Caroline Luise Reichardt

Caroline Luise Reichardt was a German composer, singer, teacher, and choral leader born in Berlin on April 11, 1779. She grew up in an unusually musical environment: her father was the composer and Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and the family home brought her into contact with important literary and musical figures. Several of her songs were published with her father's music in 1800, and she later issued collections of her own German and Italian songs.

In 1809 Reichardt moved to Hamburg, where she became an influential teacher and organizer of choral music. Social restrictions prevented women from holding many of the public musical posts available to men, yet she helped shape Hamburg's musical life through teaching, composition, and the direction of singing groups. Her output included secular songs and sacred music, often characterized by clear, singable melodic writing.

The melody behind ARMAGEDDON is associated with Reichardt's setting of the Novalis devotional poem Wenn ich ihn nur habe, dating from the early nineteenth century. Friedrich Layriz's Kern des deutschen Kirchengesangs printed the melody in 1853 and attributed it to Reichardt, decades after her death. John Goss later adapted that melody for English hymnody. Reichardt therefore belongs to the tune's source history, but she did not compose music for Havergal's 1877 text.