"Mein ganzes Herz erhebet dich" (My whole heart magnifies You) is the beginning of German hymns to a melody from the 16th century, which paraphrase

Psalm 138 Psalm 138 is the 138th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "I will praise thee with my whole heart". In Latin, it is known as "Confitebor tibi Domine in toto corde meo". The psalm is a hymn psalm. In the ...

. They are part of Protestant and Catholic hymnals.

History

A rhymed version in French of Psalm 138 appeared in the

Genevan Psalter The ''Genevan Psalter'', also known as the ''Huguenot Psalter'', is a metrical psalter in French created under the supervision of John Calvin for liturgical use by the Reformed churches of the city of Geneva in the sixteenth century. Background ...

. This psalter was used by the

Huguenots The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss politica ...

, who were persecuted in France for more than two centuries but nonetheless sang psalms and derived strength from doing so. The melody appeared first in Paris in 1530. Like other melodies of the Psalter, it was simple, spanning only an octave, and in easy rhythm of notes in only two

values In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of dif ...

. The Reformed pastor wrote new texts in German to the Genevan melodies, published first as ''Neue Bereimung der Psalmen'' in 1798, paying closer attention to the biblical originals than the Genevan Psalter, expanded in 1806 to ''Die Psalmen Davids neu übersetzt und in Reime gebracht''. He wrote Psalm 138 in four

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...

s, which became part of the Protestant hymnal ''

Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch The Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch (EKG, literally: Protestant church songbook) was the first common hymnal of German-speaking churches in the Protestant state churches (''Landeskirchen'') in Germany and the Protestant churches in Austria. It was ...

'' as EKG 470. Grunewald, Eckhard, Henning P. Jürgens and Jan R. Luth (eds.) (2004)
"Die deutsche Neutextierung des Genfer Psalters durch Matthias Jorissen (1798)."
in ''Der Genfer Psalter und seine Rezeption in Deutschland, der Schweiz und den Niederlanden''. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 331-346. A hymn with the same

incipit The incipit () of a text is the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label. In a musical composition, an incipit is an initial sequence of notes, having the same purpose. The word ''incipit'' comes from Latin and means "it beg ...

and the same melody, but with an otherwise changed text in three stanzas, appeared in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

in 1941. In the 1970s, the French pastor Roger Chapal revised this version, as all other psalms. It was included in the Catholic hymnal ''Gotteslob'' of 1975, as GL 264. This hymn appears in the ''

Gotteslob ''Gotteslob'' ("Praise of God") is the title of the hymnbook authorized by the Catholic dioceses in Germany, Austria, South Tyrol, Luxembourg and Liège, Belgium. First published in Advent 2013, it is the current official hymnal for German-speaki ...

'' of 2013 as GL 143, in the section "Gesänge zur Eröffnung", suitable for the opening of a service. The hymn has often been set to music. In the Protestant hymnal '' Evangelisches Gesangbuch'', it appears in regional sections, such as EG 620 in Baden and EG 634 in the Lippe region.

References

External links

Mein ganzes Herz erhebet dich (GL 264)
(text of 1941 version in German, English and French) denken-im-glauben.de
Mein ganzes Herz erhebet dich
(Four-part setting) Johann Paul Zehetbauer * {{Hymns and songs based on Psalms 20th-century hymns in German Psalm settings