Music for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

Lord, Let at Last Thine Angels Come   The HYMN OF THE DAY, “Lord, Thee I Love With All My Heart” (708), is most well-known for its final stanza, often used at the commendation of the dying.  This beautiful poetry is the confession that those who die in Christ may do so without fear: that Our Lord would draw us by His holy angels to His presence until His reappearing.  “And then from death awaken me… And I will praise Thee without end!”

The hymnologist Eduard Koch wrote: “this hymn, ‘a prayer to Christ, the Consolation of the soul in life and in death,’ after Psalms 18 and 73, is a treasure bequeathed to the Church from the heart of [Martin] Schalling” (1532-1608). It was written in 1567 and was published in Kurtze und sonderliche Newe Symbola in Nürnberg in 1571. The anonymous tune was published in Zwey Bücher einer neuen Küstlichen Tabulatur auf Orgel und Instrument in Strassburg in 1577.

The PRELUDE is a setting of this hymn by Johann Sebastian Bach from the Neumeister Collection, a manuscript copied by Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1757-1840).  It was rediscovered at Yale University in 1984 and found to contain chorale settings previously unknown, and was numbered in the Bach‘s works catalog as BWV 1090-1120.

Confirm in Us Your Gospel, Lord, Your Promise of Salvation   The HYMN TO DEPART, “I Trust, O Christ, in You Alone” (972, insert) was first printed in Nürnberg around 1540 described with the heading: “A prayer-hymn to Christ, our only Savior, for the remission of sins and the increase of faith and true love.”  Luther described it as “the common confession in the form of a hymn.”

The author is likely Konrad Hubert (1507-1577), a deacon in Strassburg and private secretary to Martin Bucer (1491-1551), who led the spread of the Reformation message in Strassburg. The hymn has also has been attributed to Johann Schneesing (d. 1567), pastor in Freimar.  The composer of the tune is unknown, but appears to be written for this text and published with it by 1541.