i. Alle Menschen mussen sterben. [For the Dying.] This hymn, which Koch, iii. 397, calls "his best known hymn, and a pearl in the Evangelical Treasury of Song," was written for the funeral of Paul von Henssberg, a Leipzig merchant, and was thus sung, from broadsheets, June 1, 1652. It was given in Niedling's Wasserquelle, Altenburg, 1663, and gradually came into universal use, passing through Freylinghausen's Gesang-Buch, 1704, into most subsequent collections, as in the Unverfalschter Liedersegen, 1851, No. 804, in 8 stanzas of 8 lines. It was a great favourite of P. J. Spener, who sang it regularly on Sunday afternoons; of J. F. Hochstetter, Prelate of Murrhardt, and many others (Koch, viii. 628-631).
In the Blatter fur Hymnologie, 1884, pp. 55-58, the text is quoted in full from the original broadsheet [Ducal Library, Gotha], the title of which ends "Mit seiner Poesie und Musick erweisen wollen Johannes Rosenmuller." Rosenmuller is not, however, known as a hymn-writer, and this statement is hardly sufficient to overthrow the traditional ascription to Albinus.
The translations in common use are:—
2. Hark! a voice saith, all are mortal. A good translation omitting stanzas v., viii., as No. 196 by Miss Winkworth in her Chorale Book for England, 1863, and with a translation of stanza v. added as No. 429 in the Ohio Luth. Hymnal, 1880.
-John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
My Starred Hymns
My FlexScores
My Hymnals
My Purchased Files
