Please turn to number 79 and join with the Clarinets in “Christ, The Life of All the Living.
Number: 79
First Line: Christ, the Life of all the Living
Name: JESU, MEINES LEBENS LEBEN.
Meter: 8 7, 8 7, 7 7, 7 7.
Tempo: With dignity and movement
Music: Darmstadt Gesangbuch, 1687
Text: Ernst Christoph Homburg, 1605-81
Tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1829-78 a.
Clarinet Arrangement:079.ChristTheLifeOfAllTheLiving
For the last few hymns, I’ve only been playing the melody part twice. On one of them I play the first and third verse but skip the second. The on the second I’ve been playing the first verse, improvise the second, then play the third.
For this hymn I tried something new, playing the first and third verse for two parts and then adding a third part where I only improvise the second verse.
It’s a little more work, but it gives me more control over the levels of the solo section as it relates to the harmony parts.
It also makes it a little easier to get in the right frame of mind for improvising.
I also had been using embedded soundcloud links to post the songs. Turns out there’s a limit to how many songs you can have for free on soundcloud. So I went back and replaced the soundcloud embeds with mp3s and the native worpress player.
Homburg, Ernst Christoph, was born in 1605, at Mihla, near Eisenach. He practised at Nauraburg, in Saxony, as Clerk of the Assizes and Counsellor. In 1648 ho was admitted a member of the Fruitbearing Society, and afterwards became a member of the Elbe Swan Order founded by Rist in 1660. He died at Naumburg, Juno 2, 1681. (Koch, iii. 388, 392; Allegemeine Deutsche Biographie, xiii. 43, 44.)
By his contemporaries Homburg was regarded as a poet of the first rank. His earlier poems, 1638-1653, were secular, including many love and drinking songs. Domestic troubles arising from the illnesses of himself and of his wife, and other afflictions, led him to seek the Lord, and the deliverances he experienced from pestilence and from violence led him to place all his confidence on God. The collected edition of his hymns appeared in two parts at Jena and Naumburg, 1659, pt. i. as his Geistlicher Lieder, Erster Theil, with 100 hymns [engraved title, Naumburg, 1658]; and pt. ii. as the Ander Theil with 50 hymns. In the preface he speaks of them as his “Sunday labours,” and says, “I was specially induced and compelled” to their composition” by the anxious and sore domestic afflictions by which God…..has for some time laid me aside.” They are distinguished for simplicity, firm faith, and liveliness, but often lack poetic vigour and are too sombre.
This is regarded as Homburg’s most popular hymn, but it is still pretty somber.
1) Christ, the Life of all the living,
Christ the Death of death, our foe,
Who thyself for us once giving
To the darkest depths of woe,
Partiently didst yield thy breath
But to save my soul from death;
Praise and glory every be,
Blessed Jesus, unto thee.2) Thou, O Christ, hast taken on thee
Bitter strokes, a cruel rod;
Pain and scorn were heaped upon thee,
O thou sinless Son of God,
Only thus for me to win
Rescue from the bonds of sin;
Praise and glory ever be,
Blessed Jesus, unto thee.3) Thou didst bear the smiting only
That it might not fall on me;
Stoodest falsely charged and lonely
That I might be safe and free;
Comfortless that I might know
Comfort from boundless woe.
Praise and glory ever be,
Blessed Jesus, unto thee.4) Then for all that wrought our pardon,
For thy sorrows deep and sore,
For thine anguish in the garden,
I will thank the evermore;
Thank thee with my latest breath
For thy sad and cruel death,
For that last and bitter cry
Praise thee evermore on high. Amen.