Carl Boberg

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Carl Gustaf Boberg
Carl Gustaf Boberg

Carl Boberg (1859 August 16 – 1940 January 17) was a Swedish poet, writer, and legislator best known for writing the original Swedish lyrics of "O Store Gud" (O great God, the hymn per se being known universally in English by its common title "How Great Thou Art"). Born in Mönsterås, Sweden, near Kalmar, Boberg was a carpenter’s son, worked briefly as a sailor, and served as a lay minister. He was the editor of a weekly Christian newspaper, Sanningsvittnet (Witness of the Truth), from 1890 until 1916. Boberg served in the Swedish Parliament for 20 years from 1912 to 1931. He published more than 60 poems, hymns and gospel songs,[1] including a collaboration with Swedish hymnist Lina Sandell. Nonetheless it is "How Great Thou Art"——one of the most recorded hymns ever——that has preserved Carl Boberg’s name in history. [2]


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[edit] Origin of "How Great Thou Art"

Boberg wrote the poem "O Store Gud" in 1885 with nine verses. The inspiration for the poem came when Boberg was walking home from church near Kronabäck, Sweden, and listening to church bells. A sudden awe-inspiring storm gripped Boberg’s attention, and then just as suddenly as it had made its violent entrance, it subsided to a peaceful calm which Boberg observed over Mönsterås Bay.

Boberg first published "O Store Gud" in the Mönsterås Tidningen (Mönsterås News) on 1886 March 12 and later sold the rights to the Svenska Missionsförbundet (see Mission Covenant Church of Sweden). Inexorably the poem became matched to an old Swedish folk tune[3] and sung in public for the first known occasion in 1888; in 1891 Boberg published the tune together with the words in Sanningsvittnet. These versions were all in 3/4 time. In 1894 the Svenska Missionsförbundet sångbok[4] published "O Store Gud" in 4/4 time as it has been sung ever since (cf. Time signature).

[edit] Translation and migration of the song

After 1894 the song made a most remarkable multinational odyssey. It was first translated from Swedish to German by Manfred von Glehn (1867-1924),[5] who had heard the hymn in Estonia. The song became popular in Germany, where "Wie groß bist Du" is the common title (the first line is "Du groβer Gott").[6] Eventually, the German version traveled to the Soviet Union where a Russian version managed to get published in 1927 by Ivan S. Prochanov.[7]

British missionary Stuart K. Hine[8] first heard the song while on a mission to the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, near the Poland border, in 1927. Hine made his lucid and smooth English translation in the late 1930s, one verse being creatively rendered in English as follows:

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Hine eventually brought the hymn to England at the conclusion of his mission. The poem became popular in each country that it reached. British missionaries began to spread the song around the world to former British colonies in Africa and India in approximately its current English version (see mention of changes below made by Manna Music).

In a small village near Deolali, India, Dr. J. Edwin Orr of the Fuller Theological Seminary discovered the song being sung by a choir of the Naga tribe near Burma. From there it returned with Orr to the United States. Hine sold the song in the mid-1950s to Manna Music of Burbank, California. The Manna Music editors changed "works" and "mighty" in Hine's original translation to "worlds" and "rolling" respectively; with these changes the song was popularized as the “signature song” of the 1950s Billy Graham Crusades. The Manna Music version is the one widely sung in English-language churches.[9]

Although lyrics often suffer in translation, "O Store Gud" remarkably picked up pathos and convergence with the melody and harmony as the hymn migrated from Swedish to German to Russian to English. "O Store Gud" became more popular in Sweden after the dissemination of "How Great Thou Art" in English. Swedish gospel singer Per-Erik Hallin has credited Elvis Presley's rendition of "How Great Thou Art" as a major factor in the revival of "O Store Gud" in Sweden. [10] Many churchgoing Swedes are more familiar with the English translation than with the indigenous Swedish.

"How Great Thou Art" was ranked second (after "Amazing Grace") on a list of the favorite hymns of all time in a survey by Christianity Today in 2001. George Beverly Shea's recording of the beloved hymn ranks number 204 on the top recordings of the 20th century according to the Recording Industry Association of America. In English the first line is "O Lord, my God"; and the hymn may appear with that heading, especially in British hymnals, where first-line citation is the dominant practice.[11] English-language hymnals prevailingly indicate the tune title as the Swedish first line, O STORE GUD.


See also the "How Great Thou Art" Wikipedia article. For the Swedish Wikipedia's articles on Carl Boberg and "How Great Thou Art" respectively, click these links: Carl Boberg http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Boberg and "How Great Thou Art" ("O Store Gud") http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_store_Gud .

[edit] References

  1. ^ Technically a gospel song differs from a hymn in that the gospel song invariably has a refrain and customarily (though not always) uses a less stately cadence. The gospel song, as a musical form, spread widely in Protestantism during the 19th century and to a lesser extent in Roman Catholicism; Eastern Orthodox churches largely continue to adhere to chants in the worship per se. Unless altered considerably, O STORE GUD and "How Great Thou Art" form a gospel song. "Amazing Grace" (when sung to its own familiar tune, which lacks a refrain) is a hymn.
  2. ^ These and other facts are detailed by Forrest Mason McCann (1997), Hymns & History: An Annotated Survey of Sources (Abilene, TX: ACU Press), ISBN 0-89112-058-0 , pp. 224-225, 360, 584.
  3. ^ Numerous musicologists (see, e.g., http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst-Wessel-Lied) have pointed out that the metrical pattern and chord progressions of "O Store Gud" are similar to those of the "Horst Wessel Lied" (first line "Die Fahne hoch"), which the Nazis customarily appended to "Deutschland über Alles" (the German national anthem). Informed opinion overwhelmingly denies that Horst Wessel composed that tune, the view which Dr Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, made legally exclusive in Nazi Germany. A likely explanation is that Wessel heard the tune from World War I veterans of the German Imperial Navy, where numerous such melodies had circulated in the fleet. In metrical pattern and chord progressions "O Store Gud" is similar to scores of tunes prevalent in the folk traditions of Scandinavia and the Baltic region during the decades preceding World War I. Although "O Store Gud" and "Horst Wessel Lied" both have an 11.10.11.10 metrical pattern in the verses, "O Store Gud" switches to 10.8.10.8 in the refrain, but "Horst Wessel Lied" either repeats the 11.10 of the last two lines of the verse as the refrain or (optionally) ends without refrain. Subject to specific caveats respecting scholarship and artistry, "Horst Wessel Lied" has been censored in Germany since the end of World War II, but "How Great Thou Art" ("Wie groß bist Du") is sung there freely.
  4. ^ http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Missionsf%C3%B6rbundets_s%C3%A5ngbok_1894 .
  5. ^ How Great Thou art / O store Gud / Wie groß bist du gospel christian songs free mp3 midi download
  6. ^ http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2007/s07100068.htm , http://ingeb.org/spiritua/howgreat.html .
  7. ^ William Kahle, (1978), Evangelische Christen in Russland und der Sovetunion: Ivan Stepanovic Prochanov (1869-1935) u.d. Weg d. Evangeliumschristen u. Baptisten (Frankfurt am Main: Oncken), ISBN-10 3789370568 / ISBN-13 978-3789370564 .
  8. ^ ~ How Great Thou Art ~
  9. ^ Copyright information, together with indication that Hine finalized his English translation in 1949, cited from Forrest Mason McCann & Jack Boyd, editors, (1986), Great Songs of the Church Revised (Abilene, Texas: ACU Press), Item 60. ISBN 0-915547-90-2 .
  10. ^ http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=O_store_Gud .
  11. ^ See, e.g., Albert E. Winstanley & Graham A. Fisher, editors, (1995), Favourite Hymns of the Church (Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: Eye-Opener Publications), ISBN 0-9514359-1-4 , Item 14, which contains two verses that Hine translated and that are generally omitted from hymnals published in the United States:

    O when I see ungrateful man defiling
    This bounteous earth, God's gifts so good and great;
    In foolish pride, God's holy Name reviling,
    And yet, in grace, His wrath and judgment wait.

    When burdens press, and seem beyond endurance,
    Bowed down with grief, to Him I lift my face;
    And then in love He brings me sweet assurance:
    'My child! for thee sufficient is my grace'.

[edit] External links