Dear friends of the Edition,

we wish you all a blessed and peaceful feast of Christmas. Many of you we know by person, others only by mails and contributions we received during the last months. But most of you, we know, are dealing intensively with church music, and some of you with church history as well.

We thought about what we could give to you. From the old Liturgie of 1864 we selected two musical pieces. The Liturgie of 1864 was the first liturgy book to be used after the separation of the Hamburg congregation from the Catholic Apostolic congregations. It was presumably edited by the prophet Heinrich Geyer, and distributed by Louis Stechmann, who later worked as an apostle in Hungary. It was being used in German congregations until the 1880s at least. During the next year, we plan a new and extensively commented edition of this book, also including the additions made by Heinrich Geyer in 1894.

From the Christmas services of this book, you may find here (PDF) the song during the entry of the priests "Das Leben ist erschienen" and the song before the gospel "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, denn der Herr hat es getan". The tunes each are contained in the Apostolisches Gesangbuch by W. Sebastian.

The notes will continue to be available on the "Takeaways" page.

Wishing you a blessed feast,

Reiner Hiby, Andreas Ostheimer and Mathias Eberle