Hymn of the week: ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty’

Here’s a classic, just made for congregational singing.

With a royal wedding looming upon us, let’s give the royal treatment of this great old hymn, from a service celebrating the Queen’s 60th anniversary of her coronation a few years back.

Some background:

“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” is a hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680. John Julian in his A Dictionary of Hymnology calls the German original “a magnificent hymn of praise to God, perhaps the finest creation of its author, and of the first rank in its class.”

The melody used by Neander, first published in 1665, exists in many versions and is probably based on a folk tune. The text paraphrases Psalm 103 and Psalm 150. Catherine Winkworth published her English translation of Neander’s hymn in 1863.

We’ll be singing this as the entrance processional at my parish this weekend. I remember singing it as a child. It remains a thundering, triumphant hymn of praise—something to get your blood pumping on a Sunday morning.