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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata XLVI.: Schauet doch und sehet. Tenth Sunday after Trinity ( c. 1725) - 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 XLVI.

Schauet doch und sehet. Tenth Sunday after Trinity (c. 1725)

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Melody: “O grosser Gott von Macht”

? Melchior Franck 1632

The melody and words of the concluding Choral are from Balthasar Schnurr’s (1572-1644) “O grosser Gott von Macht,” published together as a broadsheet, entitled Ein Andachtiges Buss-Lied, Aus der Vorbitt Abrahams fur die Sodomiter (Leipzig, 1632). The Cantionale sacrum (Gotha, Part II, 1648) contains a harmonisation of the melody by Melchior Franck. As that work includes thirty tunes harmonised by him, it may be conjectured that he was the composer of the melody, “O grosser Gott.”

Melchior Franck was born at Zittau, c. 1573-80. In 1601 he was Town “Musiker” at Nürnberg, and two or three years later became Capellmeister at Coburg. He died there in 1639.

The melody, which Bach does not use elsewhere, is not in the Choralgesange. There does not appear to be earlier sanction for Bach’s treatment of the fourth and sixth lines of the tune.

The words of the concluding Choral are the ninth stanza of the Hymn, an addendum to the original broadsheet of 1632, first published in Jeremias Weber’s Gesangbuch (Leipzig, 1638). Its authorship is attributed by Erk1 and Spitta2 to Johann Matthaus Meyfart (1590-1642). In Weber’s Hymn book, however, it bears the unidentified initials, “M. J. W.”:

  • O grosser Gott der3 Treu’,
  • Weil vor dir Niemand gilt
  • Als dein Sohn Jesus Christ,
  • Der deinen Zorn gestillt:
  • So sieh’ doch an die Wunden sein,
  • Sein’ Marter, Angst und schwere Pein.
  • Um seinet-willen schone,
  • Und nicht nach Sunden lohne.

  • B.G. x. 236.

Form. Extended (Tromba or Corno da Tirarsi4 , 2 Fl. (a due), Strings, Continuo). Erk, No. 280.

[1 ] Vol. ii. p. 125, No. 280.

[2 ] Vol. ii. p. 428.

[3 ] 1638 von.

[4 ] Both instruments are said to have been a combination of Tromba and Trombone.