I was out in the country last week, heard some jammers do 'How Great Thou Art.' Got home, decided to try it on my mountain dulcimer. If you know the song, you can guess that it proved problematic. Too big a range, too much squiggling around in the 6.5 - 7th fret zone.

I looked up the origins of the song. All I have ever seen is the credit "Stuart Hine, 1953." I assumed he wrote the words and text.
Come to find out, the words are:

an English translation of a
German translation of a
Russian translation of
a Swedish original.

You can see the English, the German, and the Swedish, here:

http://ingeb.org/spiritua/howgreat.html

I would like to know if the Swedish original is like the translations. Does it have those references to Jesus, or is it more about praising God the Creator?

(It's a surprise to me how different Swedish is from English and German.)

There are other sites with info about the various translations. Google 'Stuart Hime'
=============
Part 2. The melody is supposed to be a Swedish folk tune. Sources say that the hymn became well known after being sung in a Billy Graham Crusade, by trained soloists.

After learning that, I came to suspect that the first half might be a folk tune, but that the difficult second half, with its high note on 'soul' and its plunge down to 'art' is not a folk tune. I suspect it was crafted for the Crusade, to stir the crowd and show off the talent of the professionals.

Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not going to play it or sing it that way myself. So I've been tinkering with the chorus, looking for something that seems like 'How Great Thou Art' but is singable and believable as a song for ordinary people. It's a lot of fun.

I do it in the key of A. I just can't decide - should I keep that low B or not?
======
I look forward to learning about the landscapes behind the words - southeast Sweden, the Caucasus, Ukraine. Interesting!

---

English lyrics posted here (click)