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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.

Author: Johann Sebastian Bach
Author: Charles Sanford Terry

Part of: Bach’s Chorals, 3 vols.

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Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter auf Erden?

Melody: “Hast du denn, Liebster, dein Angesicht gantzlich verborgen”

Anon. 1665

- i.
  Can it be, Jesu, from highest Heaven hither
- Thou wendest,
- E’en to this sin-laden frail earth
- Thy presence Thou lendest?
- Is it indeed,
- In my distress and dire need,
- Thee Whom Thy Father’s love sendeth?
- ii.
  Thou by Thy life-blood and Passion the curse
- hast removed,
- Laid on our first parents sinful, in Eden reproved.
- O loving heart,
- Through Thee, Who Son of Man art,
- Gone is the curse that man doomed.
- iii.
  Death and the Devil their wiles do encompass
- me hourly;
- For my dark sins doth Hell’s deepest pit
- yawn to devour me.
- Almighty one,
- Answer me, succour me, come!
- Let not the fierce flames o’erpower me!
- iv.
  Grant me, O Jesu, fair thoughts and high
- purpose to serve Thee.
- Drill my weak nature, give strength to me,
- quicken and nerve me.
- O God of love,
- Call me to glory above,
- Making my song of Thee worthy.
- v.
  Speed the way, Jesu; in Heaven above haste to
- instal me,
- As Thou hast promised to all that unfeignedly
- call Thee;
- Risen I’d be,
- From Death’s grim fetters all free,
- ’Fore Thy throne’s splendour in glory!
- Caspar Friedrich Nachtenhofer (1624-85) Tr. C. S. T.1

Caspar Friedrich Nachtenhöfer’s hymn was first published in the Coburg Hymn-book of 1667, to the anonymous melody “Hast du denn, Liebster,” which had appeared two years earlier (1665) in the Stralsund Hymn-book. Zahn (No. 1912) supposes it founded on a secular tune.

Nachtenhöfer was born at Halle in 1624, became deacon and later pastor at Meder, and eventually (1671) pastor in Coburg. He died in 1685.

Bach uses the melody in Cantatas 57, 137 (c. 1732-40), in the unfinished Cantata “Herr Gott, Beherrscher aller Dinge” (c. 1740) and in the Organ movement infra. All of these works belong to his later Leipzig years. But though his form of the melody is fundamentally uniform, he treats it with a freedom which its spirited character invited.

[86]

N. xvi. 14. The movement is No. 6 of the Schübler Chorals, and is an adaptation of the Alto Solo on the second stanza of Joachim Neander’s “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren,” in Cantata 137 (? 1732):

Praise to the Lord! who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth,
Shelters thee under His wings, yea so gently sustaineth;
Hast thou not seen
How thy desires have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?

The accompaniment on the first Manual is a Violin Solo in the Cantata.

[1 ] The original hymn has five stanzas.

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Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter auf Erden ? - Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach’s Chorals, vol. 3 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Organ Works [1921]

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