How Great Thou Art: A Song History
"How Great Thou Art" began as "O store Gud," a Swedish poem by Carl Boberg, a Swedish Covenant writer and editor who also sat in the Swedish parliament; Hymnary.org dates its writing to 1885 and its publication to 1886.[1] Hymnology Archive places that first printing on the front page of the newspaper Mönsterås Tidningen on 13 March 1886, in nine stanzas, and reports that Boberg, as editor of Sanningsvittnet, reprinted it in that periodical with a Swedish folk melody on 16 April 1891.[2] The poem then traveled east: Manfred von Glehn made a German version and Ivan Prokhanoff a Russian one, though the sources consulted here give different dates for both and disagree over whether the Russian was based on the German.[1][2][3] An earlier English translation by E. Gustav Johnson, from 1925, never became widely known.[3]
Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, oil on canvas, 1836. A sweeping American landscape, shown for the hymn's wonder at the natural world; it has no connection to the hymn.
The English hymn sung today comes from Stuart K. Hine, a British missionary who worked with his wife in Western Ukraine and the Carpathian region and came across the song there in its Russian form.[4][2][3] Hine wrote his verses in stages, finishing in 1948, and published the hymn in 1949; since little of Boberg's wording survived the chain of translations, modern hymnals usually credit the English words to Hine.[1] Hymnology Archive says that 1949 printing was in Grace and Peace, a Russian magazine Hine edited, and that Hine later included the hymn in his 1953 booklet Russian Melodies and Hymns of Other Lands, before Manna Music of Burbank, California, took on the publishing rights and registered copyright in 1955.[2] The English words are still under copyright.[1]
The hymn's fame in America came through the Billy Graham crusades: soloist George Beverly Shea recalled that the team first used it in Toronto in 1955 and that the choir sang it again and again at the 1957 New York meetings, though accounts of his exact count differ.[3][2] Hymnary.org now finds it in 189 hymnals, and The United Methodist Hymnal prints it as number 77.[1][3] Stephen Seifert includes it, in DAD tuning, in The Early Years, his self-published book of 73 tunes and arrangements from 1996 to 2002, graded from beginner to intermediate/advanced and accompanied by MP3 demonstrations played slowly.[5]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "How Great Thou Art" (text).
- Hymnology Archive: "How Great Thou Art".
- Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: 'How Great Thou Art'".
- Hymnary.org: "Stuart K. Hine".
- Stephen Seifert: "The Early Years".
- Image: Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, oil on canvas, 1836. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.