One of the events that got cancelled last week was a wedding I was supposed to play. You may recall that officials at first suggested no crowds bigger than 250, then the number was reduced to 100, then further reduced to 50. Finally, the magic number was limited to 10 people, which eliminated most church services.

At one point the wedding party promised to have less than 50 people, and only a few days before the scheduled event, pared down the guest list to 10 people, with me being one of the ten, I supposed. Finally, the wedding got cancelled but it was due to the groom being quarantined by the Navy. Since he was arriving from another Hawaiian island, and despite not having any symptoms, he was told to not leave his apartment for two weeks, which precluded having a wedding.

Normally when I play weddings, I am allowed my choice of music. However, this couple had requested two pieces, one of which was not in my repertoire—Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” for the entrance procession. I was able to find an organ version which I was able to download and practice.

The other piece they wanted for the exit procession was “How Great Thou Art,” which is a hymn based on a Swedish melody (O STORE GUD), and popularized by baritone George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows during the Billy Graham crusades. Apparently it was voted the United Kingdom’s favorite hymn, and ranked second after “Amazing Grace” as a favorite hymn of all time in 2001.

Here’s the background story I found about this hymn:

Late one Summer afternoon in 1885, an unknown, twenty-six year old Swedish writer named Carl Gustav Boberg was walking home with friends from his church in the town of Kronobäck to his home in the nearby seaside village of Mönsterås. Suddenly the sky grew dark. Lightning flashed across the sky. A violent wind swept across the grain covered fields. Boberg and his friends ran for shelter as the rain poured down, but then, just as quickly as it began, the storm subsided and a rainbow appeared.

When he arrived home, Boberg opened a window to his house and gazed in awe at the now calm Mönsterås Bay reflecting the clear blue sky like a mirror. Church bells chimed in the distance. Overwhelmed by the power and wonder of God’s creation, Boberg sat down and wrote a poem, O Store Gud, literally, “Oh Great God.”

The nine stanza poem was first published on March 13, 1886 in a local newspaper. Two years later, Boberg visited a neighboring church in Sweden and was surprised to hear the poem sung to the melody of an old Swedish Folk Tune. In 1891, Boberg once again published the poem, but this time with piano and guitar instrumentation.

In 1907, the hymn was translated into German and quickly spread throughout Germany. By 1912, it was translated into Russian as well. In 1931, the British missionary Stuart K. Hine, heard the hymn in Russian as he shared the gospel in the remote villages in the Carpathian Mountains of the Ukraine.

Hine wrote an English paraphrase of the first two verses, the birth of the hymn we now know as “How Great Thou Art.”

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed;

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
And hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art, how great thou art!

I found an organ arrangement by Dale Wood and here it is played on my little home organ of 2 ranks (I=bourdon, II=holzgedacht). I altered the arrangement slightly and played the melody up an octave to make it heard more easily. Of course, had I played it in the chapel, the registration (choice of organ stops) would have been very different.