Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Crüger, Jesus, meine Zuversicht

Johann Crüger Praxis Pietatis Melica (1653/1668). The example comes from C. S. Terry, Bach's Chorals, Part II (1917), 412.

Here is a parsing of the intervals and lines. The assumption is Ionian mode with secondary emphasis (I am reluctant to call it dominant or reciting tone) on A (see *).

The strongly defined perfect interval frames for lines are common in modal melodies and in the early Lutheran chorales. If we need a focal tone, it would be C5 in the first phrase, with D5-C5 in the final cadence. The immediately preceding E5 is a simple expressive high note or "one note too far" of the kind I have seen in many 17th and 18th century melodies, songs, and dance-songs.

This is the melody Bach uses for the first movement of Cantata 145, in a four-voice chorale setting that is clearly Easter-related (Terry says the cantata was meant for Easter Tuesday).


There's a bit of Leipziger-style tone-painting in bar 4, where louring chromaticism in the bass is sparked by "Nacht" and "Tode" but note also that Bach really pushes the Resurrection ascent motif in the melody by rewriting it to expand to a 6th in bars 9-10. The chorale in its original text isn't obviously associated with Easter morning though it does mention Jesus as alive; the focus is on our death and on the final resurrection. Still, a setting by Christoph Graupner using the original first-verse text is dated April 1734 and a librarian's note indicates that it is meant for Easter Tuesday (the manuscript is in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt; see IMSLP for a digital copy).

The melody discussed above is the one Bach uses for the first movement of Cantata 145. Terry gives an alternate version from Crüger (from the 1653 edition? unclear). This was not used by Bach (or anyone else, to judge from scores I've collected so far) but is interesting because of its much stronger emphasis on the Ionian/Phrygian connection.

The last line parsed: