Nun lobet Gott im hohen Thron / From all that dwell below the skies (Chorale setting)
- Disposition: two parts (AT) a capella
- Composer: Melody: Caspar Ulenberg, Arrangement: Christoph Dalitz
- First Publication: 2008
- Text: after Psalm 117. German text: Caspar Ulenberg (1603), English text: Isaac Watts (1719)
- License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
Polyphonic two part setting of a metric psalm from the second edition of Caspar Ulenberg's "Psalmen David's in allerlei deutsche Gesangreime gebracht" (Cologne, 1603) with the cantus firmus in the lower voice. This hymn can still be found in many modern hymn books, so that this Bicinium can be sung alternating with the congregation hymn.
To make this piece also accessible to English speaking singers, I have prepared an English version by underlying the metric translation "From all that dwell below the skies" of the same Psalm from Isaac Watt's "Psalms Imitated in the Language of the New Testament" (1719). As a third stanza, I have added the common metric English doxology by Thomas Ken (1674).
I am grateful to the folks at www.cgmusic.com for making a number of historic and now public domain metric psalm translations available online. If you find my choice of text underly unsatisfactory, feel free to pick any other from this great pool of psalm translations.
Download
German version (PDF, one A4 page, 20kB)
with Ulenberg's psalm translation.
English version
(PDF, one A4 page, 20kB) with Isaac Watt's translation of the same Psalm.
ABC Datei for transpositions or other
text underlays (can, e.g., be edited with
flabc).
There is also an audio sample available.