Johann Rist (1607-1667) Johann Schopf (ca. 1600-1665)
Break forth, O beauteous heav’nly light,
And usher in the morning.
O shepherds, shrink not with affright,
But hear the angel’s warning:
This child, now weak in infancy,
Our confidence and joy shall be,
The pow’r of Satan breaking,
Our peace eternal making.
All blessing, thanks and praise to thee,
And Jesus Christ, be given:
Thou hast our brother deigned to be,
Our foe in sunder riven.
O grant us through our day of grace.
With constant praise to seek thy face;
Grant us ere long in glory
With praises to adore thee.
Tr. John Troutbeck
REFLECTION
Merry Christmas!
One of the more beautiful hymns for Christmas and Epiphany is this by Johann Rist. Unfortunately, the hymn survives in English with only three stanza translated, and really only one in use. It contains twelve stanzas. The first stanza here is the ninth stanza in the original. The entire hymn is worth considering. It tells the entire story of Christmas night, especially the annunciation to the shepherds. It begins with an address to the singer’s soul. “Take courage, o my weak spirit,” and then reflects on Jesus' coming to earth to court his bride. She is a rather unappealing prospect, what we might call a poor catch, nothing but excess, cursed, like refuse, death and darkness. Still into the darkness, filth and poverty comes this beautiful light with riches unimaginable for us.
No wonder each Christmas we spend ourselves poor to make the day somehow match the beauty of the gift we receive from God. Not that we could match it in any way, but the richness of Christ’s gift to us, I wonder, makes us want to revel in his richness and share what riches in fact also come from him. That may be why we try give each other, especially our children, a wonderful time at Christmas—not just with a surfeit of toys, but better, a surfeit of good memories, good times, good food, good family times. There is something magical about sitting with loved ones, filled with memories, and enjoying the beauty of the tree, the gifts, the candelight, the holly and ivy. This is why Christmas is a time of intense memories and maybe even sadness that those days are gone and maybe not what they could have been.
Still, through these lovely moments and memories, we approach something of the incarnation, God made flesh, God with us. We are filled with thanksgiving because he has come to us. Christmas is not as much about giving, as about receiving a gift beyond what can be imagined. Because we have been made rich with the beautiful light of God, we pray in this season that the beautiful one who changes everything about our life on earth will also make his presence known even to us, no matter whether we are alone or with many. He came to each one of us and asks to live in us now. Despite everything, we are not alone, nor condemned to a world without beauty. Relish the time and its good memories and good times, forgive the bad ones. Our light has come. Break forth O beauteous heavenly light!
HYMN INFO
Rist is one of the great Orthodox Lutheran hymn writers of his day when there were many great ones, Paul Gerhardt, Johan Heerman, Joachim Neander, Georg Neumark. Rist, like Gerhardt and Heerman lived through the horrors of the Thirty Years War. The son of a Lutheran pastor he served as pastor in Hamburg. At university he studied with Joshua Stegman, an accomplished hymn writer. He studied at the University in Rostock, where he suffered many of the awful sufferings caused by the war. At first a writer of poetry and dramas, he soon became a gifted hymn writer. He wrote some 680 hymns. Although he intended his hymns to be private, composers in the region took pleasure in his work and set it to music. The best we have were those set by Schopf who lived near Rist in Hamburg and worked with him. A violin virtuoso, he was a well regarded composer. He produced a collection of hymns Himmlische Lieder(Heavenly Songs) in 1641. Bach used several of their hymns in his cantatas. This one in his appears in Bach’s second cantata (248) in the Christmas Oratorio intended for the second day of Christmas which focused on the annunciation to the shepherds.
LINKS
Kings College Choir
Concordia Publishing House
Choir of the Sound
Bach's Christmas Oratorio with Gardiner/it is all well worth hearing, but the second part is the one with the chorale/take time to enjoy the entire oratorio if you can.
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