Geistliche Lieder

I went to a second hand book shop in Oslo last Wednesday. I do that from time to time, but I never find anything related to church music. I don't know why that is. Perhaps there aren't many books out there, or perhaps there are some very keen collectors that hoovers (british word for vacuum cleaning) the market constantly. This time, however, I found something: J. S. Bach's Geistliche Lieder (35 of them) translated to Norwegian with simple melody scores. I'm not sure how useful this little book is to me, but perhaps I can get some fun out of it sometime in the future. Maybe I can use some of the words in an anthem. Maybe I can compose arrangements and then compare what I have done to e.g. Bach's own arrangements.

This book of Geistliche Lieder (Sacred Songs) is not strictly speaking church music, but could be used as such. The words are written after the reformation, so I think anyway, jugded from both credits given and the content. There are very much "Herz" and "Schmerz" (heart and pain), in a sort of a pietistic style. I'm not sure if those are true pietistic poems, but they could have been, anyways. That's why I am not too excited about this little book, because I don't like Pietism very much. All this focus on life after death and overly self-repenting stuff.

Anyway, this is none-the-less the most exciting thing that have happpend since my last blog entry...