Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam. - Bach's Chorals, vol. 3 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works

Return to Title Page for Bach’s Chorals, vol. 3 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam. - 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.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam.

lf1393-03_figure_016

Melody: “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam”

? Johann Walther 1524

    • i.

      To Jordan when our Lord had gone,
    • His Father’s pleasure willing,
    • He took His baptism of St John,
    • His work and task fulfilling;
    • Therein He would appoint a bath
    • To wash us from defilement,
    • And also drown that cruel Death
    • In His blood of assoilment:
    • ’Twas no less than a new life.

    • ii.

      Let all then hear and right receive
    • The baptism of the Father,
    • And what a Christian shall believe
    • To shun where heretics gather.
    • Water indeed, not water mere
    • In it can do His pleasure,
    • His holy Word is also there
    • With Spirit rich, unmeasured:
    • He is the one baptizer.

    • iii.

      This clearly He to us by word
    • Hath shown, nor less by vision;
    • The Father’s voice men plainly heard
    • At Jordan tell His mission.
    • He said, This is My own dear Son,
    • In Whom I am well contented:
    • To you I send Him, every one—
    • That you may hear, I have sent Him,
    • And follow what He teaches.

    • iv.

      Also God’s Son Himself here stands
    • In His humanity tender;
    • The Holy Ghost on Him descends,
    • In dove’s appearance hidden,
    • That not a doubt should ever rise
    • That, when we are baptizéd,
    • All the three Persons do baptize;
    • And so, here recognizéd,
    • Themselves give to dwell with us.

    • v.

      Christ to His scholars says: Go forth,
    • Give to all men acquaintance
    • That lost in sin lies the whole earth,
    • And must turn to repentance.
    • Who trusts, and is baptized, each one
    • Is thereby blest for ever,
    • Is from that hour a new-born man,
    • And, thenceforth dying never,
    • The kingdom shall inherit.

    • vi.

      But in this grace who puts no faith
    • Abides in his trespasses,
    • And is condemned to endless death,
    • Deep down in hell’s abysses.
    • Nothing avails his righteousness,
    • And lost are all his merits;
    • The old sin than nothing makes them less—
    • The sin which he inherits;
    • And help himself he cannot.

    • vii.

      The eye but water doth behold,
    • As from man’s hand it floweth;
    • But inward faith the power untold
    • Of Jesus Christ’s blood knoweth.
    • Faith sees therein a red flood roll,
    • With Christ’s blood dyed and blended,
    • Which hurts of all kinds maketh whole,
    • From Adam here descended,
    • And by ourselves brought on us.

    • Martin Luther (1483-1546)     Tr. George Macdonald1 .

Martin Luther’s Baptismal hymn, “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam,” was written, probably, in 1541. Johann Walther’s (?) melody, set to another of Luther’s hymns, had been published seventeen years earlier (1524). In 1543 it was attached to “Christ unser Herr” and since has remained its distinctive melody. It occurs in the Organ movements infra; Cantatas 7, 176 (c. 1735); Choralgesange, No. 43. Bach’s text is invariable. Zahn does not reveal early authority for his variations of the orginal text (G for A as the first note of the second phrase supra; B for A as the first note of the fifth phrase). Both details are found in Witt (No. 243).

[26]

N. xvi. 62. As in the Choral Fantasia on the first stanza that opens Cantata 7, Bach lets the word “Jordan” guide his treatment of the melody. Here, as there, the quick flowing stream is the background of his picture. While the Cantata movement is a setting of the first stanza of the hymn, the conclusion may be hazarded that in No. 26 Bach had the seventh stanza in his mind. Had the first been before him it is difficult to believe that he would have omitted to emphasize lines 7 and 8 in his customary chromatic idiom:

  • And also drown that cruel Death
  • In His blood of assoilment.

Bach seeks rather to emphasize the contrast suggested in the first four lines of the seventh stanza:

  • The eye but water doth behold,
  • As from man’s hand it floweth;
  • But inward faith the power untold
  • Of Jesus Christ’s blood knoweth.

Thus interpreted, the strong, reliant melody over which Jordan ripples acquires a new significance.

[27]

N. xvi. 67. The word “Jordan” also inspires this movement, which is constructed upon the first phrase of the melody, presented in four forms in the first eight bars: (1) the first phrase of the melody in the Treble line of bars 1-4; (2) its inversion in the Bass of bars 4-8; (3) an accelerated form of it in the Bass of bars 2-4; (4) the inversion of the accelerated form in the Treble of bars 6-8. The four motives, Schweitzer points out1 , “are worked into an extremely realistic picture of great and small waves rising and falling and overwhelming each other.” It is a picture, he adds, for the eye rather than the ear.

[1 ]Exotics (London, 1876), p. 98. The original hymn has seven stanzas.

[1 ] Vol. ii. 59.