In Germany in the seventeenth century it was customary for the congregation to sing “sermon hymn,” part immediately before the sermon and part just after the sermon had ended. Tobias Clausnitzer published such a hymn, “Liebster Jesu wir Sind hier, Dich und Dein Wort anzuhören” (Dearest Jesus, WE Are Here to Listen to Thee and Thy Word), to be sung before the sermon. The direct statements in the first two lines and throughout the hymn express the desire of the congregation to hear God’s Word, thus preparing their minds to receive the message of the sermon immediately to follow. The translation into English was made by Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878; see Biographies), keeping, as was her custom, to the original meter of the chorale.

Clausnitzer was born February 5, 1619, at Thum, near what is now, Karl-Marx-Stadt. During the last four years of the Thirty Years’ War he was chaplain to a Swedish regiment, leaving in 1649 after the peace of Westphalia. He became a Lutheran pastor at Weiden, a town in what is now East Germany, ministering there until his death on May 7, 1684. Winkworth’s title was “Before Public Worship,” and she adds the author’s name with the date 1671. Her translation appears in her Lyra Germanica, Second Series, 1858.

LIEBSTER JESU was published in 1664 by Johann Rudolph Ahle (1625-1673), of Mühlhausen in the Thuringian forest of East Germany, but for the words of another hymn in the same meter. Ahle was an accomplished organist and composer who copied the Italian school of rhythm and ornate melody in an attempt to break away from the dull and stodgy German church music of the time. His so-called sacred arias, however, were subjected to much criticism and were considered as introducing too lively a secular influencer into sacred singing. He served as organist at Erfurt and at St. Blasius Church in Mühlhausen.