Paul Gerhardt (1607–76) is the greatest German hymn writer of his century, and the hard years of the Thirty Years’ War gave him more to draw on than any poet would choose. The hymn appeared in 1666 in the third part of Johann Georg Ebeling’s edition of Gerhardt’s spiritual songs, with a tune by Ebeling himself, who had succeeded Johann Crüger at St. Nicholas Church in Berlin; one hymnologist called it “golden as the sun going forth in his beauty, full of force and of blessed peace in the Lord.” The German begins “Die güldne Sonne,” the golden sun, and runs to twelve stanzas. Several Victorian translators tried it and flattened the theology out of it. Richard Massie’s 1857 version kept it, and he began not at the top but at Gerhardt’s fourth stanza, “Abend und Morgen,” which is why the hymn is called “Evening and Morning” in English at all. Our text joins two of Massie’s stanzas to two translated by Herman Brueckner in 1918. --- *From the The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity primer:* Paul Gerhardt (1607–76), the greatest German hymn writer of his century, wrote Die güldne Sonne voll Freud und Wonne out of a life shaped by the Thirty Years' War, and one nineteenth-century admirer called it "golden as the sun going forth in his beauty," full of force and of blessed peace in the Lord. It appeared in 1666 with a tune by Johann Georg Ebeling, who had succeeded Johann Crüger at St. Nicholas Church in Berlin, and Ebeling's melody is quietly pictorial: dotted rhythms near the end of most phrases and a deliberate rise and fall trace a horizon across which the singer can watch the sun come up and go down. In measure 10 a B-natural lifts the voice on the last syllable of himmlischen, "heavenly," pointing the singer upward; in English the same raised pitch lands on words like "preserves," "release," and "precious before Him." Several Victorian translators flattened Gerhardt's theology, but Richard Massie's 1857 version kept it, and our hymnal joins two of his stanzas to two more translated by Herman Brueckner in 1918. --- *From the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity primer:* Paul Gerhardt (1607–76), the greatest German hymn writer of the seventeenth century, drew on the deep well of suffering left by the Thirty Years’ War to write this meditation on God’s daily mercies. Its original German opening, Die güldne Sonne, Voll Freud und Wonne (“The golden sun, full of joy and delight”), is matched by Johann Georg Ebeling’s 1666 tune, whose rising and falling melody traces the very shape of a sunrise and sunset. Ebeling wrote a striking piece of musical text-painting into the tenth measure, a sudden raised note that in Gerhardt’s German fell on words like Schmerzen (“pains”) or himmlischen (“heavenly”), pointing the ear upward; in our hymnal, the same musical spike now lands on words like “preserves,” “release,” and “precious before Him.” The English text splices two stanzas from Richard Massie’s widely used 1857 translation with two later stanzas by Herman Brueckner (1918), and notably begins not at Gerhardt’s first stanza but at his fourth. Prayed each evening and each dawn, the hymn confesses that earthly griefs remain even after grace is received, yet it looks past every morning and evening toward the eternal day when the believer will dwell in the Father’s mansions, sustained meanwhile, like the widow of Zarephath, one day at a time.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025