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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata LXXIV.: Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten. Whit Sunday (1735 1 ) - 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 LXXIV.

Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten. Whit Sunday (17351 )

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Melody: “Kommt her zu mir, spricht Gottes Sohn”

Anon. 1530

The melody of the concluding Choral is an anonymous tune published as a broadsheet, “Ain schons newes Christlichs lyed,” in 1530, with Georg Gruenwald’s (d. 1530) Hymn, “Kommt her zu mir, spricht [sagt] Gottes Sohn.”

The melody also occurs in Cantatas 86 and 108. There is earlier authority for Bach’s variation of the opening (1534) and closing (1598) phrases of the melody.

The words of the Choral are the second stanza of Paul Gerhardt’s “Gott Vater, sende deinen Geist,” first published in the 1653 (Berlin) edition of Cruger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica, to a melody by Johann Crüger, “Den Herren meine Seel’ erhebt.” Bach follows general use in associating the Hymn with the tune “Kommt her zu mir” (supra):

  • Kein Menschenkind hier auf der Erd’
  • Ist dieser edlen Gabe werth,
  • Bei uns ist kein Verdienen;
  • Hier gilt gar nichts als Lieb’ und Ghad’,
  • Die Christus uns verdienet hat
  • Mit Bussen und Versuhnen

  • B.G. xviii. 146.

Form. Simple (Tromba, Ob. da caccia, 2 Ob., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 223.

[1 ] The Cantata is an elaboration of No. 59. See Spitta, i. 511.