Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming: A Song History
“Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” is the English form of the German carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.” Its earliest known source is a manuscript from the Carthusian monastery of St. Alban in Trier, dated to the late sixteenth century, and the song first reached print in a Catholic hymnal published in Cologne in 1599, Alte catholische geistliche Kirchengesänge, with the tune that is still sung today.[1][2][3] That early text ran to many stanzas, retelling the Gospel story of Christ’s birth.[1][3]
Israhel van Meckenem, Ornamental Engraving with the Tree of Jesse, engraving, 15th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
The central image draws on Isaiah’s prophecy of a shoot springing from the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1), along with the desert blossoming like a rose in Isaiah 35. In the Catholic original the rose stood for Mary, from whom the Christ child blooms; the Lutheran composer Michael Praetorius, publishing his widely used four-part harmonization in Musae Sioniae (1609), revised the words so that the rose points to Christ himself.[1][3][4] That revision opened the way for the carol into Protestant hymnals.[3][4]
The familiar English translation of the first two stanzas is by the American music scholar Theodore Baker and dates from 1894.[1][3] One hymnal handbook likens the tune to a Renaissance madrigal and notes that it “invites performance by an unaccompanied choir.”[1][2]
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