Johannes Zahn (church musician)

Johannes Christoph Andreas Zahn (born August 1, 1817 in Eschenbach / Pegnitz, † February 17, 1895 in Neuendettelsau ) was a German Protestant theologian and hymnologist .

Life

Johannes Zahn was the son of the Eschenbach teacher and cantor Johannes Zahn. From 1832 to 1837 he attended grammar school in Nuremberg, where he was influenced as a teenager by his teachers Roth and Nägelsbach and by the pastors Hering and Löhe . He then studied theology in Erlangen and Berlin until 1841. He then attended the preacher's seminary in Munich and then became a private tutor to the Munich businessman Gustav Schulze.

In 1847 he became a teacher and prefect of the Royal School Teachers' College in Altdorf near Nuremberg , and in 1854 its director.

Johannes Zahn campaigned strongly for the preservation and recovery of Reformation melodies and from 1889 published a collection of 8,806 melodies of German Protestant church chants. He also wrote articles for magazines such as Siona, Blätter für Hymnologie and Euterpe .

Johannes Zahn wrote the melody of the Advent song Your King comes in low covers ( EG 14).

Works

• Handbook for prospective cantors and organists , Nuremberg 1871
• The melodies of the German Protestant church hymns, drawn from the sources and communicated by Johannes Zahn (6 volumes), Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh 1889–93
• The melodies of the German Evangelical Hymnbook in four-part settings for organ and for choral singing commissioned by the German Evangelical Church Conference in Eisenach (together with G. Freiherr v. Tucher and Immanuel Faißt ), Stuttgart 1854
• Four-part melody book for the hymn book of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria , Erlangen 1855 (last (42nd) edition 1951)

literature

• Ruth Engelhardt:  Zahn, Johannes Christoph Andreas. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 14, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-073-5 , Sp. 317-320.
• Ruth Engelhardt, Theodor Wohnhaas : Notes on the life and work of Johannes Zahn . In : Mitteilungen "Altnürnberger Landschaft eV" Volume 44 (1995), Issue 2, pp. 337–342.
• Max Herold:  Zahn, Johannes . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 44, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 666-668.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johannes Zahn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Johannes Zahn  in the German Digital Library
• Sheet music and audio files by Johannes Zahn (church musician) in the International Music Score Library Project