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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Cantata XLV.: Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist. Eighth Sunday after Trinity ( c. 1740) - 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 XLV.: Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist. Eighth Sunday after Trinity ( c. 1740) - 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 XLV.

Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist. Eighth Sunday after Trinity (c. 1740)

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Melody: “Die Wollust dieser Welt”

Anon. 1679*

The melody of the concluding Choral is generally associated with Johann Heermann’s “O Gott, du frommer Gott,” but is not to be confused with the melody of 1693 (see Cantata 24). The tune, whose source is not known, appears first in Ahashuerus Fritsch’s Himmels-Lust und Welt-Unlust (Jena, 1679), in association with Johann Jakob Schütz’ (1640-90) “Die Wollust dieser Welt” (published in 1675). A reconstruction of the melody is found in the Darmstadt Geistreiches Gesang-Buch (Darmstadt, 1698), which Bach follows more closely.

The melody is used also in Cantatas 64, 94, 128, 129, and in the unfinished Cantata U 1, “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe.” The Choralvariationen or Partite (N. xix. 44) upon the melody, “O Gott, du frommer Gott,” treat another tune, originally “Gross ist, O grosser Gott,” published in the Hanover New Ordentlich Gesang-Buch (Hanover, 1646). Bach’s version of “Die Wollust” is founded upon a reconstruction of the tune in 1698. His modifications of lines 4-6 appear to be original.

The words of the concluding Choral are the second stanza of Heermann’s “O Gott, du frommer Gott” (see Cantata 24):

  • Gieb, dass ich thu’ mit Fleiss,
  • Was mir zu thun gebuhret,
  • Wozu mich dein Befehl
  • In meinem Stande fuhret.
  • Gieb, dass ich’s thue bald,
  • Zu der Zeit, da ich soll;
  • Und wenn ich’s thu’, so gieb,
  • Dass es gerathe wohl.

  • B.G. x. 186.

Form. Simple (2 Fl., 2 Ob., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 278.

[* ]sic.