Piercingly Lovely

Last updated on: December 23, 2016 at 9:48 am by Dan Peterson

Looking more or less westward from our apartment — Essentially the view from my old apartment window in Interlaken, the capital of the Berner Oberland, looking toward Niesen, a relatively small peak in the Voralpen (the Alpine foothills)
(Wikimedia Commons photo by Patrick Nouhailler)

I still vividly remember the first time I heard it. Sunday morning, on my mission, sitting in the Interlaken Switzerland Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We sang it as a congregation.

It was, I thought then and think now, one of the most achingly, yearningly, beautiful things I had ever heard. Even now, I far prefer it in the original German to any English translation.

Here it is, in two renditions: The first is by the King’s Singers. The second is by Chanticleer.

Oddly, neither of them quite captures the Platonic ideal that I have in my mind. But they approach it. They’ll have to do for now.