Please turn to Number 88 (Second Tune) and join with the clarinets in “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded”.
Number: 88 (Second Tune)
First Line: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
Name: PASSION CHORALE.
Meter: 7 6, 7 6. D.
Tempo: With devotion
Music: Hans Leo Hassler, 1564-1612
Adapted and Harm. by J. S. Bach, 1685-1750
Text: Ascribed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1091-1153
Paul Gerhardt, 1607-76
Tr. James Waddel Alexander, 1804-59 a.
Clarinet Arrangement:088b.OSacredHeadNowWounded
So we covered that Paul Simon used the melody from a song by Hans Leo Hassler:
“The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret”, which first appeared in print in the 1601 Lustgarten Neuer Teutscher Gesäng.”
But, really, Simon was probably stealing from J.S. Bach, who had stolen the tune for the hymn from Hassler via Cruger.
“The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in the St Matthew Passion. He also used the hymn’s text and melody in the second movement of the cantata Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159.[4] Bach used the melody on different words in his Christmas Oratorio, in the first part (no. 5).”
The Bach arrangement of the hymn is much closer to the tune Simon used than the original.
Hans Leo Hassler was an interesting, and important, German composer, who straddled the Renaissance and Baroque styles, bringing the innovations of Italian Baroque music to Germany and Europe.
Hassler is considered to be one of the most important German composers of all time.[4] His use of the innovative Italian techniques, coupled with traditional, conservative German techniques allowed his compositions to be fresh without the modern affective tone.[12] His songs presented a combined vocal and instrumental literature that did not make use of the continuo, or only provided it as an option,[12] and his sacred music introduced the Italian polychoral structures that would later influence many composers leading into the Baroque era.
