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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata CXXX.: Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir. Feast of St Michael the Archangel ( 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 CXXX.

Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir. Feast of St Michael the Archangel (c. 1740)

lf1393-02_figure_177

Melody: “Or sus, serviteurs du Seigneur”

Louis Bourgeois 1551

lf1393-02_figure_178

Melody: “Il n’y a icy celluy”

Anon. c. 15511

lf1393-02_figure_179

A Choral Cantata, on Paul Eber’s Hymn, a free translation of Philipp Melanchthon’s “Dicimus grates tibi, summe rerum,” first published as a broadsheet at Nürnberg c. 1554 as “Ein schon New Geistlich Lobgesang” and thence in Johann Eichorn’s Geistliche Lieder D. Mart. Lut. und anderer frommen Christen (Frankfort a. Oder, 1561).

The melody, which was associated with Eber’s Hymn before Bartholomaus Gesius wrote for the latter its proper melody in 16011 , was published originally in the Geneva Psalter, Pseaumes octante trois de David (Geneva, 1551), where it is set to Psalm cxxxiv, “Or sus, serviteurs du Seigneur,” one of the thirty-four Psalms translated by Theodore Beza and included in that book. The tune in its present and familiar form, therefore, must be attributed to Louis Bourgeois (see Cantata 13). But, like the other Psalm tunes in that collection, “Or sus, serviteurs” probably has a secular origin. Its first two lines bear a distinct resemblance to the melody of a French chanson, “Il n’y a icy celluy1 .” The tune was set to Psalm c in John Knox’ Anglo-Genevan Psalter of 1561 and also in Sternhold and Hopkins’ The whole Book of Psalmes (1562). Claude Goudimel harmonised it in 1565. Upon the issue in 1696 of Tate and Brady’s A New Version of the Psalms of David, Fitted to the Tunes Used in Churches, the word “Old” was added to the titles of the tunes that were retained in use from the older Psalter. Thus Bourgeois’ tune, which from 1562 to 1696 was the “Hundredth,” was thenceforth known as the “Old Hundredth.” The name is peculiar to British use.

The melody does not occur elsewhere in the Cantatas, Oratorios, or Motetts. There are harmonisations of the tune in the Choralgesange, Nos. 129, 1302 , 132.

(a)

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

  • Herr Gott dich loben alle wir
  • Und sollen billig danken dir
  • Fur dein’ Geschopf’ der Engel schon,
  • Die uin dich schweb’n in deinem Thron.

  • B.G. xxvi. 233.

Translations of the Hymn into English are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 293.

Form. Choral Fantasia (3 Trombe, Timp., 3 Ob., Strings, Continuo).

(b)

The words of the concluding Choral are the eleventh and twelfth stanzas of Eber’s Hymn:

    • Darum wir billig loben dich
    • Und danken dir, Gott, ewiglich,
    • Wie auch der lieben Engel Schaar
    • Dich preisen heut’ und immerdar.
    • Und bitten dich: wollst1 allezeit
    • Dieselben heissen sein bereit,
    • Zu schutzen deine kleine Heerd’,
    • So halt dein göttlich’s Wort in Werth.

    • B.G. xxvi. 268.

Form. Embellished (3 Trombe, Timp., 3 Ob., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 1312 .

[1 ] Sung to the words of the French chanson:

  • Il n’y a icy celluy
  • Qui n’ait sa belle amye.
  • Je ne le dy pas pour my,
  • La myenne n’y est mye.
  • Elle est bien a son plaisir,
  • Celle qui a son desir,
  • Elle est bien a son plaisir,
  • Mais je ne l’ouse dire.

[1 ] Zahn, i. No. 460.

[1 ] The melody is printed supra from Gaston Paris and Auguste Gevaert’s Chansons du XVe siècle, publiées d’après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris (Paris, 1875).

[2 ] See (b) infra.

[1 ]c. 1554 du wolst.

[2 ] Erk, No. 220, and Choralgesange, No. 130, print a setting of the melody in Simple form orchestrated for 2 Clarini, which Erk conjectures to have been intended as a simpler substitute for the closing Choral. He prints the arrangement from an old ms. which he thinks may be in Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s hand. Bernhard Friedrich Richter, in the Choralgesange, questions its genuineness.