HOTC #2: LSB 332, Savior of the Nations, Come

HOTCAdvent
Written By Ryan Frederick

Here we approach one of the great Advent hymns for which the Lutheran tradition is rightly famous. Indeed, it could rightly be said to be THE great Lutheran advent hymn. This tune stands among the most composed-upon melodies of all time, as we shall see.

The Author

This mosaic depicting St. Ambrose is located in the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, and may be an actual portrait, done while St. Ambrose was Bishop of Milan.

The author of the present work is, of course, Luther, who needs no introduction here. The history of this hymn goes back over 1,000 years before Luther, into the late Roman Empire, and begins with St. Ambrose of Milan, who composed the Latin precursor to this hymn, “Veni redemptor gentium.” He was Bishop of Milan from 374 to 397, and has been referred to as “The father of church hymnody,” and the “inventor of Christian Latin hymnody.” He was not the first to write hymns in the West (St. Hilary of Poitiers is a notable earlier example), however, it is from St. Ambrose that we have the greatest collection of complete surviving texts. Additionally, St. Augustine (who definitely heard St. Ambrose preach, and probably met him in person at some point) credits him with many other hymns which have been lost, or which have survived only in fragments. He (and possibly Augustine) were at one time credited with authorship of the Te Deum, however, modern scholarship has cast doubt on this assertion.

The Text

The German paraphrase of “Veni redemptor gentium,” “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” is a 1523 creation of Luther’s, done in a time of great creativity for the great reformer - many of his hymn texts come from around this same time. Luther’s paraphrase is in seven verses, tied very closely to the Latin original, with Luther appending his own eighth verse, a simple doxology. The English translation appearing in Lutheran Service Book is a composite work of several translators, but has the same general outline, and keeps quite closely to Luther’s work, even sacrificing many of the rhymes for the sake of the text (something Luther had likewise done with regard to the Latin, with similarly awkward results in the German text). See the side-by-side comparison of the Latin and German versions below, and compare with Lutheran Service Book’s English translation.

“Veni, redemptor gentium;
Ostende partum virginis;
Miretur omne saeculum.
Talis decet partus Deo.

Non ex virili semine,
Sed mystico spiramine
Verbum Dei factum est caro,
Fructusque ventris floruit.

Alvus tumescit virginis.
Claustrum pudoris permanet;
Vexilla virtutum micant,
Versatur in templo Deus.

Procedit e thalamo suo,
Pudoris aula regia,
Geminae gigans substantiae
Alacris ut currat viam.

Egressus eius a Patre,
Regressus eius ad Patrem;
Excursus usque ad inferos
Recursus ad sedem Dei.

Aequalis aeterno Patri,
Carnis tropaeo accingere,
Infirma nostri corporis
Virtute firmans perpeti.

Praesepe iam fulget tuum,
Lumenque nox spirat novum,
Quod nulla nox interpolet
Fideque iugi luceat.

Gloria tibi, Domine,
Qui natus es de virgine,
Cum Patre et Sancto Spiritu,
In sempiterna saecula.”
— St. Ambrose of Milan
“Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,
der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
dass sich wunder alle Welt,
Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.

Nicht von Manns Blut noch von Fleisch,
allein von dem Heiligen Geist
ist Gottes Wort worden Mensch
und blüht ein Frucht Weibes Fleisch.

Der Junfrauen Leib schwanger ward,
doch blieb Keuschheit rein bewahrt,
leucht hervor manche Tugend schon,
Gott war da in seinem Thron.

Er ging aus der Kammer sein,
dem königlichen Saal so rein,
Gott von Art und Mensch ein Held,
sein Weg er zu laufen eilt.

Sein Lauf kam vom Vater her
und kehrt wieder zum Vater,
fuhr hinunter zu der Höll
und wieder zu Gottes Stuhl.

Der du bist dem Vater gleich,
führ hinaus den Sieg im Fleisch,
dass dein ewige Gottesgewalt
in uns das kranke Fleisch erhalt.

Dein Krippen glänzt hell und klar,
die Nacht gibt ein neu Licht dar.
Dunkel muss nicht kommen drein,
der Glaub bleib immer im Schein.

Lob sei Gott dem Vater g’ton;
Lob sei Gott seim eingen Sohn,
Lob sei Gott dem Heilgen Geist
immer und in Ewigkeit.”
— Martin Luther, 1523

Luther himself preferred “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” as an Advent hymn, rather than a Christmas hymn as some others did. Indeed, it is one of only two Advent hymns in the Babst Hymnbook of 1545, the last hymnal to which Luther himself wrote a preface. It is traditionally the Hymn of the Day for the First Sunday in Advent, something that may go back as far as the hymn’s composition by Luther.

The hymn begins with a brief appeal for the Second Coming, before turning immediately (by the second half of the first verse) to a retrospective meditation on the Incarnation. The second verse clearly draws on the First Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, indeed St. Ambrose’s text in this verse almost seems to go through St. John 1 and simply vacuum up the Latin verbs and nouns. The end of the third verse and the entire fourth verse deal with the Incarnation directly, bringing St. Mary into the story and offering just a glimpse of the two natures of Christ. This is a theme that runs through the next couple of verses, with Verse Five sounding more like an exposition on the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed than an Advent hymn. In Verse Seven we return to a full-fledge Advent theme with an yet another allusion to St. John’s Gospel, Chapter 1: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (ESV). The whole closes with perhaps the best example of one of Luther’s doxologies.

The references in Verses Four through Six to the Incarnation and the very creedal nature of the order and tenor of these verses make this hymn especially pertinent on the First Sunday in Advent, when the Gospel reading traditionally focuses on the beginning of the Holy Week narrative (the traditional one-year lectionary as well as Year A take this from St. Matthew 21, while Year B takes it from St. Mark 11 and Year C from St. Luke 19).

“Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” as it appears in the Babst hymnbook, of 1545.

The Tune

The tune is another typical product of Luther’s collaboration with the composer Johann Walter, though the influence of Walther on the composition of this tune is unclear. The tune is an excerpt from the plainchant that would’ve accompanied St. Ambrose’s original text in the Latin breviaries of the time. Luther himself would certainly have been familiar with it as an Augustinian monk. This is made somewhat more explicit from the sheer number of hymn tunes that draw on sections or phrases from the same chant: both ERHALT UNS HERR (LSB #522, #579, #655, and #908) and VERLEIH UNS FRIEDEN (LSB #778) are taken from it, and the 9th Century plainchant VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS (LSB #499) borrows two lines from it, and is in turn the bedrock of KOMM GOTT SCHOPFER (LSB #498).

It is one of the most composed-upon melodies in the Lutheran tradition, with organ pieces from most of the major Protestant composers of the Baroque era (Johann Pachelbel, Dietrich Buxtehude, and of course J.S. Bach, just to name a few). Later Lutheran composers, such as Max Reger and Hugo Distler, did likewise.

Choral settings of both the text and the tune abound, with Bach setting the combination in two of his cantatas, BWV 61 and BWV 62. Georg Bohm’s cantata sets all eight of Luther’s verses in their entirety, and is a monument to the Lutheran cantata in the pre-Bach period of the Baroque.

Organ settings are commonplace, particularly in the Baroque era. Bach has two “short” setting, the opening piece from the Orgelbuchlein (BWV 599) in A minor, and a short fughetta in G minor (BWV 699); as well as three “large” settings: a hauntingly beautiful fantasia in G minor (BWV 659), a complex trio in G minor (BWV 660), and a manual fugue with the tune in the pedal (BWV 661).

Bach’s immediate antecedents also set the tune: Pachelbel’s is very typically Pachelbel, with the tune in the pedal (perhaps more accessible to the basic organist than the Bach settings mentioned previously); Buxtehude’s BuxWV 211 is in his archetypal chorale fantasia style, and is clearly a (shorter and simpler) predecessor of Bach’s BWV 659 (there will [some day] be an entire blog post here about the relationship between these two pieces); the young prodigy Nicolas Bruhns also has a setting worth mentioning here from the same period.

Later organ works worth mentioning include those by Hugo Distler and Max Reger (from his 52 Choralvorspiele, Op. 67, and one of the simpler works from a composer known for almost unplayable complexity).

Check out our NUN KOMM DER HEIDEN HEILAND playlist on The Lutheran Organist YouTube channel.

NUN KOMM DER HEIDEN HEILAND appears once more in Lutheran Service Book, with a different Advent text (LSB #352).

Ryan Frederick
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HOTC #3: LSB 333, Once He Came In Blessing
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HOTC #1: LSB 331, The Advent of Our King