The beloved hymn “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” is a beautiful text about Christ’s Incarnation joined with a timeless, melismatic tune, resulting in a Christmas hymn that echoes with an ancient splendor and dignity. When hearing this hymn, one could easily imagine a group of early Christians chanting it within the resonant vault of a stone church—the text and tune sound as if they had been joined together for over a millennium. Well, not to shatter the peaceful, candlelit image of this ancient Christmas service, but that moment never occurred. The text and tune that we know as LSB 384 or ELH 181 did not meet each other until 1856—relatively recently in the grand scheme of things. While both the text and tune are much older than 1856, this was the year when a hymnal editor named Thomas Helmore first joined them together.
The text by Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was written in 405 and was originally not only a Christmas hymn, but a hymn about the whole life of Christ with 38 total stanzas called “Hymnus omnis horae,” or “Hymn for All Hours.” The full text is available here. Prudentius was one of the earliest Latin Christian poets, and his hymn shows a clear confession against the heresies of his time while proclaiming the divinity and humanity of Christ as confessed in the then freshly-formed Nicene Creed. Prudentius wrote the following words about confessing the truth with hymns: “Now at the end of my life, my sinful soul rids itself of folly. At least with its voice, if it is no longer able with its works, it lifts up its praise to God. Day and night without ceasing I will sing to the Lord with hymns, I will combat heresies and explain the Catholic faith, I will destroy the temples of the pagans and will put your idols to death, O Rome. I will dedicate my poems to the martyrs and will exalt the Apostles.”
The tune of “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” is from a chant used in the thirteenth century for the hymn “Divinum mysterium semper declarator.” This hymn spoke of the divine mystery being revealed in the Eucharist and was originally a trope for the Sanctus. (A trope is the addition of another text in the midst of a part of the liturgy. Gregorian chant was at times extremely flowing and melismatic with perhaps thirty extra notes sung on just one word, thus creating ample space to sing tropes that provided commentary between the words of the main text. See LSB 942 for some trope-like qualities.) While this chant tune serves Prudentius’s text beautifully, Prudentius’s hymn has seen a few other musical pairings, notably one by Michael Praetorius that you can listen to here.
Because of the rather recent pairing of the text and tune of this hymn, there is a shortage of good choral settings available for “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” When the students in Kammerchor needed a five-part setting of this hymn for this past Advent, I composed one for them with the melody in the tenor voice that you can listen to in the player above. Enjoy!
In Christ,
Miss Engwall
Image: The Life of Christ, attr. Franceschino Zavattari, 15th c.
