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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata CLVI.: Ich steh’ mit einem Fuss im Grabe. Third Sunday after the Epiphany (1729-30) - 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 CLVI.

Ich steh’ mit einem Fuss im Grabe. Third Sunday after the Epiphany (1729-30)

(a)

The melody of the second movement is Johann Hermann Schein’s “Mach’s mit mir, Gott, nach deiner Güt’ ” (see Cantata 139).

The words of the Choral are the first stanza of Schein’s Hymn. It was written in 1628 for the funeral of Margarita Werner, the wife of a Leipzig Town Councillor, and was published in that year as a broadsheet, with the tune. The Hymn is an acrostic; the initial letters of the first and third lines in stanzas i-iv spell the name “Ma-r-g-a-r-i-t-a,” and the initial W of stanza v stands for “Werner”:

  • Mach’s mit mir, Gott, nach deiner Güt’,
  • Hilf mir in meinem Leiden.
  • Was ich dich bitt’1 , versag’ mir nicht!
  • Wenn sich mein’ Seel’ soll2 scheiden,
  • So nimm sie, Herr, in deine Händ’:
  • Ist Alles gut, wenn gut das End’.

  • B.G. xxxii. 101.

Translations of the Hymn are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1008.

Form. “Arie mit Choral” for Soprano and Tenor, i.e. a Duetto, the Soprano having the cantus and the Tenor an independent subject to other words (Vn. I and II and Viola in unison, Continuo)3 .

lf1393-02_figure_192

Melody: “Herr, wie du willt”

Anon. 1525

(b)

The melody of the concluding Choral was first published in 1525 in the Strassburg Ordnung des Herren Nachtinal, and also, with a slight alteration1 , in the Strassburg Teutsch Kirchēampt mit lobgsengen, un̄ gotlichen psalmen in the same year. It was set in both to Luther’s “Aus tiefer Noth,” but is generally associated with Bienemann’s Hymn (infra) in the Hymn books. Bienemann’s Hymn has a later (1648) melody of its own, which is less familiar.

The melody does not occur elsewhere in the Cantatas, Oratorios, or Motetts. There is another harmonisation of it in the Choralgesange, No. 151.

The words of the Choral are the first stanza of Caspar Bienemann’s Hymn, “Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir” (see Cantata 73):

  • Herr, wie du will’t, so schick’s mit mir
  • Im Leben und im Sterben;
  • Allein zu dir steht mein Begehr,
  • Herr, lass mich2 nicht verderben!
  • Erhalt’ mich nur in deiner Huld:
  • Sonst, wie du will’t, gieb mir Geduld;
  • Dein Will’ der3 ist der beste.

  • B.G. xxxii. 114.

Form. Simple (Oboe, Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 150.

[1 ] 1628 Ruff ich dich an.

[2 ] 1628 wil.

[3 ] See Spitta, ii. 441, on the movement.

[1 ] The penultimate note of the third bar is C instead of B.

[2 ] 1582 Lass mich, Herr.

[3 ] 1582 Denn dein Will.