From Heaven Above - A Christmas Hymn
From Heaven Above to Earth I Come (Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her)
The words of the hymn were written by Martin Luther, for his five year old son. The hymn has 15 verses.
Luther originally used the melody of a tavern song "Ich komm aus fremden Landen her" for his words, but later the tune was "ejected" from the hymnbooks because of the tavern associations. The anonymous melody currently in use was chosen by Johann Walther in 1551.
The original melody Luther chose.
The current melody Walther chose.
Some people claim that there is a reference to this melody in BWV 127.1, but to my mind it is a stretch. "In the very first 5 measures, Bach establishes Christ’s descent with an untexted musical reference to the famous Christmas chorale by Luther “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her” [“From heaven on high, that’s where I come from.”] by having the highest-sounding instruments (recorders, in this instance) representing the heights of heaven begin in the very first measure with a vague attempt (the first interval drop is ‘tonal’ rather than ‘real’ – it is a full-step/tone down rather than just a half-step/tone down in the original melody."
Comment from: Schweitzer: Believing, as he said, that "the devil does not need all the good tunes for himself", Luther formed his Christmas hymn "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her" out of the melody of the riddle-song "Ich komm aus fremden Landen her" - in which the singer propounds a riddle and takes her garland from the maiden who cannot solve it [8]. Afterwards, however, he had to let the devil have the melody back again, for even after its conversion it haunted every dancing-place and every tavern. In 1551 Walther ejected it from the hymn-book, replacing it by the tune to which Luther's Christmas hymn is sung to this day [9].
[9] Böhme was the first to conjecture that the ground of the ejectment
of the first melody was its profane power of resistance See Zelle p.
49. The new melody - the one now current - (Bach V, No. 49 and pp. 92
ff.) is found in a Leipzig hymn-book as early as 1539.
Here is an article discussing the Chorale, its development and its use in the Lutheran litergy.
| The music: | BWV 248.9 | A four part chorale with orchestral interludes between phrases. | |
| BWV 248.17 | A four part chorale. | ||
| BWV 248.23 | A four part chorale with orchestral interludes between phrases. | ||
| BWV 606 | An organ chorale. | ||
| BWV 700 | An organ chorale. | ||
| BWV 701 | An organ chorale. | ||
| BWV 738 | An organ chorale. | ||
| The Vom Himmel hoch Variations: | BWV 769.1 | ||
| BWV 769.2 | |||
| BWV 769.3 | |||
| BWV 769.4 | |||
| BWV 769.5 |
MP3 files of these chorales are available. If you want one, leave me a note in a comment with your email address and I will send it. Unfortunately, the files are too large to put them on my ftp server for general distribution.
Some names under which this chorale is known:
Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her
From Heaven Above to Earth I Come
Translations from the Emmanuel Music website:
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