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Johan Olof Wallin

1779 - 1839 Person Name: Johan Olaf Wallin Author of "Behold, The Joyful Day Is Nigh" in American Lutheran Hymnal Johan Olaf Wallin was born at Stora Tuna, in 1779, and early displayed his poetical powers. In 1805, and again in 1809, he gained the chief prize for poetry at Upsala. In the latter year he became pastor at Solna; here his ability as a preacher was so striking that he was transferred to Stockholm, in 1815, as "pastor primarius," a title for which we have no exact equivalent. In 1818 he was made Dean of Westeras, and set about the task of editing a revised hymn-book for the whole of Sweden. This task he completed in 1819, and published it as, Den Swenska Psalmboken, af Konungen gillad och stadfästad (The Swedish hymn-book, approved and confirmed by the King). To it he contributed some 150 hymns of his own, besides translations and recastings; and the book remains now in the form in which he brought it out. It is highly prized by the Swedes, and is in use everywhere. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1000 (1907)

Anonymous

Person Name: Unknown Translator of "Behold, the Joyful Day Is Nigh" in The Cyber Hymnal In some hymnals, the editors noted that a hymn's author is unknown to them, and so this artificial "person" entry is used to reflect that fact. Obviously, the hymns attributed to "Author Unknown" "Unknown" or "Anonymous" could have been written by many people over a span of many centuries.

Johann Sebastian Bach

1685 - 1750 Person Name: Johann S. Bach Harmonizer of "VOM HIMMEL HOCH" in The Cyber Hymnal Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach into a musical family and in a town steeped in Reformation history, he received early musical training from his father and older brother, and elementary education in the classical school Luther had earlier attended. Throughout his life he made extraordinary efforts to learn from other musicians. At 15 he walked to Lüneburg to work as a chorister and study at the convent school of St. Michael. From there he walked 30 miles to Hamburg to hear Johann Reinken, and 60 miles to Celle to become familiar with French composition and performance traditions. Once he obtained a month's leave from his job to hear Buxtehude, but stayed nearly four months. He arranged compositions from Vivaldi and other Italian masters. His own compositions spanned almost every musical form then known (Opera was the notable exception). In his own time, Bach was highly regarded as organist and teacher, his compositions being circulated as models of contrapuntal technique. Four of his children achieved careers as composers; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Chopin are only a few of the best known of the musicians that confessed a major debt to Bach's work in their own musical development. Mendelssohn began re-introducing Bach's music into the concert repertoire, where it has come to attract admiration and even veneration for its own sake. After 20 years of successful work in several posts, Bach became cantor of the Thomas-schule in Leipzig, and remained there for the remaining 27 years of his life, concentrating on church music for the Lutheran service: over 200 cantatas, four passion settings, a Mass, and hundreds of chorale settings, harmonizations, preludes, and arrangements. He edited the tunes for Schemelli's Musicalisches Gesangbuch, contributing 16 original tunes. His choral harmonizations remain a staple for studies of composition and harmony. Additional melodies from his works have been adapted as hymn tunes. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)