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Johann Sebastian Bach
1685 - 1750 Person Name: J. S. Bach Harmonizer of "[We wait for the eternal light]" in Songs of Light Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach into a musical family and in a town steeped in Reformation history, he received early musical training from his father and older brother, and elementary education in the classical school Luther had earlier attended.
Throughout his life he made extraordinary efforts to learn from other musicians. At 15 he walked to Lüneburg to work as a chorister and study at the convent school of St. Michael. From there he walked 30 miles to Hamburg to hear Johann Reinken, and 60 miles to Celle to become familiar with French composition and performance traditions. Once he obtained a month's leave from his job to hear Buxtehude, but stayed nearly four months. He arranged compositions from Vivaldi and other Italian masters. His own compositions spanned almost every musical form then known (Opera was the notable exception).
In his own time, Bach was highly regarded as organist and teacher, his compositions being circulated as models of contrapuntal technique. Four of his children achieved careers as composers; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Chopin are only a few of the best known of the musicians that confessed a major debt to Bach's work in their own musical development. Mendelssohn began re-introducing Bach's music into the concert repertoire, where it has come to attract admiration and even veneration for its own sake.
After 20 years of successful work in several posts, Bach became cantor of the Thomas-schule in Leipzig, and remained there for the remaining 27 years of his life, concentrating on church music for the Lutheran service: over 200 cantatas, four passion settings, a Mass, and hundreds of chorale settings, harmonizations, preludes, and arrangements. He edited the tunes for Schemelli's Musicalisches Gesangbuch, contributing 16 original tunes. His choral harmonizations remain a staple for studies of composition and harmony. Additional melodies from his works have been adapted as hymn tunes.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Johann Sebastian Bach
Otto Salomon
1889 - 1971 Author of "Now Blows the Wind" in Songs of Light Salomon, Otto. (Frankfort-am-Main, Germany, 1889--1971). Stayed at the Sannerz Bruderhof community in 1920 and 1921, helped in publishing work there under Eberhard Arnold's direction. Wrote his songs during his short stay there. Later wrote books under the name of Otto Bruder.
--Marlys Swinger, DNAH Archives
Otto Salomon
Kaspar Füger
1562 - 1617 Person Name: C. Fuger Author of "We Christians may" in The Bach Chorale Book Fuger, Caspar. Two Lutheran clergymen of this name, apparently father and son, seem to have lived in Dresden in the 16th century. The elder seems to have been for some time at Torgau, and then court preacher at Dresden to Duke Heinrich and his widow, and to have died at Dresden, 1592. Various works appeared under his name between 1564 and 1592. The younger was apparently born at Dresden, where he became third master and then conrector in the Kreuzschule. He was subsequently ordained diaconus, and died at Dresden, July 24, 1617 (Koch, ii. 215-216; Wetzel, i. 303; Wackernagel, as below, and i. pp. 459, 513, 569).
The hymn,
Wir Christenleut haben jetzund Freud [Christ¬mas], is quoted by Wackernagel, iv. p. 10, from Drey schöne Newe Geistliche Gesenge, 1592, and from the Dresden Gesang-Buch, 1593, in 5 stanzas of 6 lines. Wackernagel thinks it was written about 1552. Bode, p. 417, cites it as in Georg Pondo's Erne kurtze Comödien von der Geburt des Herren Christi extant in a manuscript copy, dated 1589, in the Royal Library at Berlin. It is probably by the elder Fuger, though Wetzel and others ascribe it to the younger. Included in many later hymn-books, and recently as No. 57 in the Unverfälschter Liedersegen, 1851. The only translation in common use is:-—
We Christians may rejoice to-day, a good and full translation by Miss Winkworth in her Chorale Book for England, 1863, No. 34. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Kaspar Füger
Catherine Winkworth
1827 - 1878 Translator of "We Christians may" in The Bach Chorale Book Catherine Winkworth (b. Holborn, London, England, 1827; d. Monnetier, Savoy, France, 1878) is well known for her English translations of German hymns; her translations were polished and yet remained close to the original. Educated initially by her mother, she lived with relatives in Dresden, Germany, in 1845, where she acquired her knowledge of German and interest in German hymnody. After residing near Manchester until 1862, she moved to Clifton, near Bristol. A pioneer in promoting women's rights, Winkworth put much of her energy into the encouragement of higher education for women. She translated a large number of German hymn texts from hymnals owned by a friend, Baron Bunsen. Though often altered, these translations continue to be used in many modern hymnals. Her work was published in two series of Lyra Germanica (1855, 1858) and in The Chorale Book for England (1863), which included the appropriate German tune with each text as provided by Sterndale Bennett and Otto Goldschmidt. Winkworth also translated biographies of German Christians who promoted ministries to the poor and sick and compiled a handbook of biographies of German hymn authors, Christian Singers of Germany (1869).
Bert Polman
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Winkworth, Catherine, daughter of Henry Winkworth, of Alderley Edge, Cheshire, was born in London, Sep. 13, 1829. Most of her early life was spent in the neighbourhood of Manchester. Subsequently she removed with the family to Clifton, near Bristol. She died suddenly of heart disease, at Monnetier, in Savoy, in July, 1878. Miss Winkworth published:—
Translations from the German of the Life of Pastor Fliedner, the Founder of the Sisterhood of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserworth, 1861; and of the Life of Amelia Sieveking, 1863.
Her sympathy with practical efforts for the benefit of women, and with a pure devotional life, as seen in these translations, received from her the most practical illustration possible in the deep and active interest which she took in educational work in connection with the Clifton Association for the Higher Education of Women, and kindred societies there and elsewhere. Our interest, however, is mainly centred in her hymnological work as embodied in her:—
(1) Lyra Germanica, 1st Ser., 1855. (2) Lyra Germanica, 2nd Ser., 1858. (3) The Chorale Book for England (containing translations from the German, together with music), 1863; and (4) her charming biographical work, the Christian Singers of Germany, 1869.
In a sympathetic article on Miss Winkworth in the Inquirer of July 20, 1878, Dr. Martineau says:—
"The translations contained in these volumes are invariably faithful, and for the most part both terse and delicate; and an admirable art is applied to the management of complex and difficult versification. They have not quite the fire of John Wesley's versions of Moravian hymns, or the wonderful fusion and reproduction of thought which may be found in Coleridge. But if less flowing they are more conscientious than either, and attain a result as poetical as severe exactitude admits, being only a little short of ‘native music'"
Dr. Percival, then Principal of Clifton College, also wrote concerning her (in the Bristol Times and Mirror), in July, 1878:—
"She was a person of remarkable intellectual and social gifts, and very unusual attainments; but what specially distinguished her was her combination of rare ability and great knowledge with a certain tender and sympathetic refinement which constitutes the special charm of the true womanly character."
Dr. Martineau (as above) says her religious life afforded "a happy example of the piety which the Church of England discipline may implant.....The fast hold she retained of her discipleship of Christ was no example of ‘feminine simplicity,' carrying on the childish mind into maturer years, but the clear allegiance of a firm mind, familiar with the pretensions of non-Christian schools, well able to test them, and undiverted by them from her first love."
Miss Winkworth, although not the earliest of modern translators from the German into English, is certainly the foremost in rank and popularity. Her translations are the most widely used of any from that language, and have had more to do with the modern revival of the English use of German hymns than the versions of any other writer.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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See also in:
Hymn Writers of the Church
Catherine Winkworth
Gertrud Dalgas
b. 1897 Author of "We Wait for the Eternal Light" in Songs of Light Huessy-Dalgas, Gertrud. (Brake near Bremen, Germany, 1897--?). Taught in Schleswig-Holstein and Frankfurt on the Main until she joined the Sannerz Bruderhof community in 1921. Married Walter Huessy in 1931. They had three children. At 82 (1980), still active in archives and publishing work of the Society of Brothers at Woodcrest community, Rifton, New York.
--Marlys Swinger, DNAH Archives
Gertrud Dalgas
