# 174 - At the Lamb’s high feast we sing

Words: Latin, 1632, translated by Robert Campbell

Tune: Salzburg, melody Jakob Hintze; harmonized by J.S. Bach

Many great Easter hymns this Sunday but I had to choose the one that features a wonderful Bach harmonization. Listen for the great moving bass line in the third line.

Not much is known about Robert Campbell who translated the original text. The tune SALZBURG, named after the Austrian city made famous by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was first published anonymously in the nineteenth edition of Praxis Pietatis Melica (1678); in that hymnbook's twenty-fourth edition (1690) the tune was attributed to Jakob Hintze (b. Bernau, Germany, 1622; d. Berlin, Germany, 1702). Partly as a result of the Thirty Years' War and partly to further his musical education, Hintze traveled widely as a youth, including trips to Sweden and Lithuania. In 1659 he settled in Berlin, where he served as court musician to the Elector of Brandenburg from 1666 to 1695. Hintze is known mainly for his editing of the later editions of Johann Crüger's Praxis Pietatis Melica, to which he contributed some sixty-five of his original tunes. The harmonization by Johann S. Bach is simplified from his setting in his Choralgesänge and The Hymna1 1982 contain Bach's full harmonization.

Enjoy St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York from Easter Sunday, 2011. What an organ! YOUTUBE