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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Lob sei dem allmachtigen Gott. - 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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Lob sei dem allmachtigen Gott.

lf1393-03_figure_078

Melody: “Conditor alme siderum”

Anon. 1531

    • i.

      To God we render thanks and praise,
    • Who pitied mankind’s fallen race,
    • And gave His dear and only Son
    • That us, as children, He might own.

    • ii.

      He came to seek and save the lost;
    • We sinned, and He would bear the cost,
    • That we might share eternal bliss;
    • O what unbounded love was this!

    • iii.

      What grace, what great benevolence,
    • What love, surpassing human sense:
    • For this great work no angel can
    • Him duly praise, much less a man.
    • * * *

    • v.

      The Word eternal did assume
    • Our flesh and blood, and man become;
    • The First and Last with wonder see
    • Partake of human misery.

    • vi.

      For what is all the human race,
    • That God should show such matchless grace,
    • To give His Son, that we might claim
    • Life everlasting in His name.

    • vii.

      How wretched they who still despise
    • Jesus, the pearl of greatest price:
    • Those who neglect to hear His voice
    • Must perish by their own free choice.

    • viii.

      Unhappy those who turn away,
    • Or such as carelessly delay
    • To meet their Saviour, though He came
    • Their souls from misery to reclaim.

    • ix.

      Come, sinners, Jesus will receive
    • The chief of sinners: come and live:
    • “I’ll dwell with you,” our Saviour saith;
    • Receive Him in your hearts by faith.

    • x.

      Your crimes and self-made holiness,
    • Your carnal reason and distress,
    • Give up, and trust to Christ alone,
    • Who did for all your sins atone.
    • * * *

    • xiv.

      Thus saved by God’s unbounded grace,
    • You’ll humbly render thanks and praise,
    • With all the numerous ransomed host,
    • To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

    • Michael Weisse (1480?-1534)     Tr. John Gambold1 .

Michael Weisse’s Advent hymn, “Lob sei dem allmächtigen Gott,” was first published in Ein New Gesengbuchlen (Jung Bunzlau, 1531), the earliest Hymn-book of the Bohemian Brethren, of which he was editor. Its melody (supra) is that of the Latin Advent hymn, “Conditor alme siderum.”

The melody is treated in two Organ movements. The source of Bach’s variations of the 1531 text is not ascertained. In Witt (No. 15) the hymn is set to the melody “Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her.

[94]

N. xv. 11. The movement is the last of the Advent Preludes in the Orgelbüchlein. The imminence of Christmas, rather than the text of the hymn, moves Bach to an expression of fervent devotion by means of a characteristic rhythm (cf. N. xv. 9, 31).

[95]

N. xviii. 73. A brief Fughetta, for the manuals, upon the first line of the cantus stated in free form. A copy of the movement is among the Kirnberger mss. There are three other mss. of it in the Berlin Royal Library, one of them in Forkel’s Collection.

[1 ]Moravian Hymn-book, ed. 1877, No. 31. The original hymn has fourteen stanzas, of which iv, xi-xiii are omitted in the translation.