Christmas Hymns: Go, My Children, With my Blessing: Jesu, meine Freude

» biogardener - Jesu, meine Freude

You are both right. Johann Krüger wrote the original music to a poem by his contemporary Johann Franck, and that setting is usually found in hymnbooks. A Baptist or Mennonite congregation would be singing this in four-part harmony in a service. You can listen to it while following the words in either German or English.

Phil, however, is talking about the more challenging setting by Bach which is only sung by choirs. Bach wrote a motet on this chorale as well as an organ prelude. This was, in fact, the first Bach chorale setting which I ever learned in a choir. I refer to the experience in my article:

"Music Which Touches the Soul, J. S. Bach"

John, no Baptist or Mennonite choir ever worried about the music after the sermon. We were so well trained that we could sing anything in our repertoire at any time, including at all funerals, with or without the score before us. I trained my Lutheran choir the same way in Canada. We had a TV show to put on every week.

When we came over from Germany by boat, we had Sunday services. My father directed the impromptu choir of about 150 singers, all of them Baptist. We sang everything by memory without rehearsal and without knowing each other. A Lutheran seminary student on the boat did the preaching. This happened on every boat coming from Germany after World War II.

-- posted by biogardener