Bach Books
Bach Studies: Liturgy, Hymnology, and Theology
Discussions - Part 5

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Leaver Hymnology, Chapter 9, Bach, Hymnic Aria"

William L. Hoffman wrote (September 10, 2021):
Bach took a virtual hiatus from organ chorale prelude production late in Weimar, after compiling his Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) collection and the "Great 18" extended chorale preludes as he prepared to focus almost entirely on instrumental compositions as Capellmeister at the Saxe-Cöthen Court. During his tenure there (1718-23), his only work involving the Lutheran chorale was to compile the title page of this Orgelbüchlein (Bach Digital). This was probably in late 1722 or early in 1723 when he sought the dual post of Leipzig cantor and music director, for which he compiled three manuscript keyboard collections to show his pedagogical skills (BCW: "Three Köthen Keyboard Collections"). The general term Anleitung (guide), addressed the lehr-begierige (those eager to learn), specifically anfahende Organisten (beginning organists). For sacred music, Bach in Leipzig planned to compile church-year cycles of Kirchen-Stücke (church pieces, Bach shunned the term Kantate), and completed three-plus cycles of almost 200 musical sermons, almost all ending with congregational four-part chorales.

Free of the rigors of composing weekly church service cantatas in 1729, the systematic and intentional Bach began to again seriously compose and publish instrumental works while selectively in the vocal realm planning to complete his Lutheran calling involving a "well-regulated church music to the glory of God." Pedagogically, Bach turned to compiling his plain chorales as student teaching aids while possibly at this time also composing anew liturgical, free-standing chorales, BWV 253-438 (Wikipedia: "186 four-part chorales in BGA Vol. 39"), published posthumously. These included many of his hymn-settings for the virtual-parody, his final Passion oratorio according to Mark, BWV 247 of 1731 (Bach Digital), a concise, chorale-laden work with 16 diverse (Passion and non-Passion) hymns (Wikipeda), particularly 17th century devotional poet-pastors Paul Gerhardt and Adam Rist, who are the lead topic section, "Rist and Gerhardt," of Robin A. Leaver's Bach Studies, Hymnology,¹ Chapter 9, "Bach and the hymnic aria" (Ibid.: 183ff), devotional texts. Gerhardt was the leading hymn-writer in the 17th century, the third period of the development of German hymnody, "Paul Gerhardt, the Thirty Years War, and the Development of New Literary Concerns (c. 1618-c. 1675)," says Carl F. Schalk.² A major portion of the St. Mark Passion chorales³ use texts of the personal literary poets of the 17th century while Bach's plain chorale sources are still debated among scholars.⁴

Devotional Aria Development

Meanwhile, Bach in 1730 had faced challenges to his authority to select hymns, especially new ones as he "had presumably begun composing and editing the melodies that would eventually be included in the [omnibus] Schemelli Musicalisches Gesangbuch" of 1736, Leaver comments (Ibid.: 187). At the beginning of the 18th century, "two chorale genre existed in parallel: the congregational hymn in church and the soloistic hymnic aria in the home, though they were not mutually exclusive," says Leaver (Ibid.: 187f) in the Chapter 9 second section, "Hymns and arias" (Ibid.: 187-193). Beyond Rist and Gerhardt, influential small-scale sacred concertos for small church or domestic use flourished in the 17th century involving Bach predecessor Johann Hermann Schein (BCW) and Samuel Scheidt (BCW), says Leaver (Ibid.: 188f), as well as "the mysticism of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and the love poetry from the biblical Song of Songs" (Ibid.: 189; see also, "Bach Family Dialogue Concerti," BCW). Domestic song (aria) collections involve Heinrich Albert (BCW), Adam Krieger (BCW), and Johann Rudolf Ahle (BCW, Leaver recounts (Ibid.: 190). At the end of the 17th century in 1694, a new Dresden hymnal, Geist- und Lehr-reiches Kirchen- und Hauß -Buchl, was published in two distinct parts," involving Lutheran hymns and spiritual arias (Ibid.: 190f), the arias "generally conservative in style because of the more secular musical style that was being promoted by the Pietist movement," says Leaver (Ibid.: 191), with common ground among Lutheran factions. These "hymns promoted by a Pietist [Philipp Jacob Spener] were being incorporated into a basically orthodox hymnal," says Leaver (Ibid.: 192). The next step was the publication a decade later of the Pietist omnibus hymnal edited by Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (Wikipedia, BCW), Geist-reiches Gesangbuchl (Halle: Waysenhause, 1704), with subsequent editions. Bach used 17 of Freylinghausen's melodies in the Schemelli Gesangbuch⁵ (Table 9.2, Freylinghausen melodies edited by Bach in the Schemelli Gesangbuch (Ibid.: 193).

Schemelli Gesangbuch: Spiritual Arias

In the final section of Chapter 9, "Did Bach distance himself from the traditional chorale?" (Ibid.: 193-202), Leaver responds that with the Schemelli Gesangbuch of 1736, "Bach had moved away from a strong commitment to the old congregational chorale in favor of the more intimate and individualistic spiritual aria," (Ibid.; 193). As music editor of the Schemelli, "Bach was intimately involved at various levels," says Leaver (Ibid.: 194): first, Bach composed or adapted with new thorough bass 69 new or less familiar sacred songs (Wikipedia); second, Bach was involved in the process of engraving this music into the hymnbook; third, Bach also prepared some 200 more melodies for a second edition (never printed, not extant); fourth, Bach assigned melodies to all 954 Schemelli texts, "for many of them indicating preferred key in which they should be sung," says Leaver (Ibid.: 195); and fifth, "Bach was obviously well aware of the more intimate style of the new contemporary melodies along side the older chorales." Included in the new hymnal were Table 9.3, Eighteenth-century texts Bach used in the Schemelli Gesangbuch (Ibid.: 196), "Bach either composed or edited," including 19 melodies associated with texts that had been written during his lifetime in the three decades of the eighteenth century [BWV 507, 492, 455, 474, 459, 456, 506, 439, 447, 479, 480, 505, 503, 482, 472, 458, 478, 442, 488], as well as seven others [BWV 471, 487, 498, 462, 494, 466, 468] that apparently made their first appearance" in the songbook. "Bach took a particular interest in the hymnody of his time, especially in the aria-like melodies that had first flourished in domestic circles but subsequently migrated into the public worship of the church," Leaver observes (Ibid.). The tradition of church choir and congregation in alternation singing during the service is surveyed in the closing pages of Chapter 9. Its roots were in the medieval tradition of alternatum praxis of polyphony and plain chant in Latin hymns, says Leaver (Ibid.; 197), followed by Luther's practice in the Wittenburg congregation⁶ singiof his Christ lag in Todesbanden, alternating with its adaptation from the Latin Easter Sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, sung by the choir and the organ playing verses. By Bach's time, hymnals printed "seasonal hymns alternating the stanzas of their Latin and [associated] German texts," says Leaver (Ibid.: 198), as well as the practice of creating new "hymns to be sung in alternation with older chorales" as found in the Freylinghausen Gesangbuch. Paired hymns could be sung during communion in the "primary seasons of Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost," says Leaver (Ibid.: 199). During major festivals of the church year, the distribution of the communion "could be quite protracted," Leaver comments (Ibid.: 200), so that "musica sub communione, in the form of a motet or concerted music, preceded the customary hymn singing in alternation with organ chorale preludes."

Central German Civic Chorale Passions

A more conservative use of chorales occurred in the older 18th century Passion settings of central Germany, less influenced by the Italian oratorio, says Philipp Spitta⁷ in his comments on the text of Bach's apocryphal St. Luke Passion, BWV 246 (Bach Digital), with its plethora of 31 chorales which Bach presented on 7 April 1730. Spitta compares BWV 246 to various municipal chorale Passions presented during Holy Week between 1707 and 1733 in Gotha, Rudolstadt, Gera, Schleiz, and Weißenfels. Original poetry initially is lacking, replaced with mostly summa harmony gospel Passion accounts, as well as Passion chorale settings, with no composer usually listed and the lyrics involving hymns as well as Litany and German Te Deum passages, also found in the spurious Bach Passion oratorio. Some community settings could have included even several selections from the multi-stanza Passion harmony settings of Siebald Heyden's 23-stanza 1530 "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß" (O man, weep for your great sins, BCW); Paul Stockmann's 34-stanza 1633 "Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod" (Jesus suffering, pain, and death, BCW); and Paul Gerhardt's 10-stanza 1647 "Ein Lämmlein geht trägt die Schuld" (A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth, BCW), as well as a poetic oratorio Passion version by Gotha capellmeister Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, which Bach presented in 1734. The varied chorales and treatment in the "Bach" Luke Passion are outlined in BCW: paragraph beginning "Based on information . . . ." In a similar vein is the Bach-Altnikol setting of the hybrid oratorio Passions-Pasticcio after C. H. Graun (BCW), performed by Bach c.1743-48 and Johann Christoph Altnikol on 29 March 1750, with six of the eight chorale stanzas (Nos. 24, 27, 30, 38, 40, 42; Bach Digital) of the 1531 "Christus der uns selig macht"⁸ (Christ, through whom we all are blest, Drinker), of Michael Weiße (Wikipedia), a member of the Bohemian Brethren and Martyrs (BCW), the beginnings of vernacular devotional pietist sacred songs, culminating (coming full circle) in the Schemelli Gesangbuch of 1736, music editor Bach.

ENDNOTES

¹ Robin A. Leaver, Bach Studies: Liturgy, Hymnology, and Theology (Abingdon UK: Routledge, 2021); Amazon.com.
² Carl F. Schalk, "German Hymnody," in Marilyn K. Stulken, Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia PA: Fortress Press, 1981: 28); http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/German-Hymnology[Carl-F-Schalk].pdf, scan and Google paste; Gerhardt hymns (BCW), Rist hymns (BCW).
³ St. Mark Passion chorales: Besides four chorales of Gerhardt ("O Welt, sieh dein Leben," "O Haupt voll Blut" 2, "Befiehl du deine Wege") and two of Rist ("O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort" "O Traurigkeit"), the Mark Passion features mostly an eclectic mixture of lesser-known 16th century Reformation writers such as Justus Jonas "Wo Gott, Der Herr" 2) and Adam Reusner ("In dich hab, ich gehoffet Herr") [Luther is represented by the final stanza of "A Mighty Fortress"], as well as 17th century personal poets Johann Hermann Schein ("Machs mit mir Gott"), Johann Franck ("Herr, ich habe mißgehandelt"), Ernst Christoph Homberg ("Jesu meines Lebens Leben"), Andreas Kritzelmann ("Betrübtes Herz, sei wohlgemut"), Paul Stockman ("Jesu Leiden, Pein, und Tod"), and anonymous ("Keinen hat Gott verlassen"). Three other Rist chorales, says Leaver (Ibid.: 183f), are found in the 1734/35 Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248: "Ermuntre dich, mein schwacher Geist" (Mvt. No. 12), "Jesu, du mein liebstes Lebens" (Nos. 38, 40), and "Hilf, Herr Jesu, laß gelingen" (No. 42) [commentary, "Two Popular Johann Rist Chorales," BCW).
⁴ Critical speculation of the St. Mark Passion chorale sources is found in Luke Dahn, "St. Mark Passion (BWV 247) Speculations," 2018, Bach Chorales; Dahn omits Movement 5, "Mir hat die Welt," the possible source BWV 244/38; Movement 21, "Jesu Leiden," St. 8, BWV 355; and Movement 36, "Jesu, meines Lebens Leben," substitute BWV 354. See also Markus-Passion BWV 247, General Discussions - Part 2, BCW.
⁵ Schemelli Gesangbuch, see Thomas Braatz, BWV 439-507 (Schemelli's "Gesangbuch" or "Songbook"), BCW, also Wikipedia, IMSLP; 17 Freylinghausen melodies: BWV 455, 456, 459, 474, 486, 489, 506 (2174 ed.); BWV 451, 446, 490, 497 (1708 ed.); and BWV 472, 458, 475, 482, 461, 503 (1714 ed.).
⁶ See Robin A. Leaver's The Whole Church Sings: Congregational Singing in Luther's Wittenberg (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmann's Publishing, 2017: 23), Amazon.com.
⁷ Philipp Spitta, St. Luke Passion, in Johann Sebastian Bach, Eng. trans.Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller-Maitland (London: Novello, 1989: II: 510ff), Amazon.com
⁸ "Christus der uns selig macht," from Latin hymn “Patris Sapientia,” for the Canonical Hours of Good Friday; texts, Hymnoglypt; description, BCW.

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To Come: Leaver, Bach Studies, Hymnology, Chapter 10, "Bach and the letter codes of the Schemelli Gesangbuch."

Leaver: Hymnology, Schemelli Gesangbuch, More

William L. Hoffman wrote (September 20, 2021):
The fifth and concluding article on hymnology in Robin A. Leaver's Bach Studies, is Chapter 10, "Bach and the letter codes of the Schemelli Gesangbuch" (Ibid.: 203-16). The sections are: "Identification of chorale melodies" (Ibid.: 203f), "Multiple texts and melodies" (Ibid.: 204f), "Hymnals linked to specific chorale books" (Ibid.: 205f), "Encoded keys" (Ibid.: 206-211), "Bach, Schemelli, and codes" (Ibid.: 211-14), and "Coda" (Ibid.: 215-f). Bach's work as music editor on this definitive hymnbook was the culmination of his involvement in the Lutheran chorale as a foundation of his calling for a "well-regulated church music to the glory of God." This began with his first employment as organist in Arnstadt (1703-07) when he began learning the meaning of these chorales from Johann Christoph Olearius (Leaver Bach Studies, Hymnology, Chapter 6, "Bach, Johann Christoph Olearius," BCW) and possibly at Lent 1706 composed his first musical sermon, the Easter chorale Cantata 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden (BCW), and also began to conceive of his first personal church-year hymnbook, the Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) chorale preludes. Next in Weimar Bach began setting these preludes and in 1714 as court concertmaster undertook his first cycle of sacred cantatas as musical sermons and began to compile his collection of the best-known chorales as extended preludes, called the "Great 18" (Wikipedia, YouTube). In Leipzig as cantor and music director, Bach in 1723 began composing three annual cycles of church cantatas, almost all concluding with congregational plain chorale settings.

c.1730 Chorale Collections

As Bach finished his three cycles he began to compile his plain chorale settings and free-stranding liturgical chorales, BWV 250-438 (BCW). His noted colleagues Christoph Graupner in Darmstadt and Georg Philipp Telemann in Hamburg also compiled and published two-part chorale books, 1728 Technische Universtät Darmstadt [PDF] and 1730 Google Books). In 1731, free from composing weekly sacred cantatas, Bach completed his third and final Passion oratorio, Mark, BWV 247, with 16 plain chorales including several devotional hymnic arias of Johann Rist and Paul Gerhardt (see Leaver Hymnology, Chapter 9, "Bach, Hymnic Aria," BCW). Two other, similar two-part choralbücher from this same period are the publications of Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel (Nuremburg, 1731) and Johann Balthazar König (Frankfurt 1738), says Leaver in another publication.² Between 1729 and 1735, Bach student and copyist Johann Ludwig Dietel (BCW) copied from autograph 149 plain chorales of Bach.³ This collection includes hymns from all three Bach Passion oratorios (Matthew, BWV 244; John, BWV 245; and Mark, BWV 247), especially at least 10 from BWV 247 of 1731, as well as selections from the Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, of 1734/35 and began his chorale collection which includes four settings, BWV 1122-25, not found in the omnibus Emmanuel Bach 4 volumes Breitkopf collection of 1784-87 (Wikipedia).⁴

Devotional Songs, Hymnic Arias

Bach in the middle 1730s turned to pietistic devotional books with hymnic arias, notably Paul Gerhardt, and the great compendium of the Schemelli Gesangbuch⁵ which also embraced personal, recent sacred song writers. Leaver's Bach Studies, Chapter 10, "Bach and the letter codes of the Schemelli Gesangbuch" (Ibid.: 203-16), "explores some of the ways in which musical matters are addressed in text-only hymnals, especially in the phenomenon of indicating pitch and key by letter codes — and Bach's knowledge and use of such coding in the Schemelli Gesangbuch (1736)," says Leaver (Ibid.: 203). Leaver begins this chapter with the section, "Identification of chorale melodies" (Ibid.: 203f), involving the German tradition of text-only hymnals for most communities, with the "heading of the whole hymn, the textual incipit of the associated chorale melody to which the whole text is to be sung," with "agreement only on the most familiar melodies" in common hymnals. As hymnals grew to account for more hymns, Leaver notes in the second section, "Multiple texts and melodies" (Ibid.: 204f), some hymn books began to include a metrical index to identify a hymn's multiple texts and melodies. For example, Paul Gerhardt Death & Dying hymn, "Befiehl du deine Wege" (Commend you your ways) involves two separate melodies with this same incipit, set to six other texts (see BCW). In "town and city churches when there were organs and choirs, a much richer repertoire of chorale melodies was possible," he observes (Ibid.: 205). In the next section, "Hymnals linked to specific chorale books" (Ibid.: 205f), Leaver notes that in a few cases, a community's text-only hymnal, such as the pietist Johann Jacob Rambach⁶ in his Darmstadt 1733 hymnal, refers to the Graupner Darmstadt chorale book and lists the appropriate music of the associated melody, such as "Christus, der uns selig Macht" (Christ, who makes us happy; BCW), says Leaver (Ibid.: 206).

Encoded Hymn Keys, Schemelli Songbook

The next two sections in Chapter 10 are the most substantial: "Encoded keys" (Ibid.: 206-211) and "Bach, Schemelli, and codes" (Ibid.: 211-14). About the time of the publication of Bach's definitive hymnbook, Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch⁷ (NLGB) of 1682 as a cantional hymnbook with music, a few community hymnals with texts only began including the key codes of the music to be sung with the hymn text, Leaver points out (Ibid.: 206). The letter code, which "has not received the attention it deserves," he says (Ibid.), has "major-minor tonality indications." The Arnstadt hymnal editions (Bachmann, 1701 etc.) of Johann Christoph Olearius, "presumably the edition Bach worked with" in Arnstadt (1703-07), says Leaver (Ibid.: 210), "use a single-letter code, ranged left at the head of nearly every hymn text" and the "Naumberg hymnals utilize the single-letter code," he says (Ibid.: 211). The Schemelli Musikalisches Gesang-Buch of 1736, published in Leipzig by Breitkopf, was "compiled for Naumberg-Zeitz," where "Bach had significant connections," says Leaver (Ibid.: 212). With 954 spiritual old and new hymns and arias, the Schemelli "was offered to all the churches of the ducal Saxe-Zeit" as well as for personal contemplation. <<The two-part settings for canto and bass with figured bass also were the format (Orgelbüchlein UK [PDF]) found in Christian Friedrich Witt’s Psalmodia Sacra (Gotha, 1715), also known as the Gotha Hymnal, compiled by the Gotha Kapellmeister. The omnibus Breitkopf 1736 songbook involved 954 spiritual songs and arias for the church year involving well-known chorales as well as recent pietist sacred songs in the style of Freylinghausen usually set to well-known melodies. The 1736 publication promised that a second edition would contain about 200 engraved harmonized melodies in 302 settings to chorale incipits whose key is listed in the first edition next to the incipit and number, Leaver observes in a related article (Ibid.: 370f),⁸ but were never published probably due to the lack of sales of the first edition. A complete repertory of Schemelli proposed settings that Bach edited "can be compiled" "with reasonable certainty," says Leaver (Ibid.: 371), even though the actual harmonization is unknown "since Bach's manuscript collection of these melodies is no longer extant.⁹ But the later activities of some of his significant pupils may well shed some light on how Bach approached the realization of figured bass chorales." A comparison of 29 "Four–part Realizations of Two–part SchemelGesangbuch Chorales," may have originated as Bach teaching materials, says Luke Dahn bach-chorales.com), including 11 found in the Penzel collection.¹⁰ There is "a modern flavour in the devotional songs" of Schemelli, says Peter Williams.¹¹ The devotional book "signifies a move toward modern human-types and devotional songs in new kind of family hymnal presumably of interest to the capellmeister." Georg Christian "Schemelli was cantor at Zeitz, from where had come Anna Magdalena and the song 'Vergiss mein nicht'," BWV 505, Schemelli No. 627, Timely Cross and Suffering (YouTube, Cross & Suffering, 5 stanzas, text Gottfried Arnold (1714), Bach music, Zahn 4233), "as recalling the easy kind of melody Bach had created for the Anna Magdalena Books, possibly more suitable for Zeitz than Leipzig.">> (source: BCW: "Schemelli Gesangbuch, 1736").

Chorale Letter Codes

In addition to compiling the 69 melodies with figured bass for newer entries, Bach as music editor listed all the melodies other than the familiar associated melody at the beginning of each text and listed the appropriate key. Many "of the texts are not only given the first line of the intended melody — and sometimes an alternate melody — to which the text can be sung, but many also have an uppercase letter ranged to the left of the hymn number," says Leaver (Ibid.: 213), so that "a complete range of keys are thus designated": C, D, E, F, F#, G, A, B-flat, B. "The use of these letter codes implies the practice of improvised accompaniments" by the organist and "therefore represent his [Bach's] careful choices," he says (Ibid.: 213f). Leipzig hymnals such as the NLGB did not follow the letter code practice while Bach was familiar with the Arnstadt hymnal practice and possibly the 1735 Naumberg Gesangbuch. Text-only hymnals with letter codes yield Leaver's following conclusions (Ibid.: 214): 1. Proportion of hymnals using letter codes "appears to be relatively small"; 2. they "date from the last decades of the seventeenth century and decline in usage; 3. geographically centered on the Erfurt area; 4. "codes shift from establishing pitches and modes to conveying keys"; and 5. Bach "was apparently one of the last editors to employ them." While the contents of the NLGB are arranged by church-year order from Advent to personal topics, the Schemelli Gesangbuch followed the increasing 18th century practice of beginning "with a section of general worship hymns before the Advent hymns," as Leaver shows (Ibid.: 165). This devotional perspective begins with personal hymns traditionally found towards the end of hymnals: morning and evening songs (see BCW), repentance, justification, and holy communion, followed by Advent with the incipit, "Von Christi zukunft ins Fleisch" (From the future of Christ into the Flesh), meaning Jesus' incarnation.

After Schemelli, Final Decade, Coda

From the 1736 Schemelli publication onward Bach continued to set chorales, most notably the Clavier-Übung III, German Organ and Catechism Mass (BCW), published in 1739 in observance of the bicentennial of Saxony's acceptance of the Lutheran confession. Bach also began revising the "Great 18" extended chorale preludes (BCW), another chorale collection left unfinished, besides the early Orgelbüchlein short organ chorale preludes that emphasized the de tempore first half of the church year on the life of Jesus Christ and the chorale cantata cycle (1724-25f). The Clavier-Übung III and "Great 18" collections emphasize the omne tempore second half of the church year on Christian teachings and themes, complementing the Orgelbüchlein and securing Bach's calling of a "well-regulated church music to the glory of God." A companion to the Clavier-Übung III are the plain chorale settings of Luther's 1525 vernacular Deutsche Messe and other omne tempore liturgical chorales (BCW), possibly composed in the early 1730s. In his final decade, Bach perfected his stile antico Art of Fugue (BCW) with various counterpoint studies as applied musical treatises and was able to incorporate two chorale studies, the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch (BWV 769) and the Six Schubler Chorale trio aria settings, BWV 645-50. While Bach's involvement with polyphony would be recognized following his death in 1750 at the end of the Baroque Period, Leaver points out in his final Chapter 10 section, "Coda" (Ibid.: 215f), that Bach achieved recognition in his final two decades as a distinguished contributor to German hymnody, citing hymnologist Johann Martin Schamelius in 1742, Bach cousin Johann Gottfried Walther's 1732 Musicalisches Lexicon, and Johan Mattheson's 1739 Der volkommene Capellmeister, as well as Leipzig colleagues, scholars Lorenz Christoph Mizler (BCW) and Johann Matthias Gesner (Wikipedia) in 1738, as well as poet Johann Christoph Gottsched in 1742.

ENDNOTES

¹ Robin A. Leaver, Bach Studies: Liturgy, Hymnology, and Theology (Abingdon UK: Routledge, 2021); Amazon.com; original article, Jstor.
² Robin A. Leaver, "Bach’s Choral-Buch? The Significance of a Manuscript in the Sibley Library," in Bach Perspectives 12, Bach and the Organ, ed. Matthew Dirst (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016: 27-29), series publication of the American Bach Society.
³ Dietel chorale collection: description Wikipedia; Bach Digital, Bach Digital; critical commentary, Bärenreiter: "Content"; music, II. Choralsätze der Sammlung Dietel, Scribd.
⁴ Bach Complete Chorales for Four-Part Mixed Choir, Urtext ed. Thomas Daniel (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel) in preparation for release 2022 (Breitkopf).
⁵ Schemelli Gesangbuch: description Wikipedia; facsimile, Amazon.com; sacred songs, BWV 439-507 (Wikipedia; music, Bärenriter, recording (selections, YouTube); print, Bach Digital.
⁶ Johann Jacob Rambach, Google Translate.
⁷ Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch: on-line, MDZ; description, Wikipedia; analysis, Jürgen Grimm, Das Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch des Gottfried Vopelius (Leipzig, 1682) (Berlin Merseburger Verlag, 1969).
⁸ Robin A. Leaver, Chapter 14, "Chorales," The Routledge Research Companion to J. S. Bach, ed. Leaver (London & New York: Routledge, 2017: 370f).
⁹ Schemelli bibliography Bach-Bibliographie; Schemelli Gesangbuch facsimile, Amazon.com; description, Wikipedia.
¹⁰ A possible connection between the 240 Sibley Choralbuch two-part realizations and the proposed 200 harmonizations in a planed second edition of the Schemelli Gesangbuch is only a slight possibility. For example, the Sibley Choralbuch lists the Christmas hymn, “Laßt uns alle fröliche sein,” on page 23 in four stanzas with the Zahn melody 1161, according to Leaver, which also is found in Schemelli as No. 199 under the Birth of Jesus Christ showing all four stanzas with a harmonization in G Major, while this same 4-stanza chorale also is listed in Bach's NLGB as No. 29 for Christmas with the author Johann Forster (Wittenberg 1611) and a variant of Zahn melody 1161. There is no extant Bach setting.
¹¹ Peter Williams, "Leipzig, the middle years," in Bach: A Musical Biography (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016: 385).

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To Come: Leaver Bach Studies, Part III, Theology, Chapter 11, "Bach and Pietism."

Continue on Part 6