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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Cantata XVIII.: Gleich wie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fallt. Sexagesima Sunday (1713 or 1714) - 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 XVIII.: Gleich wie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fallt. Sexagesima Sunday (1713 or 1714) - 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 XVIII.

Gleich wie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fallt. Sexagesima Sunday (1713 or 1714)

lf1393-02_figure_091

Melody: “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt”

Anon. 1535

The melody of the concluding Choral, “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt,” first appeared in Joseph Klug’s Geistliche Lieder (Wittenberg, 1535 [1529]), with the Hymn. It is said to be the melody of the song, “Was wöll wir aber heben an,” sung at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.

Bach uses the melody also in Cantata 109. Organ Works, N. xv. 107; xviii. 28.

The words of the Choral are the eighth stanza of Lazarus Spengler’s “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt,” first published in Johann Walther’s Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn (Wittenberg, 1524), with two melodies, probably by Walther himself.

Lazarus Spengler was born at Nürnberg in 1479. He made Luther’s acquaintance when the Reformer visited the city in 1518 on his way to Augsburg, and became a leader of the Reformation in Nürnberg, where he was successively Raths Syndikus and Rathsherr. He died in 1534:

  • Ich bitt’ O Herr, aus Herzens Grund,
  • Du wollst nicht von mir nehmen
  • Dein heil’ges Wort aus meinem Mund;
  • So wird mich nicht beschamen
  • Mein’ Sund und Schuld,
  • Denn in dein Huld
  • Setz’ ich all mein Vertrauen.
  • Wer sich nur fest
  • Darauf verlässt,
  • Der wird1 den Tod nicht schauen.

  • B.G. ii. 252.

English translations of the Hymn are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1072.

Form. Simple (2 Fl., Fagotto, 4 Violas, Continuo). Choralgesänge, No. 73.

Bach introduces the melody into the accompaniment of the Bass Recitativo, “Gleich wie der Regen,” and the following Chorus, “Mein Gott, hier wird” (B.G. ii. 237).

Four clauses of the Litany are inserted into the second movement (B.G. ii. 238).

[1 ] 1524 wurd.