page_title: An Wasserflüssen Babylon
section_title: History and context
hierarchical_section_title: An Wasserflüssen Babylon / History and context
caption_attribution_description: Verso CXXXIX and recto CXL of Strasburg/Argentina from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel: "Liber cronicarum: cum figuris et ymagibus ab inicio mundi". Coloured woodcuts donated by Beloit College.
context_page_description: "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" is a Lutheran hymn by Wolfgang Dachstein, which was first published in Strasbourg in 1525. The text of the hymn is a paraphrase of Psalm 137. Its singing tune, which is the best known part of the hymn and Dachstein's best known melody, was popularised as chorale tune of Paul Gerhardt's 17th-century Passion hymn "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld". With this hymn text, Dachstein's tune is included in the Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch.
  Several vocal and organ settings of the hymn "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" have been composed in the 17th and 18th century, including 4-part harmonisations by Johann Hermann Schein, Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. In the second half of the 17th century, Johann Pachelbel, Johann Adam Reincken and Bach's cousin, Johann Christoph, arranged settings for chorale preludes.
  The arrangements of "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" by Reincken and Pachelbel form the earliest extant transcriptions of Bach, copied on a 1700 organ tablature in Lüneburg when he was still a youth; remarkably, they were only unearthed in Weimar in 2005.
context_section_description: "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" is a Lutheran hymn written in 1525 and attributed to Wolfgang Dachstein, organist at St Thomas' Church, Strasbourg. The hymn is a closely paraphrased versification of Psalm 137, "By the rivers of Babylon", a lamentation for Jerusalem, exiled in Babylon. Its text and melody, Zahn No. 7663, first appeared in Strasbourg in 1525 in Wolf Köpphel's Das dritt theil Straßburger kirchenampt. This Strasbourg tract, which comprised the third part of the Lutheran service, is now lost. Despite the lost tract from 1525, the Strasbourg hymn appeared in print in 1526 in Psalmen, Gebett und Kirchenordnung wie sie zu Straßburg gehalten werden and later.
  Wolfgang Egeloph Dachstein was born in 1487 in Offenburg in the Black Forest. In 1503 he became a fellow student with Martin Luther at the University of Erfurt. He entered the Dominican monastic order in around 1520 in Strasbourg, where he started a collaboration with Matthias Greiter, a friend and contemporary. Greiter was born in 1495 in Aichach, near Augsburg in Bavaria, where he attended a Latin school, before enrolling in theology at the University of Freiburg in 1510 and becoming a monk in Strasbourg in 1520.
  During the Reformation, Protestantism was adopted in Strasbourg in 1524. The reforms involved the introduction of the German vernacular, the use of Lutheran liturgy ("Gottesdienstordnung") and congregational singing. Both Greiter and Dachstein renounced their monastic vows and married in Alsace. Their association continued, with Greiter becoming a cantor in the Cathedral and Dachstein an organist at St Thomas. Both played an important role in the musical life of Strasbourg, with many contributions to Lutheran hymns and psalms. Daniel Specklin, a 16th-century architect from Alsace, where the region Dachstein takes its name, described in detail how the pair engaged in "das evangelium" and "vil gute psalmen". A costly edition of the Straßburger Gesangbuch was published by Köpphel in 1541, with a preface by the Lutheran reformer Martin Bucer: the title, text and psalm were printed in characteristic red and black with woodcuts by Hans Baldung. During the Counter-Reformation, however, the Augsburg Interim resulted in Strasbourg reinstating Catholicism in October 1549: both Dachstein and Greiter renounced Protestantism and Bucer was sent into exile in England, where under Edward VI he became Regius Professor of Divinity.
  Dachstein's hymn "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" was rapidly distributed—it was printed in Luther's 1545 Babstsches Gesangbuch—and spread to most Lutheran hymnbooks by central Germany. The hymn tune is Dachstein's best known composition. The melody of the hymn became better known than its text, through the association of that melody with Paul Gerhardt's 17th-century Passion hymn "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld". With that hymn text, the hymn tune of "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" was adopted as EG 83 in the Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch. After the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631, during the Thirty Years' War, it was decreed that Dachstein's 137th Psalm would be sung every year as part of the ceremonies to commemorate the destruction of Magdeburg—"O Magdeburg, du schoene Stadt verbrunnen verstoert."; and, amongst Ashkenazi culture, there was also a Hebrew version of Dachstein's composition in the same period.
caption: Woodcut of Strasbourg from Nuremberg Chronicle, Hartmann Schedel, 1493: Cathedral (r) and St Thomas (l)
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