HOTC #7: LSB 896, Now Greet the Swiftly Changing Year
When Christmas falls on a Sunday, it follows that New Year’s Day also falls on a Sunday. In the occasional years when this happens (and the years when New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday, I suppose) we get to break into one of the dusty corners of Lutheran Service Book: the New Year’s hymns!
January 1 is also appointed as the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord and The Name of Jesus, for which Lutheran Service Book has other hymns, especially LSB #898, The Ancient Law Departs, though the event is referenced in the second verse of the hymn we are considering today.
The Circumcision by Peter Paul Rubens
The Author
Another anonymous text, this hymn originated in the Slovak language of central Europe in the 17th Century. The earliest printed source is a Prague hymnbook from either 1602 or 1606.
Jaroslav Vajda
(1919-2008)
Not for the last time in our travels through Lutheran hymnody, we have the prodigious talents of Jaroslav Vajda to thank for this translation, and it’s worth taking a few sentences here to introduce him. Vajda was the son of ethnically Slovak parents; his father was a Lutheran pastor, and all three of the Vajda boys (Jaroslav and his two brothers) would go on to become Lutheran pastors as well. A talented youth, he was translating Slovak poetry at the age of 15, though he would not write his first hymn until the age of 49. In the following 40 years he would go on to produce over 200 original hymns and/or original translations of hymns. Hymnary.com associates him with no less than 54 separate texts, and his work appears in at least 65 hymnals today. Having studied at Concordia College in Ft. Wayne, he received his B.A. from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, in 1941 and his bachelor’s degree in Divinity in 1944, and his work is particularly prized in the Lutheran tradition - his hymns made their debut in LCMS hymnals in the Worship Supplement of 1969, and his work has graced Lutheran Worship, Hymnal Supplement ‘98, and (obviously) Lutheran Service Book. His contributions, either as author or as translator, to Lutheran Service Book run to ten hymns: LSB #396, LSB #371, LSB #445, LSB #484, LSB #491, LSB #593, LSB #896, LSB #910, LSB #922, and LSB #945.
Yeah, we’ll be seeing some more of this guy.
The Text
Vajda produced the present text in 1968, and in doing so trimmed and rearranged the original text, going from an original 15 (!) verses down to the eight which appeared in Worship Supplement in 1969. Lutheran Book of Worship omitted the fourth verse of the 1968 work, and that final product has appeared in Lutheran hymnals since.
The overarching theme of this text is that of gratitude to the Almighty for his provision for humanity, both spiritually and temporally. In this it shares much with the text on the facing page, Martin Rinckart’s Lutheran classic Now Thank We All Our God.
The first verse calls the reader/singer to greet the new year with “joy and penitence sincere” before introducing the phrase whose parallelism will become the defining feature of this text, as the singer is implored to “Rejoice! Rejoice! With thanks embrace/Another year of grace.”
The second verse makes the only overt reference to the Feast of the Circumcision, which of course falls on New Year’s Day - an association which might not be immediately clear to congregations who choose to observed the Second Sunday in Christmas instead of Circumcision/Name of Jesus. Verse three loops in the theme of Jesus’ name, reminding us that “Jesus” quite literally means “Savior.”
With half the syllables in each verse taken up by the recurring “Rejoice! Rejoice!…” lyrics, the 16 styllables remaining at the beginning of each verse leave precious little space for elaborate theological vocabulary, and indeed the points are made succinctly as the verses fly past.
The fourth and fifth verses continue the theme of God’s “love abundant” in the new year, with the fifth verse being the only one to break the “Rejoice! Rejoice!” pattern, though still finishing with the parallel “…year of grace!” ending.
In verse six, the singer hearkens back only a few days, to the angels on Christmas Eve, a brief reminder that this is still the season of Christmas, before the the hymn concludes with a trinitarian appeal for the Almighty to hear our pleas “…In this new year of grace.”
The parallel wording of each verse, which is essentially a refrain with the exception of the aforementioned fifth verse, is very effective, and made more so when paired with this tune. It is, to my mind, almost an opposite bookend to the refrain from O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, which is traditionally sung during Advent.
The Tune
This somewhat less familiar hymntune is by the prolific contemporary composer Alfred V. Fedak, who counts to his credit some 300-plus choral and organ works, as well as some 100 hymntunes in print around the world. This is his only musical contribution to appear in Lutheran Service Book, and was first published in an octavo by Concordia Publishing House in 1985.
Notably, Mr. Fedak is credited with the highest-ever score on the written portion of the American Guild of Organist’s examination for fellowship, having scored 95% on the exhaustive (and, one presumes, exhausting) seven hour examination.
The tune is in a lively 6/8 meter, which may challenge some beginning or less-experienced musicians. The leap of a fourth that begins each phrase serves to create momentum as the phrases descend the major scale, whereas the final phrase ascends that same portion of the scale before leaping to the concluding cadence. The hymn must be played quite lightly and quickly in order for that momentum to be realized and for clarity in the litle ornamental eighth-note flourishes that end each phrase.
As this is a very modern hymntune (it was first published the year I was born!), there are a limited number of resources in which to locate settings of the tune. The list at the end of this blog post has endeavored, however, to collect as many of them as possible.
Settings of this hymn and/or tune may be found in:
For organ:
Concordia Hymn Prelude Library, Vol. 10
Alternate harmonizations:
Basic Hymn Accompaniments, Volume III
For choir:
Now Greet The Swiftly Changing Year by Alfred V. Fedak - SATB with organ (this piece is the original source for this tune)