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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata XV.: Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hölle lassen. Easter Day (1704) - Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach’s Chorals, vol. 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts [1917]

Edition used:

Bach’s Chorals. Part I: 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts, by Charles Sanford Terry (Cambridge University Press, 1915-1921). 3 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Bach’s Chorals, 3 vols.

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Cantata XV.

Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hölle lassen. Easter Day (1704)

lf1393-02_figure_087

Melody: “Wenn mein Stundlein vorhanden ist”

Nicolaus Herman 1569

The melody of the Choral sung in the last thirty bars of the concluding movement is Nicolaus Herman’s “Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist,” first published, with the Hymn, in Johann Wolff’s Kirche Gesang, Aus dem Wittenbergischen, und allen andern den besten Gesangbuchern (Frankfort a. Main, 1569).

Herman was born circ. 1485. In 1524 he was acting as Master in the Latin School and Cantor of the church at Joachimsthal in Bohemia. He died there in 1561. He was a great lover of music, a good organist, and is credited with the authorship of the tunes set to his Hymns.

Bach uses the melody also in Cantatas 31 and 95. There are other harmonisations of the tune in the Choralgesange, Nos. 353, 354, 355. The concluding line of Bach’s text is a variation of the original melody as old as 1584 (M. Eucharius Zinckeisen’s Kirchen Gesäng, Frankfort a. Main, 1584). His other variations also are found in earlier texts.

The words of the Choral are the fourth stanza of Nicolaus Herman’s Hymn for the Dying, “Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist,” first published in his Die Historien von der Sindfludt” (Wittenberg, 1562 [1560]):

  • Weil du vom Tod’ erstanden bist,
  • Werd’ ich im Grab’ nicht bleiben,
  • Mein höchster Trost dein’ Auffahrt ist,
  • Tod’sfurcht kann sie vertreiben;
  • Denn wo du bist da komm’ ich hin,
  • Dass ich stets bei dir leb’ und bin,
  • Drum fahr’ ich hin mit Freuden.

  • B.G. ii. 169.

English translations of the Hymn are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1254.

Form. Extended (3 Clarini, Timpani, Strings, Continuo).