Jerusalem, you high-rise city
Jerusalem, you high-rise city, is a Lutheran spiritual song about the heavenly Jerusalem and the entrance of the soul into the glory of the perfect. Johann Matthäus Meyfart wrote the text in 1626. The melody comes from Melchior Franck . The original eight-verse song is contained in a seven-verse version in the Evangelical Hymnal (No. 150), and in a five-verse version in the Catholic Praise for God (No. 553).
text
Emergence
Johann Matthäus Meyfart, Lutheran pastor and professor of theology, was rector of the Casimirianum in Coburg at the time the song was written . The city was not yet affected by the Thirty Years War , which had lasted for eight years , but there was great concern. Meyfart, who later published a courageous pamphlet against torture in witch trials , made the intensification of the religious life and the moral elevation of pupils and students a passionate concern. The academic Wednesday sermons served this purpose, in Latin until 1625, and since then given in German. In autumn 1626 he gave a four-part series of sermons on the " last things " death, judgment, eternal bliss and damnation, which he had published under the title Tuba Novissima ("The Last Trumpet", according to 1 Cor 15.52 EU ). The end of the third sermon On the joy and glory / which all the unselected have to wait in eternal life is the Jerusalem song. In the print version and probably also in the oral lecture, explanatory remarks and a prayer end were added to the stanzas. The print version also offers notes on stanzas 5, 6 and 7 for text deviations “in the song”: instead of “the soul” in the third person , as in the sermon version, it should read “I”, “me” etc. in the congregation chant .
shape
The ornate baroque stanza form is not a new formation from Meyfart. It can already be found in the contemporary shepherd's song Angelica, you beautiful shepherdess . The first half of the stanza consists alternately of two five- and two three-part , male , iambic lines with the rhyme scheme [abab], the second of four three-part lines with alternating feminine and masculine rhyme. The first and third lines are each divided into a two-part and a three-part part - no text word crosses this limit - and thus consistently fit in with the melody inspired by the introductory call “Jerusalem!”.
content
The image world of the song is drawn from the biblical stock of images, especially from the Revelation of John ( Rev 21 EU ), but also from the Gospel of Luke ( Lk 23.46 EU ) and from the Old Testament ( 2 Kings 2.11 EU ). From this, Meyfart creates a large-scale vision of the ascension of the soul and the glory of the otherworldly city of God, which is carried by religious longing and enthusiasm. The song is considered to be Meyfart's best poetry.
history
The Jerusalem song was only widespread regionally in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was not rediscovered until the 19th century - apparently because of the longing motif of the first stanza - and since then has been one of the most important evangelical death and eternity songs. It has been reprinted in countless songbooks for church and home and changed in the process to bring it closer to the respective linguistic usage and perception. Most of these variants have been reversed in today's official version.
Original text and today's version
The song is in Evangelical Kirchengesangbuch 1950 under the heading death and eternity included (No. 320), in evangelisches gesangbuch 1993 under the heading end of the church year , there already as ecumenically marked. The Commission for the Praise of God 2013 included it under the heading The Heavenly City in the common part for all dioceses.
Original text 1626 |
Evangelical hymn book and praise to God |
1. Jerusalem you high city / |
1. Jerusalem, you high-rise city, will |
So grieved Christians sigh / |
|
2. O beautiful day and much more beautiful hour |
2. O beautiful day and much more beautiful hour, |
Now our souls will indeed long |
|
3. At the moment you will get up |
|
With what cheerful face / |
|
4. O Ehrenburgk / now greetings to me / |
3. O Ehrenburg, now be greeted to me, open |
But will not stay with them either / |
|
5. A noble people and a very valuable |
4. What kind of people, what kind of noble crowd |
6. Prophets great and patriarchs high |
5. Prophets great and patriarchs high, |
7. When at last she has arrived |
6. When I finally arrive |
8. With cheering sound! with instruments, yes! |
7. with the sound of jubilation, beautiful instruments, |
Whoever desires to go there / |
Melody and arrangements
The
"applies to one of the most beautiful German chorales". It is unique because of its beginning, the triad descent from the upper to the lower keynote C. In the tension space that this opens up, as it were between heaven and earth, the other lines swing out in lively motion. Like the text, the melody has also been handed down in different versions.The melody appeared, in a preliminary form and without the composer's name, for the first time in print in the Erfurt hymn book from 1663. Melchior Franck is generally regarded as the author. However, there is no definite proof of his authorship. Even Johann Dilliger , 1625-1632 Kantor at the high school Casimirianum, the composer could be.
Ernst Flügel , Wilhelm Rudnick , Georg Schumann , Max Reger , Sigfrid Karg-Elert , Karl Hoyer , Rudolf Mauersberger , Johann Nepomuk David and others have arranged the Jerusalem melody in their own works. However, there are no arrangements from the Baroque period.
translation
Catherine Winkworth translated the song into English in 1858 under the title Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High .
literature
- Helmut Kornemann: 150 - Jerusalem, you high-rise city . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 13 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-50337-9 , pp. 45–54 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kornemann, p. 53
- ↑ Cf. the third stanza of Eichendorff's Mondnacht .
- ↑ a b Website for the Colmar hymn book
- ↑ This is criticized by Philip Schaff , who changes himself more than today's hymn books, see picture file hymn book 1893 .
- ↑ After the first printing in 1626, reproduced in: Albrecht Schöne (Ed.): Das Zeitalter des Barock. Texts and certificates . Munich 1988, pp. 200–202 ( books.google.de )
- ↑ EKG "longingly"
- ↑ ECG "flat field"
- ↑ a b This stanza is missing in the praise of God.
- ↑ ECG exclamation mark
-
↑ Original marginal note on verse 5:
(Look at them)
in the song:
I see.
(You)
singing to
Me.
(You) in the
Ges.I.
(Yours)
in the song of
mine. - ↑ ECG "from"
- ^ "Kron" as German translation of the Latin corona Schar, assembly; EKG "I see, the best Kron"
-
↑ Original marginal note on verse 6:
(Schawt them)
in Ges.Sch.
I. - ↑ EKG "those times there"
-
↑ Original marginal note on verse 7:
(She is) in the
singing / I
arrived
. - ↑ Ps 84.11 LUT
- ↑ Martin Luther : Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God , Str. 3
- ↑ Philip Schaff, see picture file Gesangbuch 1893; Kornemann, p. 54: "One of the most beautiful melodies in the hymnal."
- ↑ Facsimile Erfurt hymn book 1663
- ↑ Kornemann, p. 54
- ↑ Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High on Lutheran-Hymnal.com