Kommunionsång i Svenska kyrkan

Abstract

Communion Song i the Church of Sweden

The reformation took different shapes in the Nordic countries. While the ecclesia danica (Denmark, Norway, Iceland) grew similar to the church of the northern German areas, the ecclesia suecana (including Sweden and Finland until 1809) got features more similar to those in the ecclesia anglicana, and had, among other things, a rather conservative fundamental understanding of which things were necessary and suitable for the unity of the Church and her liturgical life. Not least in liturgy, »good old traditions» were kept. The vernacular principle of the reformation gave rise to extensive work on the liturgy in Swedish and Finnish. Latin, however, was by no means abandoned. It was a condition for the transmission of the rich heritage of chants and hymns.

The bilingual shape of the liturgy was most apparent in the consecration and the communion parts of the mass. Sanctus and Agnus Dei could be sung in their many different tunes, in accordance with the feast celebrated, and, as before, also very much depending on the local musical resources. The texts of these songs were either in Latin or in the vernacular. The translation of the medieval tropes, in contrast, was more difficult. Nevertheless, this chant type was represented, but as vernacular hymns »pro communio», i.e. instead of the Latin communio de tempore. It was stated that the words of institution should always be said in the vernacular. In the same way, it seems that the communio had to be sung in the vernacular. In the rubrics of the mass, particular communio songs were recommended. In the missal of1531 they were two and they had their texts from the New Testament. In the one of 1541, some songs of different types were mentioned but all had medieval roots and two of them were enlarged by Martin Luther.

Almost all these songs are still part of the Church of Sweden’s hymnbook, although only two of them are still placed among the communion songs. They happen to be the songs enlarged by Luther, namely »Jesus Christus nostra salus» and »Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet», as the German title reads. This article focuses on the last one of these songs, with the aim to describe the reformed East Nordic communio tradition up to 1809 and its continuation afterwards in the Church of Sweden.

Firstly, it is stated that the song consists of two interlacing »leisen», known from the middle of the 14th century. These appear as refrains in Thomas ab Aquino’s famous sequence Lauda Sion salvatorem, originally belonging to the Corpus Christi feast. The text and the tune of the sequence, as well as the »twin leisen» were written down in a beautiful processionale from Mainz around 1400. In 1523, Luther strongly recommended these twin leisen to be sung after the communion, and the year after, the text and the tune were printed in a setting by Johann Walter. In that edition as well as in a text booklet some months earlier, the old chant had been prolonged by Martin Luther. He had written two new twin leisen, which were structured in the same way as the medieval ones and which were integrated as the second and third stanzas of the song. In the article, it is claimed that the main source for these two new stanzas is the Thomas sequence. In this concentrated form, the main content of the devotional sequence was thus transmitted to reformed Eucharistic celebration.

In 1536, the translation of this song into Swedish was printed without notes in a small hymnbook. The interpretation is good although the metre often is limping. Eighty years ago, based on linguistic features, the hymnologist Emil Liedgren assumed that the first lines of the Swedish text were medieval. That opinion is reinforced here. Among the circumstances indicating the existence of the old twin leisen also in medieval East Nordic vernacular are variants of their tune in some 17th century manuscripts, which are more similar to German medieval records than to the one of Johann Walter. It was however Walter’s redaction that was adopted in the East Nordic hymnbook of 1695/97, the first one that contained printed notes. In spite of that, most manuscripts from the 18th century continued the earlier tradition.

Only slightly modified the communion hymn served for three centuries. In the hymnbook of 1819/20, however, the song was radically changed by the famous hymn writer J. O. Wallin, later on archbishop of Uppsala, in collaboration with the learned musician J. C. F. Hæffner. Hæffner maintained that authentic hymns, such as this one, should be both isometric and syllabic. In order to rescue the melismatic tones of the Kyrie eleison phrases 5 and 10, he asked Wallin to write a new expanded text. Wallin chose to replace the Kyrie by »Dig vare pris, o Herre Gud [Praise be to you, oh Lord God]!». This is a symbol of a revision resulting in a completely new text: the collective devotional song had become individualistic, and realistic wordings concerning incarnation and earthly sacramental realities had been omitted. A few decades later, it was obvious that the song had died away.

There were no plans to bring the song back to life during the preparation of the hymnbook of 1937/39. Soon, however, the situation was to change quite radically. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Eucharist was a rare guest in most congregations. After that, however, a Eucharistic revival has grown and is now a characteristic mark of the liturgical life in most regions of the Church of Sweden. Traces of the revival can be seen in liturgical books renewed in the late 1930s, including the hymnbook of 1937/39, which contains some communion hymns with a new Eucharistic spirit. The tendency was considerably strengthened when new editions of the books were approved in the middle of the 1980s, in the hymnbook of1986. Now time had come for the rehabilitation of the old communion hymn. In that process, the tune has not been shaped in accordance with the traditional mainstream East Nordic tradition but has received a redaction very similar to Johann Walter’s and the form in the hymnbook of 1697.The text by Wallin was naturally excluded and so was also the text from the hymnbook of 1536. The priest and poet Anders Frostenson, represented with two Eucharistic hymns already in the hymnbook of 1937/39, went back to the German version and reinterpreted the mixed medieval and reformatory twin leisen in a masterly way.