30 years of Hymnological Hymnbook Research at the Francke Foundations

We are celebrating 30 years of hymnbook research at the Francke Foundations - a significant milestone that will be honoured with an international symposium and a concert as part of the Handel Festival in the Freylinghausen Hall. In several projects, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) between 2000 and 2015, the research team under Dr Wolfgang Miersemann and Dr Hans-Otto Korth produced highly regarded publications for experts and songbooks for music enthusiasts, presenting Christian song in the 18th century with a focus on Halle's Pietism.

The symposium on 12 June 2025 will provide deeper insights into this research work. The focus will be on the critical new edition of the Freylinghausen Hymnal (Halle 1704/14), which once caused a sensation far beyond Germany's borders as the ‘Hallisches Gesangbuch’ and many of whose innovative hymns have survived to this day in numerous translations. An accompanying exhibition will be opened in the Historisches Waisenhaus, presenting the hymnological research and original sources that have been carried out since 1994.

In the evening, a concert will follow in the historic Freylinghausen Hall as part of the Handel Festival: ‘Jesus is the most beautiful light. Hallische Lieder’. The venue is the very hall of the historic orphanage inaugurated in 1711, which - then called the Prayer and Singing Hall, today the Freylinghausen Hall - provided a space for the legendary ‘singing lessons’ in Francke's ever-growing school town. It was from here that the ‘New Songs’ of the Geistreichen Gesangbuch were introduced to the world. The concert will be performed by the renowned musicians Hanna Zumsande (soprano), Georg Poplutz (tenor), Juliane Laake (viola da gamba) and Stefan Kießling (organ).