“For: the Institute of contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt”
Here’s my project.
Here’s the pdf chord sheetpraise-to-the-lord-the-almighty
There are three reasons I love (and therefore chose) this song. First, I encountered this song while planting a youth church in Berlin, Germany. The original German hymn is a classic and just has some fabulously memorable lines stuck to a simple melody. The version I initially heard, however, was not the traditional one, but rather a lively slighty syncopated rock version by Tengerin Doo with front lady Stephanie Kleinen.
We then began using this song in our worship times and several others written by Stephanie. These songs resonated with our Youth, in part, because they were authentically German songs: written in German, by Germans for Germans. Even many of the songs which came out of the Jesus Freak movement (whose leadership has ties with the Vineyard, by the way) were written by Germans in English. At our own little church we sang several songs in English and several more written in English translated into German. We were often hard pressed finding original German material.
All this is to say that this song holds a special place in my missionary past…
The second reason why I love this song is that not only do some of those fabulously memorable lines survive the translation, still packing a punch in English, but Catherine Winkworth added some great lines herself by replacing some untraslatable or weak lines in the orignal. For example, the opening line in German: Lobe den Herren, den maechtige Koenig der Ehren, litterally translates: “Praise the Lord, the powerful King of Honors.”
Winkworth ups the adjective to the superlative with some alitteration and sight adjustments for meter: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation,” which changes also the focus of who the Lord is king of…Creation, no less. It amazes me, as a linguist, how a carfully creative translator can benefit a song.
This theme of creator (along with many others which I will have to leave out, i.e. savior, trinity…) continues often subtley throught the hymn. The second verse, for example, speaks of how God sustains through what he has ordained, which aludes to his foreknowledge in creating the world as it is and having set things in motion which would take thousands of years to come to fruition at just the right moment (like the messiah culmintion in Jesus whose promise comes with the curse.)
I think my favorite line which reads identically in German, “Ponder anew, what the Almighty can do” What hope!
Finaly, I love the musical possibilities Neander, Winkworth, and Heinen have left open. This song has so much room for incredible rhythyms, inovative harmonies, and the like. I would love to hear where someone else takes it…
-Marcus
P.S. My apologies about the clipping….
I did for the record make many changes of my own. It took the liberty of updating some of the words to this millenia. If you like the sustaineths and the e’res then you can always use the original. I also spruced up the E E A E E B interludes with the “Praise to the Lord” melody and I added the second interlude after the 3rd verse.
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