Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit

Some  composers  produce their best work in their youth, and then either
retire or deteriorate in old age; others, such as Mozart,  Beethoven  or
Schubert,  improve  steadily,  and  their late works are their greatest.
Johann Sebastian Bach is the most extraordinary example.  In  March  and
April of 1750 he had undergone two "eye operations", whatever that meant
in 1750, and by July he was on his death bed, where he dictated his last
composition  to  his pupil and son‐in‐law Johann Christoph Altnikol.  It
is a chorale prelude for organ, BWV668, on a hymn tune written by Martin
Luther  himself.   Most  of the old hymn tunes have more than one set of
words, and this one has two :

     Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein
     und wissen nicht, wo aus noch ein,
     und finden weder Hülf noch Rat,
     ob wir gleich sorgen früh und spat:
     so ist dies unser Trost allein,
     daß wir zusammen allgemein
     dich anrufen, o treuer Gott,
     um Rettung aus der Angst und Not.

     Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit,
     o Gott und dich demütig bitt:
     wend' dein genädig angesicht
     vor mir betrübtem Sünder nicht.

Both hymns are appropriate to the approach of death; but the first sings
of  deepest distress, and the second of something far more glorious.  So
Luther's tune itself is ambiguous; it  could  refer  to  either  set  of
words.   In any chorale prelude the hymn‐tune is woven into counterpoint
with faster‐moving motifs in other  voices,  and  in  this  particularly
strict  counterpoint Bach constrains himself to taking these motifs from
speeded‐up phrases from the hymn‐tune itself; so every note  here  stems
from  Martin  Luther.  However, the phrases that Bach has chosen for his
motifs only fit one of the sets of words, namely Vor deinen Thron  tret'
ich  hiermit.   The  moment  of  death  can  be  seen  as painful, or as
glorious; by his choice of notes Bach makes clear his point of view.

                             ‐2‐

The chorale prelude is deeply connected to  humanity.   The  voices  lie
within the ranges of a choir, the natural tempo of 72 quavers per minute
refers to the human heart, and at the flow of nine bars per minute  each
bar  coincides  with the full breath in and out at deep rest; both these
values were codified as the Integer Valor of the Middle Ages.

The intensely clear personal expression arising from the  assumption  of
difficult  technical constraints, the modesty, and yet also the exploit,
of composing with only Martin Luther's notes, the  wonderful  beauty  of
the  piece  and  the  personal circumstances under which it was written,
combine to make this chorale prelude one of the greatest achievements of
the western musical tradition.

It  is  offered here in a new edition, arranged for piano.  The phrasing
and emphasis of all voices should  accord  to  the  text.   The  chorale
melody  (entering  at bars 8, 19, 29 and 40) should be stronger and more
sustained than the faster‐moving contrapuntal  voices.   There  are  two
impractical  stretches; on the sixth quaver of bar 9, a simple way is to
take the bass F#, sustain it with the pedal,  play  the  tenor  A  as  a
dotted  quaver,  and  play  the  bass  G by stretching the ninth; on the
fourth quaver of bar 10, the simplest is to take the low D,  sustain  it
with  the pedal, and play the F# as a semiquaver.  The long notes can be
discreetly retaken, and preferably on the offbeats, so that for  example
the  final  G  of fourteen beats could be taken as 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3
beats.  Worth particular attention is the extraordinary  beauty  of  the
final cadence.

                             Peter J Billam
                             www.pjb.com.au