Lietuvos istorijos institutas

In the Surinkimininkai (worshipers of the home-prayer services) hymnal Maʒos Giesmju Knygeles (Tilsit, 1819), which was likely prepared by preacher and teacher (Lith. šulmistras) Kristijonas Endrikis Mertikaitis (c. 1775–before 1856), there is an eight-stanza anonymous hymn marked as No. 8 entitled “Aß tikt driſu, apie ta Sʒlowe”. An unknown translator rendered this hymn from the hymn “Ich wills wagen :,: von der schönen pracht”, which was published in the hymnal Kern Alter und Neuer geiſtreicher Lieder (Königsberg, 1752) by Königsberg Pietist and professor of theology Franz Albert Schultz (1692–1763). It has been established that the author of this German hymn was the spiritual leader of the Moravian Brethren and a Pietist, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760). The text published in Schultz’s hymnal, from which the Lithuanian version was translated, is compilatory. It comprises four different hymns attributed to Count Zinzendorf: “ICh wils wagen :,: von der ſchönen pracht”, “UN ſre ʒeiten :,: ſind in deiner hand”, “HErʒenskönig :,: unſer ʒeugenchor ſagt dir wenig”,“HErʒ der triebe :,: hier iſt eine ſchaar”. With some essential editorial changes, the translation of Zinzendorf’s hymn “Aß tikt driſu, apie ta Sʒlowe” was reprinted in the main hymnal of the Surinkimininkai movement: Wiſſokios Naujos Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai (Tilsit, 1825). In the second half of the 19th century, this translation also appeared in other Lithuanian hymnals. However, unlike in the Surinkimininkai hymnals, the translation was abridged and structurally altered. The superintendent of Tilsit, Karl Wilhelm Otto Glogau (1805–1875), decided not to include the full text in the school hymnal 64 Gieſmes […] Sʒuilēms (Tilsit, 1862); he printed only the fifth stanza, beginning with the words “Pilnos Rankos”. Another instance of abridgment occurred in the collection of melodies Gieſmiu Balſai (Heidelberg, Tilsit, 1894), prepared by, among others, the superintendent of Tilsit, Karl Theodor Waldemar Hoffheinz (1823–1907). The compilers of both books treated this hymn as a shortened variant of the “Aß tikt driſu, apie ta Sʒlowe” hymn of German origin. The shorter version presented in these books was likely a reflection of the singing practices of the Surinkimininkai.

In Prussian Lithuania, several religious works were published in Lithuanian in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which the melodies of hymns were marked not in the traditional way, but in numbers and other conventional graphic symbols. The introduction of numerical notation should be linked to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s (1746–1827) pedagogical attitudes and changes in the educational system of the Kingdom of Prussia. These changes were driven by changing attitudes towards the education of young people from the lower social stratum. Elementary schools and teachers’ seminaries were paying more attention to the musical education of young people. The aim of this article is to identify, register, and describe the hymnbooks of Prussian Lithuanian schools and surinkimai (home-prayer service) as well as other Protestant books published in Prussian Lithuania in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which the melodies of hymns are given in numbers. The article presents the reconstruction of a number of melodies and their transcription in modern musical notation. The melodies reconstructed are those to which the compilers of the books added musical explanations.

Johann Arndt (1555–1621), the German theologian and next-generation religious reformer is the author of the uniquely successful prayer book titled Paradiesgärtlein (Magdeburg, 1612). The first known Lithuanian translation of Arndt’s Paradiesgärtlein appeared in early 19th century in Prussian Lithuanian. It was published in 1807 by the widow of Gottlieb Lebrecht Hartung, a printer from Königsberg. This article aims to reveal the history of revisions of six prayers from Johann Arndt’s Rojaus Darelis (The Garden of Paradise) that were first published in Königsberg in 1807. The goal is to show the revision trends and content transformations Arndt’s texts underwent in the second, 1816 Königsberg edition of Rojaus Darelis, the 1816 Tilsit edition, and the unofficial 1817 conventiclers’ (Lith. surinkimininkai) hymnal Wiſſokies Naujes Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai (Tilsit). The analysis of the prayers has shown that the language of the hymnal Rojaus Darelis (Königsberg, 1807) is rather grounded on the standard of the official ecclesiastical and philological papers of Prussian Lithuania: the prevalent southern subdialect of the Western Aukštaitians of Prussian Lithuania. It is dominated by rather stable normative elements of morphology and diacritic orthography, as evidenced in the philological written works of the period: the grammars of the Lithuanian language by Gottfried Ostermeyer (1791) and Christian Gottlieb Mielcke (1800). The only identifiable non-grammatical orthography trait is the ending -ęs that sometimes appears in the acc. sg. endings of feminine adjectives, pronouns, and numerals. A comparison of the prayers from Rojaus Darelis that were published in Königsberg in 1807 and in 1816 has revealed that the texts had remained stable and free from major or significant revisions content-wise. This edition is even more consistent in its placement of the stress-marks than the one before. Efforts are made to keep up with the standard trend of spelling and language that prevailed in the official printed texts (grammars) of Prussian Lithuanian. It has been established that the making of the new edition of Rojaus Darelis published by the printing house of Johann Heinrich Post in Tilsit in 1816 relied on the Königsberg edition that had been released earlier that year. This is evidence in the morphological and lexical revisions that had been carried over. Structurally, the prayers in the 1816 Tilsit edition had remained intact. There were a little bit more orthography and syntactic differences compared to the 1816 Königsberg edition. It is probable that the Tilsit edition had had an effect on the preparation of Arndt’s prayers that were later featured in Wiſſokies Naujes Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai, a hymnal by Kristijonas Endrikis Mertikaitis (Tilsit, 1817). Nonetheless, it is the 1816 Königsberg edition (or the prior 1807 edition) that is to be considered the original source of the prayers published in Mertikaitis’s hymnal. It was in Wiſſokies Naujes Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai by Kristijonas Endrikis Mertikaitis (Tilsit, 1817) that Arndt’s prayers underwent the greatest extent of transformation. Contrary to the Königsberg or Tilsit editions mentioned in this article, this edition is teeming with differences on all sorts of levels: orthography, phonetics, morphology, lexis, word formation, and syntax. Analysis of the relationship between the sources shows that Mertikaitis’s hymnal did not try to follow the widely recognised grammatical usage. This unconventional approach most probably was the product of Mertikaitis’s savvy of the period language and lack of literacy. It is worth mentioning that Mertikaitis was not a man of academic or spiritual elite, but rather a vibrant preacher of the home-prayer service and schoolteacher who tended to pastoral care, matters of saving his own soul and those of the others as well as eternal life, someone who did not see making language more grammatically correct and standard-comp