Meter: 8.8. 8.8.
Source: Michael Weisse, Ein New Geseng buchlen (Bohemian Brethren Hymnal), 1531
Proper Text: Lord Jesus Christ, True Man and God (Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott)
This tune first appeared in its earliest form in Michael Weisse’s 1531 Bohemian Brethren hymnal, where it was joined to the text “Nun loben wir mit Innigkeit.” It was soon thereafter reworked and joined to the text “This Body in the Grave We Lay (Nun laßt uns den Leib begraben),” in Valentin Bapst’s Geistliche Lieder, Leipzig, 1545, in which form it appeared in many subsequent sixteenth-century hymnals. Early in the seventeenth century it was further reworked, appearing with what would become its proper text, “Lord Jesus Christ, True Man and God (Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott),” in Johann Georg Schott, Psalmen und Gesang-Buch, Frankfurt am Main, 1603, No. 33, a scan of which is available here. In 1604 Melchior Vulpius altered the melody further in his influential setting, which appears in the Cantionale Sacrum, Gotha, 1648, a scan of which is available here. Also influential is the setting by Hans Leo Hassler, which would make its way into the nineteenth-century sources used by the Missouri Synod. For the Free Lutheran Chorale-Book, we have used a slightly modified version of Michael Praetorius’s simple setting, from his Musae Sioniae, vol. 12, 1610, No. 174.