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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Ach wie fluchtig. - Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach’s Chorals, vol. 3 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works [1921]

Edition used:

Bach’s Chorals. Part III: The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works, by Charles Sanford Terry (Cambridge University Press, 1915-1921). 3 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: Bach’s Chorals, 3 vols.

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Ach wie fluchtig.

lf1393-03_figure_004

Melody: “Ach wie flüchtig”

Michael Franck 1652

lf1393-03_figure_005

    • i.

      O how cheating,
    • O how fleeting,
    • Is our earthly being!
    • ’Tis a mist in wintry weather,
    • Gathered in an hour together,
    • And as soon dispersed in ether.

    • ii.

      O how cheating,
    • O how fleeting,
    • Are our days departing!
    • Like a deep and headlong river
    • Flowing onward, flowing ever,
    • Tarrying not and stopping never.
    • * * *

    • iv.

      O how cheating,
    • O how fleeting,
    • Is all earthly beauty!
    • Like a summer floweret flowing,
    • Scattered by the breezes, blowing
    • O’er the bed on which ’twas growing.
    • * * *

    • vi.

      O how cheating,
    • O how fleeting,
    • Is all earthly pleasure!
    • ’Tis an air-suspended bubble,
    • Blown about in tears and trouble,
    • Broken soon by flying stubble.

    • vii.

      O how cheating,
    • O how fleeting,
    • Is all earthly honour!
    • He who wields a monarch’s thunder,
    • Tearing right and law asunder,
    • Is to-morrow trodden under.
    • * * *

    • xiii.

      O how cheating,
    • O how fleeting,
    • All—yes! all that’s earthly!
    • Every thing is fading, flying,
    • Man is mortal, earth is dying,
    • Christian! live on Heaven relying.

    • Michael Franck (1609-67)     Tr. Sir John Bowring1 .

The melody, “Ach wie flüchtig,” was written by Michael Franck for his hymn. Words and melody were published together in 1652. In Cantata 26 (c. 1740), where the Choral is introduced twice, and in the Orgelbüchlein Bach’s text of the cantus is uniform with Witt’s (No. 665) and is based upon a reconstruction of the melody, perhaps by Johann Crüger, published in 16612 . The closing cadence is a combination of the original (1652) and Crüger’s texts. It dates from 1679. The title of the hymn is correctly stated in the Cantata. Bach heads the Orgelbüchlein movement “Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig.” Actually, “Ach wie flüchtig” is the first line of the first and succeeding odd stanzas, and “Ach wie nichtig” the first line of the even stanzas.

There is a single Organ movement on the melody:

[5]

N. xv. 121. The hymn occurs in the section on “The Life Eternal” in the Orgelbüchlein. In treating the melody Bach was moved by the word “Nebel” (mist) in the fourth line of the first stanza, and the image of man’s life as

  • a mist in wintry weather,
  • Gathered in an hour together,
  • And as soon dispersed in ether.

He therefore accompanies the melody with restless, gliding semiquavers that flicker across the movement like shadowy ghosts, or clouds driven across the sky, while the three-note phrases on the Pedals echo the words “wie nichtig.” Towards the end of his life, about a quarter of a century after the Orgelbuchlein was sketched, Bach again used the melody, in Cantata 26. So constant and invariable is his musical language that, in the opening movement of the Cantata, a Choral Fantasia, Franck’s hymn drew from him a similar treatment of the melody.

[1 ]Hymns (London, 1825), No. 35. In Franck’s setting each half of every stanza is sung twice. The original has thirteen stanzas.

[2 ] It is printed in Bach’s Chorals, Part II. 193.