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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Cantata CLXI.: Komm, du susse Todesstunde. Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity and Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M. (1715) - 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 CLXI.: Komm, du susse Todesstunde. Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity and Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M. (1715) - 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 CLXI.

Komm, du susse Todesstunde. Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity and Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M. (1715)

For the melody of the concluding Choral, Hassler’s “Herzlich thut mich verlangen,” see Cantata 135.

The words of the Choral are the fourth stanza of Christoph Knoll’s funerary Hymn, “Herzlich thut mich verlangen.” The Hymn is said to have been written during a pestilence in 1599. It was first printed at Gorlitz in 1605 and also in the Görlitz Harmoniae sacrae (1613), where it is set to Hassler’s tune.

Christoph Knoll was born at Bunzlau, in Silesia, in 1563. He was successively schoolmaster, Deacon, and Archdeacon at Sprottau, and from 1628 was pastor of the neighbouring village, Wittgendorf. He died there in 1650:

  • Der Leib zwar in der Erden
  • Von Wurmern wird verzehrt:
  • Doch auferweckt soll werden1
  • Durch Christum schon verklart;
  • Wird leuchten als die Sonne
  • Und leben ohne Noth2
  • In himml’scher Freud’ und Wonne.
  • Was schad’t mir dann der Tod3 ?
  • B.G. xxxiii. 27.

A translation of the Hymn into English is noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 629.

Form. Embellished (2 Fl., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 161.

Bach introduces (Sesquialtera ad Organo) the melody in the opening Alto Aria, “Komm, du süsse Todesstunde.”

[1 ] 1611 Dort wird erwecket werden.

[2 ] 1611 ohn alle noth.

[3 ] 1611 mir der Todt?