🎶cantāmus edition🎶Graupner Chorale No. 𝟙𝟛𝟙𝟛: 𝕯𝖚 𝖇𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖒𝖊𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖗𝖊𝖚𝖊𝖗 𝕾𝖊𝖊𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙 (from GWV 1132/53)

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Chorale No. 1313 of 1345
Music: Christoph Graupner (1683-1760)
First performance: 06/05/1753 (2nd Sunday after Easter, Misericordias Domini)
Verse Text: Du bist mein treuer Seelenhirt
Text source: 11th verse of Mein Herzens-Jesu, meine Lust - Johann Christian Lange (1695)
Chorale melody: Mein Herzens-Jesu, meine Lust (Graupner Choralbuch 1728, composer?)
8th movement of cantata Der Herr ist mein Hirt (GWV 1132/53)
Scoring: SATB, 2 horns, 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, strings and organ.
Reissued performance with vocals powered by cantāmus (https://cantamus.app/) of this video: https://youtu.be/5bsBnRxyvPk

11. Du bist mein treuer Seelenhirt
und Selber auch die Weide;
Du hast mich, da ich war verirrt,
geholt mit großer Freude.
Ach, nimm Dein Schäflein nun in Acht,
damit es weder List noch Macht
von Deiner Herde scheide.

Translation Johann Christian Jacobi
11. Thou art the shepherd of my Soul,
And my sweet food and pasture,
Thou brought'st me back, when I did stroll
With great transporting gesture:
Now take thy sheep within thy care,
That it by force nor flatt'ring snare
Stray from thy flock hereafter.

Is this the greatest of all of Graupner's chorale settings? It certainly makes a fine shout for that accolade. Like many of the works from his final composition year, 1753, we get the impression of a composer at the very top of his game, but also with his finger on the pulse of the large changes in the musical landscape going into the second half of the 18th century. In fact it is really quite astonishing that a work like this could ever have been penned by a composer born before Bach and Handel. It shows Graupner almost entirely walking away from the baroque idiom and treating his orchestra not like an early classical one but in fact a mid-to-late one! The work sounds so slick it can be easily missed that Graupner constantly varies the parts which double at octaves. Every possible pairing of parts seems to have been achieved here as he gets his band, which includes horns, flutes and, unusually, two bassoons, to paint a picture of pastoral bliss. And the coda ... well, this is almost pure Haydn, complete with the cheeky return of the work's "Leitmotif", ending 2 minutes of the most heavenly (and visionary) music by the 70 year old Graupner.