O Savior, tear open the heavens

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O Savior, tear open the heavens , text version Würzburg 1630
First print of the melody, Rheinfelsisches Gesangbuch 1666

O Savior, tear open the heavens is a church Advent song . The text, published since 1622, is attributed to Friedrich Spee (1591–1635).

Lore

The song was first published in the catechetical collection of songs, printed in Würzburg in 1622, The Most Beautiful Child in the World , whose author is generally considered to be Friedrich Spee because of some similarities with his posthumously published Trutznachtigall collection . In 1623 it was included in the new edition of the hymn book printed by Peter von Brachel in Cologne without naming the author. The melody sung to this day ? / i in the first tone of the church is documented for the first time in the Rheinfelsischen hymnal from 1666. Audio file / audio sample

In a typical baroque way, the song thematizes the leitmotif of Advent , the longing for the Redeemer. It quickly found its way into Catholic song collections. Protestants saw it as a Catholic Advent song for a long time and only included it in the Protestant church hymn book (1950/1969) .

Today the song is in the Gotteslob under the number 231 ( GL old 105), in the Evangelical Hymnal (EG 7), in the Evangelical Methodist Hymnal (EM 141), in the Free Church Hymnal Fieren & Loben (FL 189), in the Mennonite Hymnal (MG 244) and in the Swiss Reformed Hymnal (RG 361).

content

Like the 150 years younger Tauet, Heaven, the Righteous , also sung in the Rorate masses of Advent , the song refers to a passage in the book of Isaiah , in the version of the Vulgate : “Rorate coeli de super, et nubes pluant justum : aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem "( Isaiah 45.8  VUL ) -" Tauet, O heavens, from above, and the clouds like rain the just: open it, the earth, and they sprout the Savior. " It is a counterfactor of the Gregorian antiphon Rorate caeli .

The beginning of the song also connects to another call from Isaiah: "Oh that you tore the heavens and bring them down, so that the mountains melt away before you" ( Isa 63:19  LUT ).

The text makes use of numerous dynamic verbs (tear, pour, flow, break, rain, knock out, jump) and emphatic interjections from the area of lament (“O, ah”).

While the stanzas 1–3 form a thematic unit through the images of hope heaven , dew and earth , the stanzas 4–6 are connected through dark images ( valley of tears , darkness , distress, "eternal death" and misery), each with the images of hope " Sun ”,“ star ”,“ consolation ”and“ strong hand ”correlate. The historical background of the Thirty Years' War is important, as is the case for Baroque poetry as a whole. The poet formulates the experience of suffering and death and the call for the Savior, however, without any concrete time references.

O Savior, tear open the heavens, run
down, run down from heaven,
tear off gates and doors from heaven,
tear off where lock and bolt for.

O God, pour a dew from heaven,
descend in the dew, O Savior, flow.
You clouds, break and rain from
the king on Jacob's house.

O earth, strike out, strike out, o earth,
that mountain and valley everything turn green.
O earth, bring this little flower for this,
O Savior, from which earth leaps.

Where are you, consolation of the whole world,
that it gives all its hope?
Oh come, oh come from the highest hall,
come, comfort us here in the valley of tears.

O clear sun, you beautiful star,
we wanted to look at you;
Oh sun, go up, without your glow
in the darkness we all be.

Here we suffer the greatest need,
eternal death stands before our eyes.
Oh come, lead us with a strong hand
from misery to the fatherland .

Later added to the collection of Alte and Newe Geistliche Catholische extra-reading chants published in Würzburg in 1630 on the orders of the Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg and in 1631 by David Gregor Corner (not in the original):

We want to thank you,
our Redeemer, for and for;
we all want to praise you
at all times and forever.

Edits

Arrangements of the chorale can be found among others. a. with Johannes Brahms , Johann Nepomuk David , Hugo Distler , Johannes Weyrauch or Richard Wetz ( Christmas Oratorio ).

Modern reception

Friedrich Spee is now considered the most vehement critic of the witch trials of his time within the church , who with his writing Cautio Criminalis , also anonymously published in 1631, nine years after O Heiland, contributed decisively to the end of the witch madness in Germany. In recent times there is hardly a homiletic or literary interpretation of the song that does not make reference to it. This modern interpretation is clearly expressed, for example, in the leading article by Heribert Prantl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung for Christmas 2016:

“The song is not a bell. It is the bitter call for justice; it is the complaint that Christmas is not coming even though it is on the calendar. The lawsuit exposes the disappointment and breaks the path of longing. It is an attempt to defend oneself against collective madness. Spee doesn't flee, not even in simple answers. He couldn't stop the terror; but he could do what an individual can do: accuse him. He did that: He did not stop at making demands on the heavenly Savior; he became a resister, a whistleblower of the 17th century. His song of comfort scream is as shockingly true at Christmas 2016 as it was in 1622. "

Spee himself understood his song traditionally and in accordance with the rest of the contemporary song production as a representation “how fiercely the Heylige Patriarchs and prophets demand Christ: what Jsaias dauon pro [p] heceyet: what in the Old Testament is represented by characters making what: vnn what the Heyden vil 100th year zuuor Dauon was revealed ”, or in short as“ the old fathers sighs in limbo ”, which had been heard through the actual coming of Christ.

Friedrich Schneider , for example, combines the interpretive approaches "witch hunt" and "reference to Isaiah" :

“In itself, this life doesn't sound very spectacular. If it hadn't been for a delusion that had cost the lives of thousands of women in Germany: the witch hunt. ... He was supposed to accompany the women sentenced to death at the stake on their last journey. He gets insights into the regularities of this madness and finally publishes ... a book in which he criticizes the methods and the sense of the witch hunts. ... The poet can hardly stand it: God, don't be late! It's about time! We know this cry from the psalms or from the prophet Isaiah. He laments in the face of the misery of his people ... "

literature

  • Michael Fischer: "O JESV my beautiful hero". The motif of the beauty of Christ in the 17th century. In: Spee yearbook. Edited by the consortium of the Friedrich-Spee-Societies Düsseldorf and Trier 13 (2006), ISSN  0947-0735 , pp. 145–158 ( online , PDF, 416 kB).
  • Hermann Kurzke : hymn and culture. Studies and location assessments . Francke, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-7720-8378-5 , pp. 210 ff. ( Limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Joachim Pritzkat: O Savior, tear open the heavens. On the 374 year history of a song by Friedrich von Spee . In: Hermann Kurzke , Hermann Ühlein (Hrsg.): Church song interdisciplinary: Hymnological contributions from German studies, theology and musicology . 2nd Edition. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, ISBN 3-631-38738-5 , pp. 131-172.
  • Joachim Pritzkat: Where is the consolation of the whole world? On the tension between fear of this world and hope in the hereafter in Friedrich von Spee and Andreas Gryphius . In: Spee-Jahrbuch 5 (1998), ISSN  0947-0735 , pp. 107-116 ( historicum.net ).
  • Johanna Schell : 7 - O Savior tear open the heavens . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 2 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-50321-0 , p. 3–6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Web links

Commons : O Savior, tear open the heavens  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reproduction of this original version in: Michael Härting (Ed.): Friedrich Spee. The anonymous spiritual songs before 1623 (= Philological Studies and Sources. Issue 63). E. Schmidt, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-503-00594-3 , pp. 160-162 ( digitized from Zeno.org .).
  2. ↑ Christoph Reske: Book printer of the 16th and 17th centuries in the German-speaking area. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05450-8 , p. 462 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Cf. also From heaven high, O angel, comes
  4. ↑ Markus Bautsch: About Contrafactures of Gregorian Repertoires - Rorate , accessed on December 3, 2014
  5. ↑ a b Text version: EG 7; GL 231 (= ö version) with minor deviations in punctuation and without stanza 7
  6. ↑ Heribert Prantl: World 2016, Tear open the sky. SZ.de, December 24, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Preface to the first edition 1622, zeno.org
  8. ↑ Headline of the song in print 1630
  9. ↑ Friedrich Schneider, O Savior, tear open the heavens. The story behind a well-known Advent song , in: Die Gemeinde. Believe. Together. Shape. , No. 24A v. December 2, 2018, p. 4.f.