Christian Gregor, Moravian minister and musician (b. Dirsdorf, Silesia 1723; d. Berthelsdorf, near Herrnhut, Saxony, 1801), wrote GREGOR'S 112TH METRE as a setting for "Er wird es tun, der fromme treue Gott" and published it in his Choralbuch in 1784 (hymn no. 112). That hymnal was a supplement to the 1778 Gesangbuch der evangelische Brueder-Gemeinen. Dutch musician Leonard J. Mens (1879-1960) prepared the harmonization for the Psalmen en Gezangen (1938), where this tune was set to Pierson's text.
The tune has bar form shape (AAB) common in many chorales. The melody also; has a sensitive balance between stepwise motion and larger, dramatic intervals. Sing in harmony and use a firm, bright organ registration.
Gregor became uncomfortable as a Protestant in predominantly Roman Catholic Silesia, and he joined the Moravian settlement in Herrnhut in 1742. There his many gifts came to expression: he became a noted spiritual leader, church musician, and hymnal editor. He traveled to Moravian communities and mission outposts in Europe and the United States, served as organist for the Moravians in Zeist, the Netherlands (1749-1753), and became a Moravian bishop in Herrnhut in 1789. The principal editor, of the Moravian Gesangbuch (1778), Gregor supplied some three hundred of his own texts as well as adaptations to its contents of 1,750 hymns. He also compiled a tunebook for that hymnal, entitled Choralbuch (1784), in which a number of tunes are also attributed to him.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook
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