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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt. - 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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Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt.

lf1393-03_figure_025

Melody: “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt”

Anon. 1535

    • i.

      When Adam fell, the frame entire
    • Of nature was infected;
    • The source, whence came the poison dire,
    • Was not to be corrected:
    • The lust accursed, indulged at first,
    • Brought death as its production;
    • But God’s free grace
    • Hath saved our race
    • From misery and destruction.
    • * * *

    • iii.

      By one man’s guilt we were enslaved
    • To sin, death, and the devil;
    • But by another’s grace are saved
    • Through faith from all this evil:
    • And as we all by Adam’s fall
    • Were sentenced to perdition,
    • So for us hath
    • Christ by His death
    • Regained true life’s fruition.

    • iv.

      Since God bestowed His only Son
    • On His rebellious creature,
    • To save our souls which were undone,
    • And free our sinful nature
    • From shame and guilt, by His blood spilt,
    • His death and resurrection,—
    • Do not delay,
    • Make sure this day
    • Thy calling and election.
    • * * *

    • viii.

      I send my cries unto the Lord,
    • My heart implores this favour,
    • To grant me of His living word
    • A never-failing savour;
    • That sin and shame may lose their claim
    • To hinder my salvation:
    • In Christ, the scope
    • Of all my hope,
    • I fear no condemnation.

    • ix.

      His word’s a lamp unto my feet,
    • My soul’s best information;
    • My surest guide and path to meet
    • Eternal consolation:
    • This light, where’er it doth appear,
    • Revealeth Christ our Saviour
    • To all the lost,
    • Who firmly trust
    • In Him alone for ever.

    • Lazarus Spengler (1479-1534)     Tr. John Christian Jacobi1 .

Lazarus Spengler’s penitential hymn, “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt,” was first published in the Hymn-book which Johann Walther, in collaboration with Luther, issued in 1524. The melody (supra) which bears its name did not appear in association with it until the publication of Joseph Klug’s Hymn-book at Wittenberg in 1535 [1529]. The tune, the “Pavier Tone,” is said to have been sung at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Bach employs it elsewhere in Cantatas 18 and 109 (1713: c. 1731). In the Organ movements he gives the sixth and last lines eight feet. In Witt (No. 291) and the Cantatas, as in the original, they have seven. Otherwise Bach’s text is invariable.

There are two Organ movements on the melody:

[40]

N. xv. 107. One of the movements in the “Penitence and Amendment” section of the Orgelbüchlein. Bach interprets the opening line:

When Adam fell.

The basso ostinato consists of a series of almost irremediable stumbles or falls. Notice also the pathetic significance of the little phrase accompanying the first note of every line of the melody. But the close in A major enforces the lines:

  • But God’s free grace
  • Hath saved our race.

[41]

N. xviii. 28. The Fugue is among the miscellaneous movements and its form declares it an early work. The text of it is among Kirnberger’s mss. Five other copies are in the Berlin Royal Library and Hauser mss. It bears no relation to a particular stanza.

[1 ]Moravian Hymn-book, ed. 1877, No. 18. The original hymn has nine stanzas, of which ii, v-vii are omitted in the translation.