Luther's 10 Commandments Hymn

This Sunday, March 15, the first lesson is the story of the 10 commandments. We are going to sing Luther's hymn, "These Are the Holy Ten Commands" throughout the worship service. All 12 verses! But don't faint ... we'll do 4 verses for the entrance hymn, 4 for the hymn of the day, and 4 for the sending hymn.

This hymn is not in either LBW or ELW, which is a shame. Luther wrote 6 catechism hymns, and only three of them are in the ELCA's hymnals. But, the Missouri and Wisconsin synod hymnal do contain them, and we are thankful for that! I do think, that since ELCA people consider ourselves to be Lutherans, and since the Small Catechism is so important to our understanding of our faith, that our hymnals should make more of an effort to include Luther's catechism hymns. We have room for "Shine, Jesus, Shine" but not the 10 commandments. Yikes.

Alright, that was a bit of a diatribe. Back to this coming Sunday.

Andrew Gades, our assistant organist, is going to play a prelude based on this hymn. Here is what Andrew wrote about it for our bulletin:

"The prelude for today is an organ setting of today's hymn, "These are the Holy Ten Commands," a hymn in which Luther set the Ten Commandments into German. When Bach made this organ arrangement he used a musical pun to reinforce the text of the hymn. Bach places the melody in canon, similar to a round with one voice following the other. The pun is that in Latin, canon means law and Bach is using a musical canon for a hymn on the Ten Commandments, the most prominent example of the Old Testament Law. Also, Bach has the second voice start at a specific point so the first note of the hymn can be heard repeating ten times, once for each commandment."

That Bach ... very tricky! Always doing things with numbers and notes that most mortals couldn't quite imagine!