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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Cantata XVII.: Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity ( c. 1737) - Bach's Chorals, vol. 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts

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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata XVII.: Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity ( c. 1737) - 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 XVII.

Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (c. 1737)

lf1393-02_figure_089

Melody. “Nun lob’, mein’ Seel’, den Herren”

? Johann Kugelmann 1540

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The melody of the concluding Choral, “Nun lob’, mein’ Seel’, den Herren,” was first published, with the Hymn, in Johann Kugelmann’s News Gesanng, mit Dreyen stymmen (Augsburg, 1540), a Hymn book compiled for the use of the Lutheran Church in Prussia and one of the earliest of its kind after Walther’s (1524). It contained thirty-nine hymns, for the majority of which (thirty) Kugelmann composed the tunes.

Kugelmann is said to have been born at Augsburg. In 1519 he was in the service of the Emperor Maximilian I at Innspruck as Court Trumpeter. Later he passed into the service of Duke Albert of Prussia in a similar capacity, and eventually became Ducal Capellmeister at Konigsberg. He died in 1542.

Bach uses the melody also in Cantatas 28, 29, 51, 167, in Motett 1, “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied,” and in the so-called Motett, “Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren.” Other harmonisations of the tune are in the Choralgesange, Nos. 269, 270. The variations of the original melody which appear in Bach’s versions are found in texts within sixty years of the publication of the tune in 1540.

The words of the Choral are the third stanza of Johann Graumann’s (Poliander) “Nun lob’, mein’ Seel’, den Herren,” a version of Psalm ciii, first published as a broadsheet at Nürnberg c. 1540, and, with the tune, in Kugelmann’s News Gesanng (1540).

Graumann was born at Neustadt in the Bavarian Palatinate in 1487. In 1520 he became Rector of the Thomasschule, Leipzig. On Luther’s recommendation he was invited to aid the Reformation movement in Prussia, and in 1525 became pastor of the Altstadt Church at Konigsberg. He died there in 1541. The Hymn is said to have been written in 1525 at the request of Albert of Hohenzollern, High Master of the Teutonic Order and first Duke of Prussia (d. 1568):

  • Wie sich ein Vat’r1 erbarmet
  • Üb’r seine junge Kindlein klein:
  • So thut der Herr uns Armen,
  • So wir ihn kindlich fürchten rein.
  • Er kennt das arm’ Gemächte,
  • Er2 weiss, wir sind nur Staub.
  • Gleich wie das Gras vom Reche,
  • Ein’ Blum’ und fallend Laub:
  • Der Wind nur druber wehet,
  • So ist es nimmer da:
  • Also der Mensch vergehet,
  • Sein End’, das ist ihm nah

  • B.G. ii. 225.

Translations of the Hymn into English are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 451.

Form. Simple (2 Ob., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 271.

[1 ] 1540 man.

[2 ] 1540 Got.