Nielsen - Kirken den er et gammelt hus

As you can probably already tell, I like a lot of unusual and not often heard music. =) This next piece is another one most people have probably never heard, but I feel it should be known.

Kirken den er et gammelt hus is the third chorale prelude in the second book of chorale preludes by the Danish composer Ludvig Nielsen. It is part of his Op. 5. The melody for Kirken den er et gammelt hus (Built on the Rock the Church Doth Stand) was written by L.M. Lindemann in 1840 and the text for the hymn was written by Nikolai Grundtvig in 1837. The following is the first verse written by Grundtvig:

Kirken den er et gammelt hus,
står, om end tårnene falde,
tårne fuldmange sank i grus,
klokker end kime og kalde,
kalde på gammel og på ung,
mest dog på sjælen træt og tung,
syg for den evige hvile.

Here is the English translation of the same verse:

Built on the Rock the Church doth stand,
even when steeples are falling;
Christ builds his church in every land;
bells still are chiming and calling,
calling the young and old to rest,
calling the souls of those distressed,
longing for life everlasting.

It's really a beautiful text in my opinion.

Anyway the piece itself is very short, only two pages and last about two minutes or so. The theme is immediately introduced by itself in a series of eighth notes with the theme coming in again above this on the third measure, but now in quarter notes. It's really a very well written piece of music. I really don't have too much to say about it other than it is well worth the time it takes to learn it. Most of it is actually fairly sight readable for a decent organist and it's one of those piece I'm going to play for a long long time.

Below I'll post my own recording of the piece on YouTube. Unfortunately, the organ is relatively small and doesn't quite do it justice, but it comes close. I'm also sad to say that this is another piece that seems to be out of print. I've been trying to track it down for quite sometime. I myself learned it off of a photocopy of a photocopy that my teacher had given me. I do have it in PDF form though if anybody is interested. It's only two pages.

Enjoy!

Yours in Music,

Jim