The Enchiridion

Catherine Winkworth: Chorale Book for England

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Catherine Winkworth, William Sterndale Bennett and Otto Goldschmidt: The Chorale Book for England (1863): Title page and Extracts from the Preface, transcribed from a copy in the Congregational Library, London.

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[ Title Page ]

THE

CHORALE BOOK

FOR ENGLAND;

A COMPLETE HYMN-BOOK FOR PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WORSHIP, IN

ACCORDANCE WITH THE SERVICES AND FESTIVALS OF

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

 

THE HYMNS FROM THE

LYRA GERMANICA AND OTHER SOURCES,

TRANSLATED BY

CATHERINE WINKWORTH;

 

THE TUNES FROM THE SACRED MUSIC

OF THE

LUTHERAN, LATIN, AND OTHER CHURCHES,

FOR FOUR VOICES, WITH HISTORICAL NOTES, ETC, ETC,

 

COMPILED AND EDITED BY

WILLIAM STERNDALE BENNETT,

PROFESSOR OF MUSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

AND

OTTO GOLDSCHMIDT

 

LONDON:

LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS AND GREEN.

1863

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Brief extracts from Catherine Winkworth's Preface (dated Clifton, September, 1862)

" [ the collection is ] . . . intended primarily for use in united worship in the church and family, as also in meetings for the practice of church music. . . .

. . . many beautiful hymns contained in the Lyra Germanica have thus been excluded, because their length or purely reflective character render them ill-adapted for congregational singing, while a large number of new translations - about one-third of the whole - have been introduced, either for the sake of their tunes, or to supply necessary requirements of our services. These have been selected from various sources, chiefly from some very early German hymn-books, from the collections of Tucher and Wackernagel, from the new Bavarian hymn-book of the Lutheran Church, and from the Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch, Stuttgart, 1855, published by the Church Conference held in Eisenach in 1853. . . .

. . . [ The original hymns show . . . ] frequent use of double rhymes, which the structure of the German language renders as common, and indeed inevitable, in German, as monosyllabic rhymes are with us. The comparatively small number of the former, in our language, presents a serious obstacle to rendering the German hymns into English with the force and simplicity they possess in their own tongue. . . .

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(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 5/2/02)