Christian Knorr, Baron von Rosenroth, was the son of a Silesian Lutheran pastor who became one of the more unusual figures in Lutheran hymnody: a student of languages, philosophy, chemistry, and the natural sciences, chancellor to a German prince, ennobled by Emperor Leopold I in 1677, and the author of a compendium on Jewish mysticism attempting to show the harmony of the Kabbalah with the Christian faith. When he published this text in 1684 he did not write it for a Sunday service at all. He titled it simply “Morgen-Andacht,” Morning Devotion, and meant it for private prayer at the start of the day. The English translation improves on the German. Knorr wrote Morgenglanz der Ewigkeit, “morning brightness of eternity”; Richard Massie, an English layman, rendered it in 1857 as “bright and Morning Star,” which is the Lord’s own name for Himself in Revelation 22:16. Massie kept working at it: seven years later he went back and changed “falling upon barren places” to “falling soft on barren places,” and that is the line we sing.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025