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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

IV.: Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir 1 - 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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IV.

Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir1

lf1393-02_figure_208

Melody: “Warum sollt’ ich mich denn grämen”

Johann Georg Ebeling 1666

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Reconstruction 1713

The melody of the Choral, upon which the Sopranos of Coro I and II combine in the last section of the Motett, is Johann Georg Ebeling’s setting of Paul Gerhardt’s Hymn, “Warum sollt’ ich mich denn gramen,” first published, with the Hymn, in Gerhardt’s Geistliche Andachten Bestehend in hundert und zwanzig Liedern (Berlin, 1666).

The melody also occurs in the “Christmas Oratorio,” No. 33, and there is a harmonisation of it in the Choralgesange, No. 334. In the Oratorio Bach uses only the first half of the tune, and except for the latter half of the second and first part of the third lines of the Hymn, follows Daniel Vetter’s reconstruction of the melody in his Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit (Leipzig, Part II, 1713). There is earlier authority for Bach’s innovations, excepting his lines 3 and 6. In the Motett he follows Vetter, excepting the last three bars (supra), where his version seems to be his own. The Choralgesange form is identical with the Oratorio movement, but with Vetter’s version of the fourth line of the Hymn.

The words of the Choral are the eleventh and twelfth stanzas of Gerhardt’s Hymn, first published, to another melody, in the 1653 (Berlin) edition of Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica:

  • Herr, mein Hirt, Brunn aller Freuden!
  • Du bist mein, ich bin dein;
  • Niemand kann uns scheiden.
  • Ich bin dein; weil du dein Leben
  • Und dein Blut mir zu gut
  • In den Tod gegeben.
  • Du bist mein, weil ich dich fasse
  • Und dich nicht, O mein Licht,
  • Aus dem Herzen lasse!
  • Lass mich, lass mich hin gelangen,
  • Wo1 du mich, und ich dich
  • Ewig2 werd’ umfangen.

  • B.G. xxxix. 98.

Form. Choral Fantasia in Motett form, the three lower parts working out a subject fugato.

[1 ] English versions of the Motett, “Be not afraid,” are published by Novello & Co. and Breitkopf & Haertel.

[1 ] 1653 Da.

[2 ] 1653 Lieblich.