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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata CLXXXIV.: Erwünschtes Freudenlicht. Whit Tuesday (? 1724) - 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 CLXXXIV.

Erwünschtes Freudenlicht. Whit Tuesday (? 1724)

lf1393-02_figure_203

Melody: “O Herre Gott, dein gottlich Wort”

Anon. 1527

The words and melody of the fifth movement are from the Hymn, “O Herre Gott, dein gottlich Wort,” attributed to Anark of Wildenfels, published, with the melody, in the 1527 edition of the Erfurt Enchiridion.

The author, who died in 1539, was one of the strongest supporters of the Reformation at the Saxon Court and signed the Augsburg Confession.

The melody does not occur elsewhere in the Cantatas, Oratorios, or Motetts. Bach’s slight variations from the original, notably the B natural for A natural at the third note supra, the C natural for D natural at the fifth note after the first double bar, and the closing cadence, are found in sixteenth century texts.

The words are the eighth stanza of the Hymn:

  • Herr, ich hoff’ je,
  • Du werdest die
  • In keiner Noth verlassen,
  • Die dein Wort recht
  • Als treue Knecht’
  • Im Herz’n und Glauben fassen;
  • Giebst ihn’n bereit
  • Die Seligkeit
  • Und lass’st sie nicht verderben.
  • O Herr, durch dich
  • Bitt’ ich, lass mich
  • Frohlich und selig1 sterben.

  • B.G. xxxvii. 95.

Translations of the Hymn into English are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 836.

Form. Simple (2 Fl., Strings, Continuo). Choralgesange, No. 2832 .

[1 ] 1527 willig.

[2 ] Spitta, ii. 399, supposes that the Choral, which precedes the final Chorus, was inserted when the Cantata was adapted, 1724 (?), to Church use. His inference appears to be incorrect. See Schweitzer, ii. 162.