Now rejoice, dear Christians, g'mein
Now rejoice, dear Christians, g'mein is a spiritual song , the text and melody of which Martin Luther wrote in 1523. It is considered one of his first and theologically most important poems and is still part of the core inventory of German-language evangelical hymn books ( EG 341; main song on Reformation Day ).
Emergence
Luther was inspired by the martyrdom of the two Augustinian monks Hendrik Vos and Johannes van Esschen, who converted to the Reformation, for his first song, Ein neue Lied wir heben . Both were executed at the stake on July 1, 1523 in Brussels . Luther's song is a ballad-like narrative song and was not intended for church and worship, but for market and street.
In hymnological research it is certain that Now rejoice, dear Christians, g'mein immediately followed the martyr's song . Like this it is a narrative song without a literary template, now with reference to the timeless and temporal act of redemption of God, and like this it is initially not a hymn, but a Reformation folk song , which was sung by traders, craftsmen and maids, and which played a large part in its spread of the Reformation ideas. In the Eight-Song Book of 1524 it is in first place - Luther's hand only contains three psalm adaptations -, in the Erfurt Enchiridion , published that same year, it is the second of 26 songs.
shape
Luther composed the ten stanzas in the seven-line iambic bar form , which was particularly popular at the time in love poetry, and later one of the most widely used stanza schemes in Protestant hymns.
Text in use today
1. Now rejoice, dear Christians,
and let us jump happily so
that we can
sing confidently and all in one with joy and love
what God has addressed to us
and his sweet miracle;
he has earned it dearly.
2. To the devil I was trapped,
in death I was lost,
my sin tormented me night and day,
in which I was born.
I also fell deeper and deeper,
there was no good in life mine,
sin had possessed me.
3. My good work did not count,
it was 'spoiled' with him;
the free will hated God's judgment,
he had died for good;
the fear drove me to despair,
that nothing but dying stayed with me,
to hell I have to sink.
4. There God laments
my misery excessively for eternity;
he thought of his mercy,
he wanted to let me help;
he turns his father's heart to me,
it was certainly no joke with him,
he let it taste his best.
5. He said to his dear son:
“The time is here to have mercy;
go there, dear Crown,
and be salvation to the poor
and help him out of sins trouble,
strangle bitter death for him
and let him live with you. ”
6. The son of the father was g'horsam,
he came to
pure and tender to me on earth from a virgin;
he should become my brother.
He wields his power in secret,
he walked in my poor form,
he wanted to catch the devil.
7. He said to me: “Hold on to me,
you should succeed now;
I give myself completely for you,
I want to wrestle for you;
for I am yours and you are mine,
and wherever I stay, there you should be,
the enemy should not part us.
8. He will shed my blood and
rob me of my life;
I'm sorry for all of this for your credit,
hold on with firm faith.
Death devours my life,
my innocence bears your sin,
there you were saved.
9.
From this life I will go to heaven to my Father ;
I want to be your master,
I want to give you the spirit,
who should comfort you in gloom
and teach me to know well
and guide me in truth.
10. What I have done and taught,
thou shalt do and teach,
so that the kingdom of God may be increased
to praise and glory;
and watch out for the sentence that
spoils the noble treasure:
I'll leave that to you last. "
Content and interpretations
Actors in the narrative are "I", the devil , God the Father , God the Son and the Holy Spirit . For a long time , the lyrical I was understood with Luther himself and the song was largely understood as a religious autobiography . It says in the Weimar edition :
- Most editors agree on the meaning of this song as a kind of poetic self-confession. With shocking truth and openness, it describes the path "which Luther inwardly traversed from entering the monastery to attaining full peace in justification through faith [] and is thus a wonderful mirror of his inner development."
However, this view is consistently rejected by newer interpreters. Rather, Luther brings personal experience into the generally Christian basic process of salvation, which Paul describes quite analogously in Romans 7 EU and Romans 8 EU ; Even the self, decayed to death and the devil in Romans 7, is not Paul as an individual, but the person who is supposed to fulfill the law of God completely and thus falls apart with himself. That is why the first stanza as a prologue proclaims to the audience of the story that the “miracle” has happened to “us”.
The salvation decision of God and the redemptive acts of Jesus, his vicarious death, his resurrection and the sending of the Spirit as a comforter brings Luther in direct speech to the language - one that imparts much of his directness the song. The end with the warning about “human statutes” formulates a specifically reformatory concern.
Melodies
The lively sung to this day with its eighth-notes and fourth-jumps, was probably created by Luther with the text. It is included in the first edition of the song, the book of eight songs. In the Enchiridion of Erfurt, instead, the melody of a medieval Easter song is mentioned ( Rejoice, you women and your husband, that Christ was risen , around 1390), which remained associated with It is salvation and we come from here (EG 342). Johann Walter composed his own melody for his four-part Geistliches Gesangbüchlein (1524) for Well glad you , which never became a community song . Another, quieter created Luther himself for Now rejoice ; it first appeared in Klug's hymn book (2nd edition from 1533; 1st edition from 1529 lost) and is the basis for most of the baroque arrangements of the song. This melody remained in use for other texts (it is certainly high time; I am standing here at your crib ) ; For today's singers, Luther's joyful redemption song is inseparably linked to his first melody.
In 2015, Michael Penkuhn-Wasserthal composed a modern melody for Nunjoy , dear Christians g'mein , which is included in the songbook freiTöne of the German Evangelical Church Congress 2017 as part of a song competition of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the German Evangelical Church Congress .
Translations
Translated into Danish, "Nu fryder eder alle Christne mænd ..." in the Danish hymn book Rostock 1529 [1528], taken over into the Danish hymn book by Ludwig Dietz, Salmebog , 1536, no. 5, and in a different translation under "new psalms" No. 21 ("Ver glad oc fro all Christenhed ..."); in the Danish hymn book by Hans Tausen , En Ny Psalmebog , 1553. More recently edited as "Nu fryde sig hver kristen mand og springe højt af glæde ..." 1837, 1862 and 1888, incorporated into the Danish church hymn book Den Danske Salmebog , Copenhagen 1953, no. 435, and also in Den Danske Salme Bog , Copenhagen 1993, no. 435 (edited by Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig , 1837 and 1845). In the current Danish hymn book Den Danske Salmebog , Copenhagen 2002, No. 487. In the hymn book of the Danish Folk High School Højskolesangbogen , 18th edition, Copenhagen 2006, No. 37 (translated by Claus Mortensen 1528, edited by Grundtvig 1837, by Frederik Ludvig Mynster [1811 - 1885], 1862, and by Carl Joakim Brandt [1817 - 1889; pastor in Copenhagen], 1888; with the melody after Johann Walter 1524).
literature
- Kurt Aland : Luther German . Volume 6, Göttingen 1966, p. 360f.
- Gerhard Hahn , Helmut Lauterwasser: 341 - Now rejoice, dear Christians, g'mein . In: Martin Evang, Ilsabe Seibt (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelischen Gesangbuch . No. 19 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-525-50342-3 , pp. 44–53 , doi : 10.13109 / 9783666503429.44 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- Christa Reich : Now rejoice, dear Christians, g'mein . In: Hansjakob Becker u. a. (Ed.): Geistliches Wunderhorn. Great German hymns . Munich 2/2003, pp. 111-123.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ or If God is for me, step ( liturgical calendar on the ground floor)
- ^ Reich, p. 114.
- ↑ Version EG 341, orthographically adapted ; Urtext see here .
- ↑ WA 35 (1923), p. 133 , using a quote from Wilhelm Nelle (1909)
- ^ Reich, p. 118
- ^ Reprint 1878
- ^ Reich, p. 113
- ↑ Exception: Buxtehude , BuxWV 210, YouTube
- ↑ Reformation song wanted for Wittenberg 2017. German Evangelical Church Congress , accessed on October 30, 2017 .
- ↑ No Reformation without songs. German Evangelical Church Congress , accessed on October 30, 2017 .
- ↑ Cf. Otto Holzapfel : Lied index: The older German-language popular song tradition ( online version on the Volksmusikarchiv homepage of the Upper Bavaria district ; in PDF format; ongoing updates) with further information.