Danke sehr, Ernest. Das is nett. Reutter = Ritter.

Joe, I found it in the Lutheran Book of Worship, which my congregation still uses. The tune is indeed Wachterlied, which I suppose means 'Watching Song.'

I've listened to the version on the site you mentioned, Lutheran-Hymnal.com   It makes the song sound like something done by a not-too-polished marching band. When I see a tune like this, from 1535, and then I see all those block chords in the arrangement, I wonder where the arrangement came from. Is it [shudder] Victorian?

I have been tinkering with the tune using Noteworthy Composer, and I think the bar lines are in the wrong places. (The editors thought so too, because they've inserted breath marks in funny places.) So I try to imagine a Renaissance choir, which will be led by boy sopranos, singing a song of joy. Then I ask myself, where would their sentences begin and end? It seems to need 4/4 measures and at least one 6/4 measure, but unless the overall phrasing makes sense, my friends will never be able to play it with me.

When a song has a different number of beats in different measures, it's called a crooked tune. I wonder is that is just an American phrase, or do other countries use it. (?) As a Lutheran, I've sung such songs all my life. When my friends look at them and cry, "What?!" I tell them, 'Look, nobody's dancing here. We're singing words, and however many beats it takes to sing the words, that's how many we use.'