Superb performance (back in 1973). This is the way this tender chorale should be sung, quietly, with deep reverence and hushed wonder at the unfathomable mystery of divine redemption through the cross. For those who don’t know or remember the musical context, it’s highly significant that within the long St. Matthew Passion, Bach placed this famous piece right after the point where Jesus dies. That context makes its impact all the more powerful.
Thanks for posting this moving rendition, Kendall.
David Handy+
My error. I just checked the libretto. Two stanzas (‘O sacred head’ and ‘Thy beauty long desired’ in English translation) are at Matthew 27:27-30, the mocking and spitting scene.
‘Be near me Lord when dying’ is the single stanza following Christ’s death.
Herzliebster Jesu is Choral No. 3 and several more and interspersed precede ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’, and only then the single ‘Be near me Lord when dying’ (‘Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden’).
To have been in Leipzig when this was performed. The congregation must have left transfixed and transformed. The recent John Eliot Gardiner book on Bach is sheer genius. My wife and I visited Eisenach last summer. Bach’s house is there, as is the house where Luther attended Latin school, and of course the famous Wartburg Castle.
Thank you for posting this … just lovely!
And thanks for the comments as well.
A perfect meditation for this Good Friday.
Anyone looking to visit the great sites associated with Bach’s life and music (and eager to draw on John Eliot Gardner’s lifetime of musical scholarship!) might want to see the wonderful BBC documentary, Bach: A Passionate Life. It’s available on YouTube, it’s in HiDef (so glorious on the Big Screen if your TV does YouTube) and it’s a wonderful introduction to the kind of insight JHG offers in his new book on Bach.
Gardner goes to the great German locales, we hear some selections (too few alas) and the interviews are really really insightful. I highly recommend it!
Superb performance (back in 1973). This is the way this tender chorale should be sung, quietly, with deep reverence and hushed wonder at the unfathomable mystery of divine redemption through the cross. For those who don’t know or remember the musical context, it’s highly significant that within the long St. Matthew Passion, Bach placed this famous piece right after the point where Jesus dies. That context makes its impact all the more powerful.
Thanks for posting this moving rendition, Kendall.
David Handy+
These two stanzas are after the death, but the others are scattered throughout the first movements.
My error. I just checked the libretto. Two stanzas (‘O sacred head’ and ‘Thy beauty long desired’ in English translation) are at Matthew 27:27-30, the mocking and spitting scene.
‘Be near me Lord when dying’ is the single stanza following Christ’s death.
Herzliebster Jesu is Choral No. 3 and several more and interspersed precede ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’, and only then the single ‘Be near me Lord when dying’ (‘Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden’).
To have been in Leipzig when this was performed. The congregation must have left transfixed and transformed. The recent John Eliot Gardiner book on Bach is sheer genius. My wife and I visited Eisenach last summer. Bach’s house is there, as is the house where Luther attended Latin school, and of course the famous Wartburg Castle.
Thank you for posting this … just lovely!
And thanks for the comments as well.
A perfect meditation for this Good Friday.
Anyone looking to visit the great sites associated with Bach’s life and music (and eager to draw on John Eliot Gardner’s lifetime of musical scholarship!) might want to see the wonderful BBC documentary, Bach: A Passionate Life. It’s available on YouTube, it’s in HiDef (so glorious on the Big Screen if your TV does YouTube) and it’s a wonderful introduction to the kind of insight JHG offers in his new book on Bach.
Gardner goes to the great German locales, we hear some selections (too few alas) and the interviews are really really insightful. I highly recommend it!