Sigmund von Birken belongs to the »Trio of poets from Nürnberg«, together with Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Johann Klaj whose posthumous fame is mainly due to their pastoral poetry with fullsounding ...verses in praise of peace and love. Birken started his career with an enormous upshot as organizer of multi-media spectacles during the peace ceremony in Nürnberg in 1650. Apart from his hymns and pastoral love poems, Birken’s poetry does not belong to the canon of early modern literature in Germany. If he had lived longer, he would probably have edited later all those poems which he had written on demand for special occasions and immediately published as separate brochures or leaflets in at least four huge volumes. He would have properly arranged love poems, odes in praise of friendship, poems dedicated to noblemen and civilians, hymns and secular songs, starting like his famous predecessors with his Latin verses. This ambitious publication project is outlined in his manuscript collections, but was not realized during Birken’s lifetime. To correct for this oversight, the commented edition of Birken’s complete poetic manuscripts, which was recently finished by Hartmut Laufhütte, gives a broad impression of his talents as a playful virtuoso in all kinds of genres, teacher of poetry, advisor, ›ghostwriter‹ and promotor of young poets, male and female alike. His diaries and correspondence account for his enormous productivity and versatility, thus enabling modern readers to watch him during the creative procedure more closely than any other German poet of his time. The edition of Birken’s manuscripts is on the same scale as a few other recently completed long term editions of early modern German ego-documents and poetry and sets high standards for further editions.
Despite the growth of a cult for the Armenian martyr Hripsime in Ethiopia during the Middle Ages, no malkəʾ-hymn dedicated to her can be found in manuscripts predating the eighteenth century. There ...are two extant witnesses, one from the early eighteenth century and one from the nineteenth or twentieth century, to a Malkəʾa ʾArsimā containing seventeen stanzas. Evidently this hymn is the one named in a list of titles of malkəʾ-hymns extant in four manuscripts, two of which indicate that the hymn should have seventeen stanzas. While shorter than most, the hymn skilfully incorporates allusions to biblical stories, including Esther and Judith, paraphrases of and references to verses from the Old and New Testaments, and references to the flight to Egypt and Mount Koskam. While the text seemingly fell out of use, there being no later manuscript witnesses or printed editions of it, a different, longer malkəʾ-hymn was at some point composed and is now widespread in printed collections.
For more than 60 years, the BBC has been broadcasting Songs of Praise weekly--a religious television programme featuring Christian hymns and songs sung in churches and places of worship from various ...denominations across the United Kingdom (UK). In 2013, Songs of Praise conducted a national survey to determine the country's favourite hymn. From thousands of entries the hymn How great Thou art emerged as the winner. In 2019, the research was repeated, and viewers indicated that their favourite hymn this time is CH Hubert Parry's Jerusalem. So, what is the most beloved hymn or song in the various Afrikaans-speaking congregations in Southern Africa? With the kind support of the Southern African Church and Concert Organists Society (SAKOV), the researcher decided to embark on this project to find the most beloved church hymn in Afrikaans-speaking churches in Southern Africa. This article provides an explanation of the process and results of using a self-administered online survey and questionnaire in determining this most beloved hymn/song. Attention is paid to aspects such as the choice of method, sampling of respondents, questionnaire design and the statistical analysis of responses. Some of the risk-reduction strategies used by the researcher are also highlighted. The most obvious problem with such a research project is where one will start with the selection of these "favourite" hymns? To determine a workable population of hymns, it was decided to focus only on the population of hymns and songs currently in use in the various Afrikaans-speaking churches in Southern Africa taken from four different sources. From May 2020, the researcher, using the Delphi technique, and a panel of experts compiled a consensus sample of these hymns (Phases 1 and 2 of the research project), which was then used as a population from which the most beloved church hymn/song could be determined (Phase 3 of the research project). In the third phase of the research project, respondents were expected to complete a survey in the form of an online questionnaire that consisted of open-ended and close-ended questions. There was also a section where they could exercise their ranking choices regarding their favourite hymn/song where an ordinal measurement scale was used. As participation in the research project was voluntary and the probability of a member of the target population responding unknown, non-probability sampling was used in the research. Females, with a mean age of 57,75 years, were the majority of the sample respondents. About 133 respondents came from the Gauteng province of whom most (83 each) are members of and organists in their respective congregations. Other important roles that respondents played in their respective congregations were that of music leader/director as well as the organist/pianist of the congregation (25) and also the pastor of the congregation (24). The majority of respondents (147) came from the Dutch Reformed Church. In determining the most beloved hymn, respondents had to place their favourite hymns/ songs in a ranking of choice. The final choice of hymns/songs was therefore based on the product of weighted rankings. From the analysis congregants showed a clear preference for hymns from the Liedboek (Afrikaans Hymnal) and Psalmboek (Afrikaans Psalms) but that they were also partial to the singing of church songs from both VONKK and FLAM (these two "hymnals" contain more modern and contemporary Afrikaans songs and hymns for church use). It is furthermore noticeable that the Psalms in the official Afrikaans hymnal still play an important role in the spirituality of many of the Afrikaans-speaking churches in Southern Africa. This article contributes to the methodological debate in the research field of Church Music. KEYWORDS: choice of method; church hymn/song; self-administered online question naires; Delphi technique; weighted rankings; Afrikaans hymnal TREFWOORDE: opnametegniek; kerklied; self-geadministreerde vraelyste; Delphi tegniek; geweegde gemiddelde; Liedboek
The Anglican Passion is a largely forgotten genre that flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modeled distinctly after the Lutheran Passion- particularly in its use of ...congregational hymns that punctuate and comment upon the drama-Anglican Passions also owe much to the rise of hymnody and small parish music-making in England during the latter part of the nineteenth century. John Stainer's The Crucifixion (1887) is a quintessential example of the genre and the Anglican Passion that is most often performed and recorded. This article traces the origins of the genre and explores lesser-known early twentieth-century Anglican Passions that are direct descendants of Stainer's work. Four works in particular will be reviewed within this historical context: John Henry Maunder's Olivet to Calvary (1904), Arthur Somervell's The Passion of Christ (1914), Charles Wood's The Passion of Our Lord according to St Mark (1920), and Eric Thiman's The Last Supper (1930). Examining these works in a sequential order reveals a distinct evolution and decline of the genre over the course of these decades, with Wood's masterpiece standing as the towering achievement of the Anglican Passion genre in the immediate aftermath of World War I. The article concludes with a call for reappraisal of these underperformed works and their potential use in modern liturgical worship.
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