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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata CXXIII.: Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen. Feast of the Epiphany ( 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 CXXIII.

Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen. Feast of the Epiphany (c. 1740)

lf1393-02_figure_174

Melody: “Liebster Immanuel”

Anon. 1679

lf1393-02_figure_175

Melody: “Schonster Immanuel”

Anon. 1698*

A Choral Cantata, on Ahashuerus Fritsch’s “Liebster [Schonster] Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen,” first published in his Himmels-Lust und Welt-Unlust (Jena, 1679), with the melody.

The melody appears either to be derived from, or to be the original of, a “Courant,” which is found in a ms. collection of dance tunes dated 1681. The former alternative is the more probable.

The melody does not occur elsewhere in the Cantatas, Oratorios, or Motetts. Erk, No. 113, who attributes the tune tentatively to Johann Rodolph Ahle, prints the melody, with figured Bass, from Schemelli’s Gesang-Buch (1736). The tune is very freely treated in the Hymn books. Bach’s version follows a reconstruction of it in the Darmstadt Geistreiches Gesang-Buch (Darmstadt, 1698). His substitution of an F sharp for A natural as the third note of the third bar of the reconstructed melody (supra) is found in a version of the tune in 1715. For his treatment of bars 5 and 6 also there is (1731) authority. His closing cadence, based on the 1679 text, is repeated in Schemelli’s Gesang-Buch (1736).

(a)

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

  • Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen,
  • Du meiner Seelen Heil1 , komm, komm nur2 bald!
  • Du hast mir, höchster Schatz, mein3 Herz genommen,
  • So ganz vor Liebe brennt und nach dir wallt.
  • Nichts kann auf Erden
  • Mir Lieb’res werden,
  • Als wenn ich meinen Jesum stets behalt’1 .

  • B.G. xxvi. 43.

A translation of the Hymn into English is noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 675.

Form. Choral Fantasia (2 Fl., 2 Ob. d’amore, Strings, Continuo)2 .

(b)

The words of the concluding Choral are the fifth stanza of Fritsch’s Hymn:

  • Drum fahrt nur immerhin3 , ihr Eitelkeiten!
  • Du, Jesu, du bist mein, und ich bin dein;
  • Ich will mich von der Welt zu dir bereiten;
  • Du sollt in meinem Herz und Munde sein4 !
  • Mein ganzes Leben.
  • Sei dir ergeben,
  • Bis man mich einstens legt in’s5 Grab hinein.

  • B.G. xxvi. 60.

Form. Simple (2 Fl., 2 Ob. d’amore, Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 229.

[* ]sic.

[1 ] 1679 Trost.

[2 ] 1679 doch.

[3 ] 1679 Denn du hast mir, mein Schatz, das.

[1 ] 1679 Wenn ich, mein Jesu, dich nur stets behalt.

[2 ] Spitta, iii. 102, draws attention to Bach’s evident desire to conceal the secular character of the melody, which is a sarabande in form.

[3 ] 1679 Drumb fahret immerhin.

[4 ] 1679 Mund und Herze sein.

[5 ] 1679 Bis man mich leget in das.