During chapel, the students have begun singing a new setting of the Te Deum—“Lord God, Thy Praise We Sing.” This setting by Luther is new to us this year and will be incorporated into Matins a couple times each week; it involves antiphonal singing, namely, two groups singing back and forth with each other. The Te Deum is an ancient part of the Matins liturgy and dates from before 500 AD. In addition to its prominent use in Matins, Christians have long used the Te Deum to give thanks to God at coronations or at the end of wars. While one cannot say with certainty who wrote the Latin text of the Te Deum, there is a tradition that offers an interesting possibility as to its origins. When St. Ambrose baptized St. Augustine, legend has it that these men then began singing back and forth to each other the words of the Te Deum, improvising one of the most beautiful praises to God and confessions of the faith. As a result of the familiarity of this story in the early history of the Church, many older manuscripts refer to the Te Deum as the Ambrosian Hymn. Though this is an appealing explanation for the Te Deum’s origins, scholars have found that the poetical style of the text does not match the form usually employed in that region and time, so a more probable author is Nicetas of Remesiana, who was a bishop in what is now Serbia. The original Latin text was set to a Gregorian chant that can be sung antiphonally, leading to this way of singing in Luther’s later version of the Te Deum in German.
As to the history behind Luther’s Te Deum specifically, Luther translated the words of the Te Deum from Latin into a rhyming German paraphrase, published in 1529 and entitled “Herr Gott, dich loben wir.” The tune of Luther’s Te Deum closely follows the style of the original Gregorian chant, with the most significant change being Luther’s removal of the melismas (more than one note sung per syllable) to make the music match the meter of his text and to simplify the tune for congregational singing. This reduction of a Gregorian chant into the melody of a congregational hymn is also seen in Luther’s tune for “Savior of the Nations Come,” which is a simplified version of the Gregorian hymn “Veni redemptor gentium” by St. Amborse. “Herr Gott, dich loben wir” has been commonly included in many Lutheran hymnals, including Walther’s Hymnal, the first official hymnal of the LCMS, and recently Luther’s Te Deum has become more accessible for congregation use. If you have heard Luther’s Te Deum in chapel and would like to hear how it resembles the original chant, you can listen to it here.
In Christ,
Miss Engwall
