Herzlich lieb

Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
I pray thee, ne'er from me depart;
With tender mercy cheer me.

Earth has no pleasure I would share
Yea, heav'n itself were void and bare
If thou, Lord, were not near me.

And should my heart for sorrow break,
My trust in thee can nothing shake.
Thou art the portion I have sought;
Thy precious blood my soul has bought.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My God and Lord, my God and Lord,
Forsake me not! I trust thy Word.

In a couple of weeks, our combined choirs will do a version of this chorale, which comes at the end of the St. John Passion of J. S. Bach. It will be for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, with the Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus.

The youngest boy in our Youth Choir, age eight, sings this chorale by heart as if it were the most important thing in the world. I could hardly get through our work on it in Wednesday's rehearsal, seeing him do so.

There are those who say that children should have only age-appropriate materials to read, hear, and sing, and by “age-appropriate” they in practice generally mean “hyperactive attention-grabbing-but-meaningless video/sound bites” or worse: “thoroughly sanitized and dull.” They are wrong. Children should have the best, and it will usually include much that is over their heads. Often, they will recognize the best when they encounter it more easily than will adults. This young chorister surely does not understand all of the words and ideas, but he perceives from the strength of the chorale tune (and Bach's setting of it) that they matter. He will grow into them.

This is why I am not just an organist, but a choirmaster as well. I want these young people (the adults too) to have words and music such as this in their hearts.

Yea, Lord, 'twas thy rich bounty gave
My body, soul, and all I have
In this poor life of labor.

Lord, grant that I in ev'ry place
May glorify thy lavish grace
And serve and help my neighbor.

Let no false doctrine me beguile,
Let Satan not my soul defile.
Give strength and patience unto me
To bear my cross and follow thee.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My God and Lord, my God and Lord,
In death thy comfort still afford.

Here is a YouTube link to the end of a performance of the St. John Passion, of which this is part twelve of twelve:
Link

We are not able to do the recitative and chorus: only the final chorale, which begins about nine minutes into the video clip. But we are doing three stanzas of it, in alternation with another song with which it makes a dialogue:

Jesus loves me! this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.

Jesus loves me! He who died
Heaven's gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin,
Let His little child come in.

Jesus, take this heart of mine,
Make it pure and wholly Thine;
On the cross You died for me,
I will love and live for Thee.

The idea is not original with me; we did this at a conference of the Hymn Society a few years ago. As we did there, the young people will sing the first two stanzas of Herzlich lieb in the key of B flat, and the congregation will respond with “Jesus loves me,” softly and in harmony. We will modulate up a fourth to E flat major, and all -- congregation and choirs – will sing the final stanza in Bach's harmonization as it appears in the Passion setting.

Lord, let at last thine angels come,
To Abr'hams' bosom bear me home,
That I may die unfearing;

And in its narrow chamber keep
My body safe in peaceful sleep
Until thy reappearing.

And then from death awaken me,
That these mine eyes with joy may see,
O Son of God, thy glorious face,
My Saviour and my fount of grace.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise thee without end!