Wer Gott nicht | mit unß diese | Zeitt p ||
Vers[us] | 2d[us]
Wir glaube[n] | al an eine[n] Gott |
pedaliter· | H S M· ||
Vers[us] auff | 2 Clav.
Zellerfeld Tablature Ze1
(Hieronymus Jordan, Braunschweig, ca 1635–45?)
The song that is the subject of the first of these two verset cycles is one of a pair of paraphrases of Psalm 124 dating from 1524. Scheidemann set not only ‘Wär Gott nicht mit uns’ but also, presumably, ‘Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält’, which appears immediately before it in Ze1 and is very similar in style. With a range of only a sixth and a ‘major-mode’ feel in many of its constituent phrases, ‘Wär Gott nicht mit uns’ has some modal ambiguity. It is notated with a final of D in the earliest source (Walther) and in others, while some sources, including the Hamburg books Psalmi D Martini Lutheri (Eler, who assigns it to the Hypoaeolian mode) and Melodeyen Gesangbuch, notate it with a final of A, the latter with ‘high clefs’ indicating a downward transposition in practice. Thus Scheidemann’s versets have a final of E – which necessitates a number of D sharps, not ordinarily found in strict quarter-comma meantone tuning. In the present recording I have chosen to deal with the harshness of E flats standing for D sharps by selecting, in the first verse, not only (a simulacrum of ) a stopped flute (which lacks every other overtone in the harmonic series), but the blandest one available, made of wood. The very subdued result is perhaps not out of keeping with the meaning of the text.
This first verset, with cantus firmus in the tenor, is written in Scheidemann’s typical, seemingly straightforward yet remarkably artful, four-voice style. The second verset is in his three-voice format, in which the cantus firmus is again found (as the lowest voice) in the pedal, with each hand playing one voice. No Scheidemann source – nor indeed any German source known to me from before J.G. Walter; see the notes on Pachelbel’s ‘Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam’ – has any explicit indication for playing such a three-voice piece on two manuals. The present work, however, seems to invite, almost to require, a two-manual performance, given the nearly overlapping initial entries, the collision in bar 2, and the generally very close intervals between the two manual voices through much of the piece. (Beckmann emends the beginning so that the left hand enters an octave lower, but this is unconvincing, being outside the general range of the left-hand voice.) Scheidemann often uses this three-voice texture for a concluding doxological verse or stanza; the running and leaping figuration which the texture affords is consonant with an Affekt of praise, and the number of voices may point to the Trinity. In this case the third and final stanza of the text is part of the Psalm-paraphrase itself and perforce not Trinitarian, but it still bespeaks an Affekt of praise and thus is well served by Scheidemann’s music.
Though Scheidemann usually uses the texture just described for concluding versets, in the case of ‘Wir glauben all an einen Gott’, he has used it for the first verset. Werner Breig suggests that he chose to do so on account of the length of the chant, so as to afford maximum variety, but perhaps also the ‘givenness’ and ‘fundamental’ disposition of the bass cantus firmus – or even more importantly the three-voice texture as a whole, popular with Sweelinck and found in much older keyboard music, but already notably archaizing by the time this was written – suggests God the Father, or the Trinity, or eternity. Interestingly, where the three-voice verset of ‘Wär Gott nicht mit uns’ points more clearly than usual to a two-manual performance, the present verset contains a clue suggesting performance on a single manual: the rest in the left hand in bar 50, which seems abrupt in and of itself and surely is given only so that the left hand can get out of the way of the right.
Since the cantus of ‘Wir glauben all’ is the longest of any set by Scheidemann, the second verset contains Scheidemann’s most varied and elaborate coloratura of all. The key here, I think, is the following line: ‘He [i.e. the Holy Spirit] adorns [us, or all] with beautiful gifts’. Scheidemann’s extraordinary outpouring expresses this sentiment as well as evoking more generally the Spirit, the Church, and the life everlasting: a fitting setting of the great song of praise, thanksgiving, and hope that is the Christian Creed.