Christum wir sollen loben schon by Lucas Osiander
The chorale 'Christum wir sollen loben schon' is Martin Luther's translation and adaptation of the Latin Christmas hymn 'A solis ortus cardine', written in the fifth century. The original poem is an 'abecedarius' (bet you didn't know THAT word!), that is to say, the 23 verses each begin with the successive letters of the Latin alphabet.
Luther's melody hews closely to the original chant, and thus is unusually flowing and irregular as compared to such of his chorales as 'Ein feste Burg' or 'Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ'. The setting I am including is from Lucas Osiander's 1586 Cantional, a large compilation of simple homophonic settings of German chorales. Osiander's harmonizations include the melody in the top voice (many earlier settings had the melody in the tenor), and his simple, root position triads give a spare no-bells-and-whistles sound which can be quite atmospheric in a shape-note-singing kind of way.
The recording in the 'Christum wir sollen' zip file features first the melody and then Osiander's setting. Even if you're not a soprano, I recommend that you learn the beautiful tune before learning and singing your part.
The chorale 'Christum wir sollen loben schon' is Martin Luther's translation and adaptation of the Latin Christmas hymn 'A solis ortus cardine', written in the fifth century. The original poem is an 'abecedarius' (bet you didn't know THAT word!), that is to say, the 23 verses each begin with the successive letters of the Latin alphabet.
Luther's melody hews closely to the original chant, and thus is unusually flowing and irregular as compared to such of his chorales as 'Ein feste Burg' or 'Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ'. The setting I am including is from Lucas Osiander's 1586 Cantional, a large compilation of simple homophonic settings of German chorales. Osiander's harmonizations include the melody in the top voice (many earlier settings had the melody in the tenor), and his simple, root position triads give a spare no-bells-and-whistles sound which can be quite atmospheric in a shape-note-singing kind of way.
The recording in the 'Christum wir sollen' zip file features first the melody and then Osiander's setting. Even if you're not a soprano, I recommend that you learn the beautiful tune before learning and singing your part.