I pray to the power of love
I pray to the power of love is the original fourth verse of the spiritual song For you be all my heart and life . Its text was written by the pietistic preacher Gerhard Tersteegen in 1750. In the first print, the title The love of God opened in Jesus and the melody Who only lets God rule are added to the song .
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The song sings about the redeeming love of God , who liberated “me” - the lyrical I or the singer of the song - through Jesus from the “compulsion” of a self-centered existence (original verse 2): “Instead of thinking of myself, I want to Sea of love sink me ”(original verse 4).
Dubbing
The melody with which I adore became famous comes from the Ukrainian composer Dmitri Stepanowitsch Bortnjanski (1751-1825), who worked in Petersburg . He composed it in 1822 to the text Kol 'slaven naš Gospod' v Sione ("How praised is our Lord in Zion") , written by Mikhail Matwejewitsch Cheraskow (1733-1807) and later known as the Masonic song . This song verse was at Zarenhof I. Alexander introduced.
The assignment of the melody to the song verse of Gerhard Tersteegen can be found for the first time in a pietistic pastor from the former Catholic priest Johannes Evangelista Goßner (1773-1858), from Bavarian Swabia , who worked at the Maltese Church in Saint Petersburg from 1820-1824 by the Russian organist Iwan Karlowitsch Tscherlizki (1799–1865), who worked there at the Lutheran St. Katharinen Church . Contains the melodies for the collection of exquisite songs from redeeming love and the songs in Johannes Gossner's treasure chest. Printed with stereotypes . Leipzig bei Karl Tauchnitz, 1825, p. 82, [No.] 86: “I pray to the power of love & c. […]. ”Through his work in Berlin (1826–1858) Goßner conveyed the melody he had got to know in Saint Petersburg, including the German text, to the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. of Prussia and its successors.
Big tattoo
Friedrich Wilhelm III. had ordered the addition of a prayer to the military evening ritual of the tattoo - an expression of the religious self-image of the Holy Alliance in 1813, during the anti-Napoleonic wars of liberation , based on the Russian model . Ever since I pray in the power of love with the Bortnyansky melody was rang out on May 12, 1838 in Berlin when this evening prayer was reorganized and elaborately performed in the presence of the Russian tsar, the piece has been part of the ceremonial.
The chorale is played regularly as part of the Great Zapfenstreich of the German Armed Forces - except in Bavaria, where the Bavarian military prayer is played by Johann Kaspar Aiblinger .
As part of the Great Zap, the command "helmet off - to prayer" is given before the song, after the song the command is "helmet on" and the "call for prayer" is heard.
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The original text contains many phrases that were already felt to be intolerable at the beginning of the 19th century and have since given rise to ever new adaptations, rearrangements and abbreviations. The Evangelical Hymnal , regional part of Rhineland-Westphalia-Lippe, contains four stanzas with Bortnjanski's melody (No. 661):
For you be all my heart and life,
my sweet God, and all my good,
for you you have only given
it to me, in you it only rests and blissfully.
Maker of my hard case,
for you be forever heart and everything.
I pray to the power of love
revealed in Jesus;
I give myself to the free instinct,
whereby I was loved worm;
Instead of thinking of myself, I want to immerse myself in
the sea of love.
How are you so tender to me.
And how does your heart long for me!
Through love, drawn gently and deeply,
my everything also bends towards you.
You trusted love, good being,
you have chosen me and I have chosen you.
O Jesus, that your name should be
impressed in the heart;
would like your sweet Jesus love to be shaped
in your heart and mind.
Jesus and nothing else can be read in the
word, in work and in all being
.
In the regional section of the Evangelical Hymnal for the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church , a five-stanza version is printed under No. 615.
In the following hymn books the song is represented as follows:
-
Celebrate & Praise - Three Stanzas (No. 358)
- This is also the case in the previous church songs (No. 313)
- Hymnal of the Evangelical Methodist Church - five verses (No 123).
-
Mennonite Hymnal - Four Stanzas (No. 41)
- In its predecessor hymn book with six stanzas (No. 55).
literature
- Arnold Feil : Metzler Music Chronicle from the early Middle Ages to the present. 2., ext. Ed., Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-476-02109-0 , pp. 515-516.
Web links
- Kol Slaven (Bortnjanski) : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- I pray to the power of love in the song database
Individual evidence
- ↑ deutschesheer.de .
- ↑ Hymnal . Published by the Conference of the South German Mennonite Congregations, Ludwigshafen 1972, here: 2nd edition 1978.