30, here p. 24 ( limited preview in the Google book search); Johannes Block, Martin Rößler: 319 - The best time of the year is mine . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 13 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-50337-9 , pp. 89–96 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Johannes Block, Martin Rößler: 319 - The best time of the year is mine . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 13 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-50337-9 , pp. 89–96 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ^ Wilibald Gurlitt : Foreword. In: Johannes Walter: Praise and price of the praiseworthy art Musica 1538. Facsimile reprint, with a foreword edited by Wilibald Gurlitt. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1938, pp. 1–16, here p. 15.
  4. ↑ Appendix XII. The facsimile of the Luther song from Musica, the original of which Veit Dietrich allegedly pasted into an old chorale book. In: D. Martin Luther's works. Critical complete edition. Volume 48, Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1927, pp. 293-297, here p. 293 f. ( Text archive - Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ On the differences between manuscript and print, Appendix XII. The facsimile of the Luther song from Musica, the original of which Veit Dietrich allegedly pasted into an old chorale book. In: D. Martin Luther's works. Critical complete edition. Volume 48, Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1927, pp. 293-297, here pp. 294-297 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  6. ^ Wilibald Gurlitt : Foreword. In: Johannes Walter: Praise and price of the praiseworthy art Musica 1538. Facsimile reprint, with a foreword edited by Wilibald Gurlitt. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1938, pp. 1–16, here p. 16.
  7. ↑ a b Annex XII. The facsimile of the Luther song from Musica, the original of which Veit Dietrich allegedly pasted into an old chorale book. In: D. Martin Luther's works. Critical complete edition. Volume 48, Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1927, pp. 293-297, here p. 297 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  8. ↑ Martin Rößler : Luther, Martin. In: Wolfgang Herbst (Hrsg.): Composers and songwriters of the Evangelical Hymnal (= Handbook for the Evangelical Hymnal. Volume 2). Göttingen 1999, pp. 204–208, here p. 207.
  9. ↑ is present
  10. ↑ better
  11. ↑ Orthographically modernized text version, from line 25 according to EG 319
  12. ↑ Ludwig Erk: German song treasure. 250 male-voice chants for the upper classes of high schools and secondary schools and for seminars. 4th edition, Rudolf Winkler, Leipzig 1889, p. 13 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  13. ↑ For example in: Walther Lipphardt (Ed.): Gesellige Zeit. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1933; Gottfried Wolters (Ed.): Ars Musica . Volume IV: Choir book for mixed voices. Möseler, Wolfenbüttel 1967; Siegfried Bauer: A little melody. The choir book for socializing. Strube, Munich 1989.
  14. ↑ Ludwig Erk, Franz Magnus Böhme: German song library. Volume 3, Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1894, p. 575 ( digitized version ).
  15. ^ Melody by Arnold Mendelssohn
  16. ↑ Konrad Ameln : “Sing today and rejoice, Christianity”: A wandering melody? In: Yearbook for Liturgy and Hymnology. Volume 22, 1978, ISSN  0075-2681 , pp. 156-160, JSTOR 24195212 .
  17. ↑ Johann Horn (ed.): A hymn book of the brothers in Behemen vnd Merherrn, Die one auss hate vnd neyd, Pickharden, Waldenses, & c. calls. Nuremberg 1544, sheet CXXXV ( digitized ).
  18. ↑ Konrad Hubert (ed.): Das Gros Kirchen Gesangbuch. Strasbourg 1572.
  19. ↑ Johannes Zahn : The melodies of the German Protestant church songs. First volume: two-line to five-line melodies. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1889, p. 100, no. 353 and P. 114, No. 393 .
  20. ↑ There with the source reference "from" Der Musikant "by Fritz Jöde " (1924).
  21. ↑ a b deutscheslied.com , accessed on July 26, 2017
  22. ↑ Volker Wangenheim / The best time of the year is mine . Carus publishing house . 2006. Retrieved June 19, 2017.
  23. ↑ Long night on the evangelical hymn of the 16th and 17th centuries: The best time of the year is mine . Deutschlandfunk . April 8, 2017. Retrieved June 19, 2017.