A collection of hymnal companions/handbooks

Most denominational hymnbooks come with an accompanying "companion" or "handbook" volume that gives a lot of extra details about the hymns and authors and tunes and composers, where originally published, and so on. They are wonderful to browse through.

Here's an example:

I know that there are a number of books like 101 Hymn Stories and Come Let Us Adore Him: Stories Behind the Most Cherished Christmas Hymns available in Logos or Vyrso, but those tend to be more devotional in nature and necessarily are selective. Here, for comparison, is the write-up on that same hymn from CLUAH:

And from Amazing Grace—366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions:

These are nice, but sometimes what you want is more of a handbook/companion style write-up with "just the facts, ma'am!" And these hymnal companions are notoriously unavailable to most church members. The church has the hymnals in the pews, but the companion usually isn't even in the church library (maybe the organist or pianist or worship leader has a copy if they are a real hymn buff, but not likely in a small church), and they are often out of print or expensive. So, I'm suggesting a collection of some of the more important ones.

This would be a real specialist collection, so I'm not anticipating many takers, and thus Logos isn't likely to take me up on this idea. But still, a girl can dream...

The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion
Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Augsburg Fortress)
Companion to Church Hymnal (Church of Ireland; Columba Press) - the Irish/Celtic tradition of hymn-writing is very rich, so this would be a nice one to have
The Hymnal 1982 Companion, 4 Volume Set (Episcopal; Church Publishing Inc.)
Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Abingdon)
Hymnal Companion (Mennonite; Brethren Press) - Mennonites are known for being great four-part-harmony hymn singers and having a strong hymn tradition (though many have abandoned that)
Companion to Baptist Hymnal (Baptist Sunday School Board)
The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal (Concordia)
Companion to the Worshiping Church: A Hymnal (Hope Publishing) - this was the companion for the hymnal my Presbyterian church in Seattle used; totally obscure and out of print, though I own one in hard copy!

OK, that's enough. I realize this would be hard to do, because it's a bunch of different publishers, most of whom Logos doesn't have relationships with yet. But as I said, a girl can dream...

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Rosie Perera

Oh, and this wasn't just an idle request. I came across a claim that Luther had written a hymn called "God Is Dead" in a book I'm reading. I wanted to find it and research the veracity of that statement, and my searches led me to the German words: "O große Not, Gott selbst ist tot, Am Kreuz ist er gestorben, Hat dadurch das Himmelreich us aus Lieb' erworben" which I found in The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, which alas was only available in snippet view on Google Books. So I couldn't see the whole hymn nor figure out who actually wrote it. (It wasn't Luther, I'm pretty sure, because I found in this article that "the expression 'God is dead' does not occur in Luther's published hymns.")

Incidentally, the quote I came across was in Brian Zahnd's Beauty Will Save the World. He said "Martin Luther composed a Holy Saturday hymn entitled, 'God Is Dead.'" But he gave no source for that information, and thus far my research seems to be proving that it is false. But I'm deeply curious about this and would love to see the hymn if the one I've found is not the one Zahnd was referring to.

Sam Henderson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/589041#Comment_589041

Having Logos see this one through to production sooner rather than later would be a darn good start toward something like the kind of titles you are requesting Rosie:

https://www.logos.com/product/30280/hymnology-collection

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/589044#Comment_589044

I know. I've been waiting for that for ages! It's in production now. Can't be too much longer. (I hope.)

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/589041#Comment_589041

"O große Not, Gott selbst ist tot, Am Kreuz ist er gestorben, Hat dadurch das Himmelreich us aus Lieb' erworben"

Rosie,

this is really a strange one. It's not from Luther. The hymn is called "O Traurigkeit" (O darkest woe) and you can check it out e.g. here: http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/Lieder/otraurig.html

The verse you cited is from Johann Rist - it seems he wrote verses 2 to 8 in year 1641, however, many google hits wrongly claim 1741 (Rist lived 1607-1667 and is credited to be one of the most-renowned hymn-writers of the 17th century, which may cause the confusion).

The first verse was written in 1628, probably by Friedrich Spee (the Jesuit most known for his critique towards contemporary witch-hunting). Sometimes he is wrongly credited for the whole hymn.

The statement "God is dead" was deemed too challenging for hymn-singing by later editors and "Gott selbst ist tot" was changed to "Gott's Sohn liegt tot" (God's son lies dead) and this is the version printed in my hymnal from the 1980s.

EDIT: the link above gives an English text, too, and reads "O sorrow dread! God's Son is dead!" not "God self is dead!"

and for the theological discussion, we go to Logos:

"In the original words of the hymn “O Darkest Woe,” written by the seventeenth-century Lutheran hymn writer Johannes Rist (1607–67), we can even say, “O woe and dread, our God is dead.” God cannot die, and yet in the personal union of God and the human creature Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity was there on the cross, dying for us."

Robert Kolb, The Christian Faith: a Lutheran Exposition, electronic ed. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2000), 133. /EDIT

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/589048#Comment_589048

Thank you, Mick! I had tracked down the German words to the whole hymn here, but didn't find an English translation, and Google Translate did a poor job. The site you linked to has the English words too.

Robert Kolb, The Christian Faith: a Lutheran Exposition, electronic ed. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2000), 133.

I guess there's a book I'm going to want to own. I do have the Concordia Electronic Theological Library: Complete Collection in my list of resources to acquire one of these days.

I wonder where Zahnd got the idea that Luther wrote that hymn? Anyway, I'm very glad to have cleared up the confusion! Thanks. Now I can continue my reading. I get so little read because I'm always going off on all these rabbit trails as I read. [:)]

Here's the context of my puzzlement:

And towards the end there, you can see why I ended up requesting Aidan Nichols's books on beauty and the arts. Sigh, I'll never get anything finished if I create so many more rabbit trails for myself...

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/589050#Comment_589050

hunting this rabbit further: http://www.hymnary.org/text/o_traurigkeit_o_herzeleid?sort=text-authors (it also has a biographical entry on Rist, coming from https://www.logos.com/product/30280/hymnology-collection#002 - well sort of - and showing him as a first-rank protestant hymn writer)

I wonder where Zahnd got the idea that Luther wrote that hymn?

Maybe because it condenses an idea that Luther laid out in his well-known treatise about the babylonian captivity of the church. He discusses the meaning of the eucharistic sacrament and writes:

This testament of Christ is foreshadowed in all the promises of God from the beginning of the world; indeed, whatever value those ancient promises possessed was altogether derived from this new promise that was to come in Christ. Hence the words compact, covenant, and testament of the Lord occur so frequently in the Scriptures. These words signified that God would one day die. “For where there is a testament, the death of the testator must of necessity occur” (Heb. 9[:16]). Now God made a testament; therefore, it was necessary that he should die. But God could not die unless he became man. Thus the incarnation and the death of Christ are both comprehended most concisely in this one word, testament.

Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. William R. Russell and Timothy F. Lull, Third Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 212.