Whatever my God wants, that's always the case
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What my God wants, the g'scheh always is a hymn of the Evangelical Lutheran tradition. The text was written around 1550 and is attributed to Albrecht von Prussia . The melody goes back to a way of singing that Claudin de Sermisy composed in 1529 for a secular French text. The song has been one of the core songs of Lutheran church chanting without interruption since its creation. In the Evangelical Hymnal it is in the rubric Faith - Love - Hope. Fear and Confidence (No. 364).
Sources and reception
Philipp Wackernagel bases his two editions of the four-stanza song on a Dresden print from 1556 and a Nuremberg print “around 1554”. The two versions differ in many details, but above all in the very different fourth stanzas. Several only a little later prints only offer stanzas 1–3, so that these can be considered the original ones. Nevertheless, the fourth stanza from Nuremberg has prevailed in reception history.
In the Copenhagen hymn book of 1571 the song bears the title Des alten Churfürsten Marggraff Albrechts Lied ; it is the earliest evidence of a reference to Albrecht of Prussia († 1568). Wackernagel comments: "Whoever could have written it for him or dedicated it to him, there is no instruction about it". The biographical assignment of the song to the death of Albrecht's first wife Dorothea in 1547 is documented even later .
In the following centuries Was mein Gott wants was included in all German-language Lutheran hymn books, including the "150 core songs" from 1854, where only a few songs from the 16th century can be found, and in the German Evangelical Hymnal (1914).
content
What my God wants is always a confession of unlimited trust in God : He who “believes in him firmly” helps and comforts him in every need and in death. In the closing lines of the third stanza and in the possibly added fourth stanza, the confession of prayer . An explicit reference to Christ is missing; it is implicitly found at the end of verse 3.
Text in use today
1. What my God wants, happen always,
his will is the best.
He is ready to help
who believes in him firmly.
He helps out of need,
the faithful God,
he comforts the world without measure.
He who trusts God and
builds firmly on him
will not leave him.
2. God is my comfort, my confidence,
my hope and my life;
I don't want to oppose
what my God wants that story
to me.
His word is true
because
he counted all my hair himself.
He guards and watches,
always strive for us,
that we lack nothing.
3.
Therefore , I have to drive sinners out of the world according to God's will
to my God, if it pleases him,
I will keep him quiet.
My poor soul,
I command God
in my last hours:
you loyal God,
sin, hell and death
you have overcome me.
4. One more thing, Lord, I want to ask you,
you will not refuse
me : If the evil spirit challenges
me, Lord, don't let me despair.
Help, steer and defend,
oh God, my lord,
in honor of your name.
Whoever desires
it will be granted it.
Then I say cheerfully: Amen.
Melody and musical arrangements
From the beginning, the song was based exclusively on the that goes back to Claudin de Sermisy , which he had composed in 1529 for the secular text Il me suffit de tous mes maulx . With a spiritual text, a Dutch adaptation of Psalm 129, it appeared as early as 1540 in the Antwerp Souterliedekens ("Psalterlieder").
The artistic, syncopated and metrically irregular way of singing Sermisys was simplified early on. In the Baroque, versions were created in even quarters . Johann Sebastian Bach uses them in his cantata 111 and in further cantatas as well as in the St. Matthew Passion (No. 31, as an answer to Jesus' prayer in the garden of Getsemane).
Further arrangements for different occupations wrote u. a. Heinrich Schütz ( sacred choral music 24), Georg Philipp Telemann (cantata TWV 1: 1529), Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (sonata no.1 for organ, op.65,1, first movement), Max Reger (op 135a no.27), Hermann Bendix , Günter Raphael and Erwin Amend .
literature
- Philipp Wackernagel : 1240. What my God wants, that happens always and 1241. What my God wants, that happens always . In: The German hymn from the earliest times to the beginning of the XVII. Century , 3rd volume, Leipzig 1870, pp. 1070-1071
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ s. literature
- ↑ Albrecht was, however, only Duke of the Duchy of Prussia that he created and never Elector.
- ↑ Wolfgang Herbst : Who is who in the hymn book? Göttingen 2001, p. 22
- ↑ German Protestant Church Hymnbook in 150 core songs , Stuttgart / Augsburg 1854, pp. 120–121
- ↑ The variant “and chastised with measure” was widespread at times, cf. Praxis Pietatis Melica 1653, p. 588 ; so also in the DEG from 1914 and with Otto Riethmüller , Ein neue Lied , 1932; on the other hand in the core songs of 1854 "and comforts the world with measure".
- ↑ here relative pronouns; in older hymn books "that"
- ↑ Mt 10.30 LUT
- ↑ Text version: Evangelical hymn book No. 364, with adaptation of the ß
- ^ Carl von Winterfeld : The Protestant church song and its relationship to the art of composition . Leipzig 1843, p. 71
- ^ Bach Cantata's website
- ↑ Bach Cantata's website with detailed documentation of the various melody versions