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Johann Sebastian Bach

1685 - 1750 Person Name: J. S. Bach, 1685-1750 Arranger of "O JESULEIN SÜSS" in Hymnal Supplement 98 Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach into a musical family and in a town steeped in Reformation history, he received early musical training from his father and older brother, and elementary education in the classical school Luther had earlier attended. Throughout his life he made extraordinary efforts to learn from other musicians. At 15 he walked to Lüneburg to work as a chorister and study at the convent school of St. Michael. From there he walked 30 miles to Hamburg to hear Johann Reinken, and 60 miles to Celle to become familiar with French composition and performance traditions. Once he obtained a month's leave from his job to hear Buxtehude, but stayed nearly four months. He arranged compositions from Vivaldi and other Italian masters. His own compositions spanned almost every musical form then known (Opera was the notable exception). In his own time, Bach was highly regarded as organist and teacher, his compositions being circulated as models of contrapuntal technique. Four of his children achieved careers as composers; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Chopin are only a few of the best known of the musicians that confessed a major debt to Bach's work in their own musical development. Mendelssohn began re-introducing Bach's music into the concert repertoire, where it has come to attract admiration and even veneration for its own sake. After 20 years of successful work in several posts, Bach became cantor of the Thomas-schule in Leipzig, and remained there for the remaining 27 years of his life, concentrating on church music for the Lutheran service: over 200 cantatas, four passion settings, a Mass, and hundreds of chorale settings, harmonizations, preludes, and arrangements. He edited the tunes for Schemelli's Musicalisches Gesangbuch, contributing 16 original tunes. His choral harmonizations remain a staple for studies of composition and harmony. Additional melodies from his works have been adapted as hymn tunes. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Valentin Thilo

1607 - 1662 Person Name: Valentin Thilo, 1607-62 Author of "O Jesus So Sweet, O Jesus So Mild" in Christian Worship (1993) Thilo, Valentin, son of Valentin Thiel or Thilo [born Jan. 2, 1579, at Zinten, became diaconus of the Altstadt Church in 1603, and died of the pestilence at Königsberg in 1620], diaconus of the Altstadt Church in Königsberg, was born at Königsberg, April 19, 1607. He matriculated in 1624 at the University of Königsberg as a student of theology, but devoted himself more especially to the study of rhetoric. When the Professor of Rhetoric, Samuel Fuchs, retired in 1632, he recommended Thilo as his successor. The post was, at Thilo's desire, kept open for two years, during which he pursued his studies at the University of Leyden. On returning to Königsberg, he graduated M.A. there on April 20, 1634, and was thereafter installed as Professor of Rhetoric. During his 28 years’ tenure of office he was five times elected as dean of the Philosophical Faculty, and twice as Rector of the University. He died at Königsberg, July 27,1662. (Koch, iii 202; K. Goedeke's Grundriss, vol. iii., 1887, p. 135, &c.) Thilo was a great friend of Heinrich Albert and of Simon Dach, and was with them a member of the Königsberg Poetical Union. He was the author of two text books on Rhetoric, published in 1635 and 1647. Some of his separately printed occasional poems are noted by Goedeke as above. His hymns were almost all written for various Festivals of the Christian Year. They are as a rule short and vigorous, and are somewhat akin to those of Dach. They appeared principally in the Preussische Fest-Lieder, Elbing, 1642-44 [Berlin Library], and in the New Preussisches vollständiges Gesang-Buch, Königsberg, 1650 [Hamburg Library]. A list of their first lines is printed in the Altpreussische Monats-schrift, Königsberg, 1889, p. 308, where evidence is given to show that they are by the younger Thilo, and not, as has sometimes been said, by the father. The only hymn by Thilo translated into English is:— Mit Ernst, o Menschenkinder. Advent. This is a fine hymn founded on St. Luke iii. 4, 5, and was first published in pt. i., Elbing, 1642, of the Preussische Fest-Lieder, as No. 8, in 4 stanzas of 8 lines, entitled "On the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Parate viam Domino," and marked as by "Valentinus Thilo." Lauxmann, in Koch, viii. 8, considers st. iii. the finest, and thinks that it may have been suggested by the remembrance of his beloved sister (wife of Pastor Kuhn, of the Rossgart Church in Königsberg), who died of the pestilence on Aug. 16, 1639, and as a picture of her character. Translated as:— 1. 0 sons of men, your spirit. This is a good translation of st. i.-iii., by A. T. Russell, as No. 35 in his Psalms & Hymns 1851. 2. Ye sons of men, in earnest. This is a good translation of the original form, by Miss Winkworth, as No. 84 in her Chorale Book for England, 1863. It is repeated, omitting st. iii., in the Ohio Lutheran Hymnal 1880, No. 121. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.] -- Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Frieda Pietsch

1904 - 1982 Translator of "O Jesus So Sweet, O Jesus So Mild" in Christian Worship (1993) Frieda Emilie Priebbenow (née Pietsch) was born September 13, 1904, in Murtoa, Victoria, Australia, to Paul Johannes Pietsch and Anna Elizabeth Pietsch (née Zadow). One of nine children, she grew up on a farm called Pleasant View in the Wimmera District of Victoria, in Kewell North. She attended the Lutheran Day School. In Lutheran school, she studied the Holy Bible and grew to love studying scripture. In 1928, she moved with her brother, an ordained Lutheran pastor, to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Greenwood, Queensland, where she served as his housekeeper. She met a farmer at her brother’s church, Johann (John) Hermann Priebbenow. He was the organist at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Greenwood. Frieda’s two hymn translations were published in The Australian Lutheran, the periodical of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Australia (later Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia). “O Jesus so sweet, O Jesus so mild,” her translation of “O Jesulein süss, O Jesulein mild” (LSB 546), was printed in the December 20, 1932, issue. Her second hymn translation, a work by Friedrich Samuel Dreger (1798-1859) “Mein Schifflein geht behende” appeared as a five-stanza hymn beginning “My ship is deftly wending” in the February 17, 1933, issue. Because these hymns were published before she married, they appear under her maiden name. Her sons, Clarence and Harold, in emails and a letter dated February 3, 2009, and February 8, 2009, to the editor, Peter Reske, for the Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, c2019) said that their mother had translated other hymns from German, but these have not been identified. Frieda Priebbenow died on July 20, 1982. Jean Katherine Neuhauser Baue (With great appreciation to Peter Reske; Source: Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, volume 2, p. 578)