“How Great Thou Art” is one of those undying favorite hymns that most, if not all, of us have known for years. Unlike many favorite American hymns, both the text and tune come from Sweden. That kind of throws a monkey wrench in the notion that it is a stereotypical southern U. S. hymn. Sure, you may hear it through the open windows of a country church in lower Alabama, or your favorite version of it may be the one released by Carrie Underwood in 2014, but as much as we have adopted it as our own, the fact is that the text was first published in a Swedish newspaper in 1886!
Enter the author, Carl Boberg (1859-1940), a Swedish poet, politician, sailor, editor, and lay minister. The story goes that Boberg and his friends were walking home after an afternoon church service when a thunderstorm rolled in. Winds, rain, thunder, and lightning ran their course, eventually dissipating and leaving a rainbow over the meadow. Boberg was inspired by both the tempestuous and pacific aspects of nature. He saw this as awe-inspiring and expressed this feeling in the poem, “How Great Thou Art.” Boberg wrote the following about this inspiration. He also mentioned that it was a kind of paraphrase of Psalm 8.
“It was that time of year when everything seemed to be in its richest colouring; the birds were singing in trees and everywhere. It was very warm; a thunderstorm appeared on the horizon and soon there was thunder and lightning. We had to hurry to shelter. But the storm was soon over and the clear sky appeared.
When I came home I opened my window toward the sea. There evidently had been a funeral and the bells were playing the tune of ‘When eternity's clock calls my saved soul to its Sabbath rest.’ That evening, I wrote the song, ‘O Store Gud.’”
Later, the poem was pared with a Swedish folk tune and published in 1891. What we have come to know as verses three and four were actually written by Stuart Hine (1899-1989), a Methodist missionary. Hine eventually translated the original text into English, and included verses of his own writing. This is the way many texts come to be – through collaborative authorship over a period of years, decades, or even centuries. This hymn has been rated the second favorite hymn of all time, second only to, “Amazing Grace.”
Mozart’s, “Laudate Dominum,” is a very different type of piece. Rather than being a poem set to a folk tune that slowly was circulated around the world, the lyrics come verbatim from the Latin translation of Psalm 117. Just like in the Anglican tradition, the Roman Catholic Church has psalms assigned to nearly every liturgy. Mozart composed a setting of the vespers liturgy, “Vesperae solennes de confessore,” in 1780 for use in the liturgy of Salzburg Cathedral. “Laudate Dominum” is actually the penultimate movement of the larger six movement composition. One might expect that Mozart would take a rather boisterous approach when setting such a jubilant text. In English, the lyrics translate as, “Praise the Lord, all you nations. Praise him, all you peoples. Alleluia.” Instead, Mozart seems to express this inspiration in a language of awe and wonder. From the gentle accompaniment to the lyrical solo soprano line, this is music to lose yourself in – not something that hits you over the head. As with many good composers, Mozart’s music seems natural, eternal, inevitable.
These two pieces you will hear this Sunday, while very different, have much in common. Both express awe and wonder in the face of God’s majesty, both are inspired by the psalms, and both have transcended their original context to become loved all over the world.