A Mighty Fortress Is Our God: A Song History
Martin Luther wrote both the words and the melody of Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott; Hymnary.org dates the text to 1527–29 and notes that its first three stanzas draw on Psalm 46.[1] The hymn existed by 1529, when it appeared in at least three printings, among them a Wittenberg hymnal from Joseph Klug that no longer survives; it is sometimes tied to the second Diet of Speyer that spring, and Klug’s 1533 edition is the most trustworthy early copy to survive.[2] Luther’s tune began as a lively, freely syncopated line,[2] but by Bach’s day it had been smoothed into the even, stately rhythm most English speakers know, and Bach’s Cantata 80 supplies the harmony heard in many hymnals.[3] Some Lutheran churches, notably the Missouri Synod, still favor the older rhythmic version.[4]
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther, engraving. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
English versions go back to Miles Coverdale’s psalter of about 1535, and Thomas Carlyle’s 1831 translation became the usual one in Britain.[2] Americans, however, adopted the rendering of Frederic Henry Hedge, a Unitarian minister and scholar of German literature, whose wording stays near the German original; it was printed in 1852 in Gems of German Verse and in 1853 in Hymns for the Church of Christ.[1] It went on to outpace Carlyle’s version in the United States,[2] and Hymnary.org now indexes the text in some 760 hymnals.[1] Heinrich Heine dubbed it “the Marseillaise of the Reformation,” and the hymn was sung by Protestant exiles and soldiers alike.[1] The melody also found its way into concert music, including a symphony by Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots.[3]
On the mountain dulcimer, the hymn is one of the 68 hymns and gospel songs arranged in Stephen Seifert’s Join the Jam: Gospel Edition.[5]
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