Published
Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit (BWV 668)
BWV 668 Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit [Before your throne I now appear] (cantus firmus chorale*)
The three-part imitative accompaniment in the pedal and lower keyboard of this chorale prelude is based on figures derived from the 4 different lines of the melody and their inversions; each line of the cantus firmus itself is heard in the simple soprano line, stripped of any embellishment, after its pre-imitation in the ritornello parts.* The cantus firmus chorale: The melody of the chorale is sounded in long notes throughout the piece, was established and popularized in central Germany by Pachelbel. One of his students was Johann Christoph Bach III, Bach’s older brother, who in turn taught Bach keyboard technique. There are six examples of the cantus firmus chorale: BWV 651, 657, 658, 661, 663 and 668.
This is a choral setting of BWV 668, often referred to as Bach’s “Deathbed Chorale”. Published in 1751 at the end of the Art of Fugue, this four-part chorale is likely the last piece of music that Bach ever wrote. This verson for SATB chorus features the text that Bach used as his title: “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit.” (Por la presente me presento ante tu trono).
Original text and translation:
Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit,
O Gott, und dich demütig bitt:
Wend doch dein gnädig Angesicht
Von mir blutarmen/betrübtem Sünder nicht.Ein selig Ende mir bescher,
Am jüngsten Tag erweck mich, Herr!
Daß ich dich schaue ewiglich.
Amen, Amen, erhöre mich.Before your throne I now appear,
O God, and bid you humbly,
Turn not your merciful face
From me, a pale sinner.Confer on me a blessed end,
On the last day awaken me, Lord!
That I may see you eternally.
Amen, Amen, hear me.
The possible history of this choral prelude is not well known. When Bach was in Weimar, he wrote a choral prelude that is know as BWV 641: this will form the basis of two later revisions cataloged as BWV 668a and finally BWV 668. I am convinced that Bach revised this choral prelude in the last years of his life, when he was going through a moment of despair and very great difficulty: the text of the chorale is Wenn wir in höchsten Nötensein (when we are in the greatest distress). In fact, in the year 1749 Bach had a stroke, but he slowly recovered, so much that he could conduct the cantata BWV 29 by playing the elaborate part of the organ himself by the end of the year. Later in 1750, unfortunately, he was forced to undergo two surgeries, in both of his eyes by the famous Taylor from England, remaining completely blind. It is reasonable to think that in this period Bach felt the greatest distress, but he was still confident that he could make it, that he could still continue to praise God with his art and musical science. Because of this he enlarged the early and simpler choral prelude bwv 641 into what we know to be the choral prelude BWV 668a (which was published posthumously and hastily in the Art of Fugue, to compensate for the alleged incompleteness of the fuga a 3 soggetti). When he then realized that he was dying, instead, that there was no possibility for him to recover again his strengths, he finally made further small changes and even changed the text of the chorale: Vor deinen Thron tret ‘ich: here I am Before your throne. We can hear Bach preparing to leave this world in this chorale that he wanted to add as the last in the autograph of the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes BWV 651-668. Unfortunately the last page of this version, written by a student, is lost (this last version is the famous “death-bed chorale” that is reported in the Obituary). In these small changes through the years we can feel Bach’s hope: his fear, his pain, his faith, his humanity. We can feel his eartly departure and his immortal spirit too.
As was customary in the Lutheran rituals of death and dying, Bach died at home, probably on the second floor of the cantor’s apartments in the Thomasschule, in his own bedroom above the Thomasplatz. A week before his death on July 28, Bach’s condition had deteriorated quickly when he suffered a stroke, which was soon followed by raging fever; a pair of failed eye operations performed on him a few months earlier had left Bach blind, and lying in his bed he would not have been able to see the summer morning early in his east-facing window. The hours of Bach’s death was approaching.
In these circumstances, the actions of the dying person and oft he family members, friends, and clerics standing by were thoroughly ritualized. Those gathered around the deathbed would have comforted the dying man by praying and reading from the Bible, singing chorales, perhaps even playing them on a harpsichord or clavichord.
With the ultimate question to be decided over the course of Bach’s last days, the composition or, as is more probable, the revision of his so-called deathbed chorale, Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit, would have played a crucial role in the domestic drama of his death.
Bach’s last piece is an elaborate demonstration of intricate contrapuntal tehnique used to treat a chorale text which both anticipates death and refers beyond it, to the arrival of the dead man in heaven:
As one might expect from the dying musical utterances of a composer of Bach’s stature Vor deinen Thron is embedded in mystery and myth, the fragment of truth often indistinguishable from the shapes of legend.
The piece was first published posthumously in 1751, appended to the first edition of the Art of Fugue in order to make up for the incompleteness of the collections’s final contrapunctus, whose own shatteringly premature end in the midst of a massive contrapuntal oration supposedly marked Bach’s death, at least according to an annotation in the original manuscript made by Bach’s second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel.
The myth of finality is complicated further by the fact that the manuscript version of the deathbed chorale, also a fragment, includes some improvements to the published readings. In the note which appeared on the reverse side oft he title-page of the first edition oft he Art of Fugue, Emanuel claimed that shortly before his death his father had dictated the chorale extemporaneously to an unnamed scribe. This notion was repeated by the guardians of Bach’s legacy, his family legacy and early biographers.
What is remarkable, however—and this is what must have left a lasting impression on Bach’s closest circle —is that even on his deathbed the composer was engaged with the techniques of learned counterpoint in all its fabulous complexity. It was intricate counterpoint that had occupied Bach’s last musical reflections.
While we should keep in mind that Bach did not compose the entire work in the last week of his life—a superhuman act thought by the heirs to be a suitably impressive yet devout summation of his genius—there is no reason to doubt that he was indeed at work on an expanded version of the chorale while awaiting his death, perhaps even before the stroke he suffered on July 20th. The blind Bach could have listened to someone play the piece, then could have dictated adjustments and corrections to an expanded, more contrapuntally complex, yet less elaborately ornamented version oft the origianl Orgelbüchlein chorale. A family member or student would have served as the amanuensis for these revisons, playing through the piece for the blind composer, who dictated the corrections while lying in what he clearly now knew was his deathbed. Given the debilitating illness which beset Bach in his last days, the slight differences between the two chorales might well approximate the level of composerly exertion of which the ailing man was then capable.