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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Cantata CLI.: Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kommt. Feast of St John the Evangelist (Christmas) ( c. 1740) - Bach's Chorals, vol. 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts

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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata CLI.: Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kommt. Feast of St John the Evangelist (Christmas) ( 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 CLI.

Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kommt. Feast of St John the Evangelist (Christmas) (c. 1740)

lf1393-02_figure_191

Melody:Lobt Gott, ihr Christen alle gleich

Nicolaus Herman 1554

The words and melody of the concluding Choral are Nicolaus Herman’s Christmas Hymn, “Lobt Gott, ihr Christen alle gleich,” written c. 1554, and first published in Herman’s Die Sontags Euangelia uber das gantze Jar (Wittenberg, 1560), where it is set to the melody printed above.

The melody, of which Herman was the composer, appeared first in a broadsheet published in 1554. It is set there to his own words:

  • Kommt her, ihr lieben Schwesterlein,
  • An diesen Abendtanz;
  • Lasst uns ein geistlichs Liedelein
  • Singen um einen Kranz.

The melody occurs also in Cantata 195 and there are harmonisations of it in the Choralgesange, Nos. 233, 234. Organ Works, N. xv. 29; xviii. 74. Bach’s version of the tune practically was established before the end of the sixteenth century.

The words of the concluding Choral are the eighth stanza of Herman’s Hymn:

  • Heut’ schleusst er wieder auf die Thur
  • Zum schonen Paradeis,
  • Der Cherub steht nicht mehr dafur;
  • Gott sei Lob, Ehr’ und Preis!
  • B.G. xxxii. 16.

Translations of the Hymn are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 514.

Form. Simple (Flauto, Oboe d’amore, Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 235.