O Little Town of Bethlehem

Author's manuscript with the first stanzas

O Little Town of Bethlehem has been a very popular Christmas carol in the United States since the late 19th century . It was first disseminated through the hymn books of the Episcopal Church , then in the second half of the 20th century through interpretations by Elvis Presley , Ella Fitzgerald , Bob Dylan , Garth Brooks , the Golden Gate Quartet and others.

History of origin

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), then rector of Trinity Church (Church of the Holy Trinity) in Philadelphia ( Pennsylvania , USA), wrote the text in 1868 in the wake of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land , which he had taken 1865/1866.

Later versions

The text was changed several times by Brooks and later editors. In the printed versions, the fourth stanza in the original five-stanza text is mostly missing, because in it Christ was addressed as the "son of the Undefiled" (Son of the Immaculate). The emergence of the text falls into a period of intensive debate about the Oxford Movement promoted orientation of the Anglican churches in Catholic traditions , which won in the United States so much ground that 1873 to split off the Reformed Episcopal Church came. The designation of the Mother of God Mary as "undefiled" therefore contained considerable potential for conflict, because it was reminiscent of the doctrine of the immaculate conception, which arose in the later Middle Ages but was only proclaimed by the Pope in 1854 as a specifically Catholic dogma . The stanza was therefore either omitted in the printed versions or the word “undefiled” was replaced by “mother mild” (benevolent mother).

Singable versions also exist in Spanish, French, German and other languages.

Melodies

"St. Louis ", the setting by Lewis Orator (from a songbook from 1896)

The Christmas carol is spread on different melodies.

Phillips Brooks asked Lewis H. Orator , his church organist, to set the text to music for Sunday School. Speaker later reported that he had initially postponed this assignment, but on Sunday night, for which he had promised the tune, an angel appeared to him in his sleep and had given him the notes. In reference to the composer's first name, this melody is also known in literature as “St. Louis ”. This melody is the most widespread version in the United States and is also the basis for most modern recordings of Christmas albums by pop musicians.

"Forest Green", from the English Hymnal, 1906

In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations , where the Churches of the Anglican Communion predominate, a different tune is used, derived from an ancient folk song. Ralph Vaughan Williams added the text to the melody for the folk ballad The Plowboy's Dream , which he had recorded in 1903 by a certain Henry Garman from Forest Green, Surrey . The melody is referenced as "Forest Green" according to its place of origin. Vaughan Williams' choral setting of the song was first published in the English Hymnal in 1906 .

Further settings of the text are by Henry Walford Davies and William Rhys-Herbert , but did not achieve the popularity and spread of the first two melodies.

literature

Louis F. Benson: O Little Town of Bethlehem . In: Studies of Familiar Hymns . First series. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia 1924 ( excerpt available online [accessed December 24, 2012]).
Alexander VG Allen: Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks . Three volumes. EP Dutton, New York 1900 (English).
Alexander VG Allen, Phillips Brooks: 1835-1896 - Memories of His Life With Extracts From His Letters and Note-Books . EP Dutton, New York 1907 (English).
Rainer Hauke: Art. "Barbe, Helmut" . In: Wolfgang Herbst (Ed.): Who is who in the hymnal? Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-50323-7 , pp. 30 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
Klaus Danzeglocke, Mathias Nagel: 55 - O Bethlehem, you little town . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 5 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-50326-1 , pp. 44–48 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Web links

Commons : O little town of Bethlehem - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: O little town of Bethlehem - English text including Spanish, French and German translation (English)

References and comments

↑ The Christmas service in the Roman Catholic rite, in which he took part in Bethlehem , was initially perceived by Brooks as a "lengthy and tiresome mummification", but seems to have left a lasting impression on him in later memory. Letter from Philipps Brooks to his father (December 30, 1865): “My energetic letter-writing has paused for a week. It take it up again to tell you of my tours around Jerusalem. Last Sunday morning we attended service in the English church, and after an early dinner took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. The great church of the Nativity is its most prominent object; it is shared by the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, and each church has a convent attached to it. We were hospitably received in the Greek convent, and furnished with a room. Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been, and in the same fields the story of Ruth and Boaz must belong. As we passed, the shepherds were still 'keeping watch over their flocks,' or leading them home to fold. We returned to the convent and waited for the service, which began about ten o'clock and lasted until three (Christmas). It was the old story of a Romish service, with all its mummery [= a Catholic church service with all its mummery], and tired us out. They wound up with a wax baby, carried in procession, and at last laid in the traditional manager, in a grotto under the church. The most interesting part was the crowd of pilgrims, with their simple faith and eagerness to share in the ceremonial. We went to bed very tired. Christmas morning we rode up to town and went to service. It rained all that day, and we stayed in the house. The next morning we were off for our trip to the Jordan ... “( Letters of Travel by Phillips Brooks , ed. By MFB, New York: EP Dutton 1894, pp. 69f.); Letter from Phillips Brooks to the children of the Sunday Schools at Holy Trinity and Chapel in Philadelphia (Rome, February 19, 1866): “I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the 'Wonderful Night' of the Savior's birth, as I heard them a year before; and I assure you I was glad to shut my ears for a while and listen to the more familiar strains that came wandering to me halfway round the world. ”( Letters of Travel by Phillips Brooks , ed. v. MFB, New York: EP Dutton 1894, pp. 85f.).

^ For a comprehensive account of the Anglo-Catholic view of the Immaculate Conception, see F. Hasting Smyth, The Immaculate Conception of Saint Mary The Virgin . To Eirenic Essay, McGuire-Johnson Publishers: Wadsworth, Ill. 1954.

↑ The textual history of the song reflects the confessional contrasts of its time of origin in a similar way as the Christmas carol " Es ist ein Ros sprung " in the German-speaking area , in the second stanza of which, from a Protestant point of view, problematic statements about Mary in the Protestant version were defused by reinterpreting Jesus (Catholic 1599: "The rose that I mean / of which Isaia says / is Mary the pure one / who brought us the flower. / From God's eternal advice / she gave birth to a child / and remained a pure maid "; Protestant 1609: "The little rose that I mean, / Isaiah says of it, / brought us alone / Marie the pure maid. / From God's eternal advice / she gave birth to a child / probably half the night ").

↑ The entry in Wikisource offers a literal German translation as well as an older, singable German version (“O Bethlehem, du Städtchen klein”). A more modern German version by Helmut Barbe 1954 can be found in the Evangelical Hymn book, No. 55 (“O Bethlehem, du kleine Stadt”).

^ Carlton A. Young: Companion to the United Methodist Hymnals. Abingdon Press 1993, p. 519: "As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, 'Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”?' I replied, 'No,' but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868. "(after the correspondence between Louis F. Benson and the speaker from 1901)

↑ Vaughan Williams' Manuscript of "The Plowboy's Dream" , Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Full English collection, accessed March 30, 2014

^ Julian Onderdonk: Hymn Tunes from Folk Songs: Vaughan Williams and English Hymnody . In: Byron Adams, Robin Wells (Eds.): Vaughan Williams essays . Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot 2003, ISBN 1-85928-387-X , pp. 103-128, here p. 111.

[Brief_von_Philipps_Brooks_an_seinen_Vater-1] The Christmas service in the Roman Catholic rite, in which he took part in Bethlehem , was initially perceived by Brooks as a "lengthy and tiresome mummification", but seems to have left a lasting impression on him in later memory. Letter from Philipps Brooks to his father (December 30, 1865): “My energetic letter-writing has paused for a week. It take it up again to tell you of my tours around Jerusalem. Last Sunday morning we attended service in the English church, and after an early dinner took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. The great church of the Nativity is its most prominent object; it is shared by the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, and each church has a convent attached to it. We were hospitably received in the Greek convent, and furnished with a room. Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been, and in the same fields the story of Ruth and Boaz must belong. As we passed, the shepherds were still 'keeping watch over their flocks,' or leading them home to fold. We returned to the convent and waited for the service, which began about ten o'clock and lasted until three (Christmas). It was the old story of a Romish service, with all its mummery [= a Catholic church service with all its mummery], and tired us out. They wound up with a wax baby, carried in procession, and at last laid in the traditional manager, in a grotto under the church. The most interesting part was the crowd of pilgrims, with their simple faith and eagerness to share in the ceremonial. We went to bed very tired. Christmas morning we rode up to town and went to service. It rained all that day, and we stayed in the house. The next morning we were off for our trip to the Jordan ... “( Letters of Travel by Phillips Brooks , ed. By MFB, New York: EP Dutton 1894, pp. 69f.); Letter from Phillips Brooks to the children of the Sunday Schools at Holy Trinity and Chapel in Philadelphia (Rome, February 19, 1866): “I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the 'Wonderful Night' of the Savior's birth, as I heard them a year before; and I assure you I was glad to shut my ears for a while and listen to the more familiar strains that came wandering to me halfway round the world. ”( Letters of Travel by Phillips Brooks , ed. v. MFB, New York: EP Dutton 1894, pp. 85f.).

[The_Immaculate_Conception_of_Saint_Mary_The_Virgin-2] For a comprehensive account of the Anglo-Catholic view of the Immaculate Conception, see F. Hasting Smyth, The Immaculate Conception of Saint Mary The Virgin . To Eirenic Essay, McGuire-Johnson Publishers: Wadsworth, Ill. 1954.

[Anmerkung_Es_ist_ein_Ros_entsprungen-3] The textual history of the song reflects the confessional contrasts of its time of origin in a similar way as the Christmas carol " Es ist ein Ros sprung " in the German-speaking area , in the second stanza of which, from a Protestant point of view, problematic statements about Mary in the Protestant version were defused by reinterpreting Jesus (Catholic 1599: "The rose that I mean / of which Isaia says / is Mary the pure one / who brought us the flower. / From God's eternal advice / she gave birth to a child / and remained a pure maid "; Protestant 1609: "The little rose that I mean, / Isaiah says of it, / brought us alone / Marie the pure maid. / From God's eternal advice / she gave birth to a child / probably half the night ").

[Wikisource-4] The entry in Wikisource offers a literal German translation as well as an older, singable German version (“O Bethlehem, du Städtchen klein”). A more modern German version by Helmut Barbe 1954 can be found in the Evangelical Hymn book, No. 55 (“O Bethlehem, du kleine Stadt”).

[Companion_to_the_United_Methodist_Hymnals-5] Carlton A. Young: Companion to the United Methodist Hymnals. Abingdon Press 1993, p. 519: "As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, 'Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”?' I replied, 'No,' but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868. "(after the correspondence between Louis F. Benson and the speaker from 1901)

[6] Vaughan Williams' Manuscript of "The Plowboy's Dream" , Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Full English collection, accessed March 30, 2014

[7] Julian Onderdonk: Hymn Tunes from Folk Songs: Vaughan Williams and English Hymnody . In: Byron Adams, Robin Wells (Eds.): Vaughan Williams essays . Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot 2003, ISBN 1-85928-387-X , pp. 103-128, here p. 111.