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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata LXXIII.: Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir. Third Sunday after the Epiphany ( 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 LXXIII.

Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir. Third Sunday after the Epiphany (c. 1725)

lf1393-02_figure_149

Melody: “Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns halt”

Anon. 1535

(a)

The Choral melody of the opening movement, “Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält,” was first published, with Justus Jonas’ (1493-1555) Hymn bearing that title, in Joseph Klug’s Geistliche Lieder (Wittenberg, 1535 [1529]). The Hymn was most usually sung to the tune “Ach lieben Christen, seid getrost,” but Bach follows Cruger (1709) in associating it with “Who Gott der Herr.”

The melody also occurs in Cantatas 114 and 178, and in Cantata D 3 attributed to Bach, “Siehe, es hat überwunden der Lowe.” There are three other harmonisations of the tune in the Choralgesänge, Nos. 383, 385, 388.

The words of the Choral are the first stanza of Caspar Bienemann’s (Melissander), “Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir,” first published in his Betbuchlein (Leipzig, 1582).

Bienemann was born at Nürnberg in 1540. He accompanied an Imperial embassy to Greece as interpreter, and there assumed the name Melissander. In 1578 he became pastor and General Superintendent at Altenburg. He died there in 1591. The Hymn was written in 1574, when he was private tutor to the children of Duke Johann Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar, and was taught as a prayer to the Duchess Maria, then aged three. The initial letters of the three stanzas form an acrostic on her title, “Herzogin zu Sachsen”:

  • Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir
  • In Leben und im Sterben!
  • Allein zu dir steht mein Begier,
  • Herr, lass mich1 nicht verderben!
  • Erhalt’ mich nur in deiner Huld,
  • Sonst, wie du willt, gieb mir Geduld;
  • Denn dein Will’ ist der beste.

  • B.G. xviii. 87.

Translations of the Hymn into English are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 142.

Form. Choral Fantasia. The Choral Chorus (S.A.T.B.), Extended in design, is intersected by Recitativo passages for S.T.B. which elaborate the ideas suggested by the Hymn. The Recitativo passages are sung to orchestral ritornelli, always the same, but differing in key (Corno, 2 Ob., Strings, Organ obbligato, Continuo)2 .

(b)

For the melody of the concluding Choral, “Von Gott will ich nicht lassen,” see Cantata 11.

The words of the Choral are the ninth stanza of Ludwig Helmbold’s “Von Gott will ich nicht lässen,” founded on Psalm lxxiii. 23. The Hymn, written during a pestilence at Erfurt in 1563, was first published as a broadsheet in 1563-64 and later in Hundert Christenliche Haussgesang (Nürnberg, 1569).

Helmbold was born at Mühlhausen in 1532, was educated at Leipzig and Erfurt, became Dean of the Philosophical Faculty in the latter University, and was crowned a poet by Maximilian II in 1566. He became pastor of St Blasius’ Church, Mühlhausen, in 1586, and Superintendent there. He died in 1598:

  • Das ist des Vaters Wille,
  • Der uns erschaffen1 hat;
  • Sein Sohn hat Gut’s die Fulle
  • Erworben uns aus Gnad’2 ;
  • Auch Gott3 , der heil’ge Geist,
  • Im Glauben uns regieret,
  • Zum Reich des Himmels fuhret:
  • Ihm sei Lob, Ehr’ und Preis.

  • B.G. xviii. 104.

English translations of the Hymn are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 508.

Form. Simple (Corno, 2 Ob., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 328.

[1 ] 1582 Lass mich, Herr.

[2 ] See Spitta, ii. 414, and p. 44 supra.

[1 ] 1569 geschaffen.

[2 ] 1569 Erworben und Genad.

[3 ] 1569 Gott.