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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata LXXVIII.: Jesu, der du meine Seele. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (after 1734) - 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 LXXVIII.

Jesu, der du meine Seele. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (after 1734)

lf1393-02_figure_153

Melody: “Wachet, doch, erwacht, thr Schlafer”

Anon. 1662

A Choral Cantata, on Johann Rist’s Lenten Hymn, “Jesu, der du meine Seele,” first published in Part I of his Himlischer Lieder (Lüneburg, 1641).

The melody of the opening and concluding movements has, from 1663, been known by its association with Rist’s Hymn. In its earliest form it belonged to the secular song, “Daphnis ging fur wenig Tagen,” and is found in association with it in Theobald Grummer’s Des Daphnis aus CimbrienGalathee (Hamburg, 1642). In 1643 it was used for the song, “Ferdinand, du grosser Kaiser.” In the 1662 (Frankfort) edition of Johann Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica the tune is attached to Georg Philipp Harsdorffer’s (1607-58) “Wachet doch, erwacht, ihr Schlafer,” and in Nicolaus Stenger’s Christlich- neuvermehrt und gebessertes Gesangbuch (Erfurt, 1663) it was set to Rist’s Hymn. With that Hymn it has been particularly associated ever since.

The melody occurs also in Cantata 105. There are other harmonisations of the tune in the Choralgesange, Nos. 185, 186, 187. For the first half of the tune (lines 1-4) Bach’s text is invariable and follows the Rothenburg Cantor Georg Falck’s Andacht-erweckende Seelen-Cymbeln (1672). For lines 7 and 8 he uses more than one form. In Cantata 78 he follows the Leipzig organist Daniel Vetter’s Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-Ergotzlichkeit (Part II, Leipzig, 1713). Elsewhere his eighth line follows Telemann (1730).

(a)

The words of the opening movement are the first stanza of Johann Rist’s Hymn:

  • Jesu, der du meine Seele
  • Hast durch deinen bittern Tod
  • Aus des Teufels finstrer Hohle
  • Und der schweren Seelennoth1
  • Kräftiglich heraus gerissen,
  • Und mich Solches lassen wissen
  • Durch dein angenehmes Wort:
  • Sei doch jetzt, O Gott, mein Hort!

  • B.G. xviii. 257.

Translations of the Hymn into English are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 966.

Form. Choral Fantasia1 (Corno, Flauto, 2 Ob., Strings, Continuo).

(b)

The words of the concluding Choral are the twelfth stanza of Rist’s Hymn:

  • Herr! ich glaube, hilf mir Schwachen,
  • Lass mich ja verzagen nicht2 ;
  • Du, du kannst mich starker machen,
  • Wenn mich Sund’ und Tod anficht.
  • Deiner Gute will ich trauen,
  • Bis ich fröhlich werde schauen
  • Dich, Herr Jesu, nach dem Streit
  • In der sussen Ewigkeit.

  • B.G. xviii. 286.

Form. Simple (Corno, Flauto, 2 Ob., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 1883 .

[1 ] 1641 Sunden Noth.

[1 ] The movement is built upon the same ground Bass as the Crucifixus of the B Minor Mass.

[2 ] 1641 Lass uns ja verderben nicht.

[3 ] The last four lines of the second Recitativo are from the tenth stanza of the Hymn.