page_title: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
section_title: Melody and use
hierarchical_section_title: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded / Melody and use
context_page_description: "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded" is a Christian Passion hymn based on a Latin text written during the Middle Ages. Paul Gerhardt wrote a German version which is known by its incipit, "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden".
context_section_description: 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. 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 four different settings in his 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. Bach used the melody on different words in his Christmas Oratorio, in the first part (no. 5). Bach also craftily employed the melody as a counterpoint in half-time in the opening aria of the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde, BWV 161, and set it for four parts to close that cantata. Franz Liszt included an arrangement of this hymn in the sixth station, Saint Veronica, of his Via crucis (Stations of the Cross), S. 504a. The Danish composer Rued Langgaard composed a set of variations for string quartet on this tune. It is also employed in the final chorus of "Sinfonia Sacra", the Ninth Symphony of the English composer Edmund Rubbra. Mauricio Kagel quoted the hymn at the end of his oratorio Sankt-Bach-Passion telling Bach's life, composed for the tricentenary of Bach's birth in 1985.
  The melody of "American Tune" by Paul Simon is based on the hymn. "Stop Error" on Provincial by John K Samson also uses the same melody. Peter, Paul & Mary and the Dave Brubeck Trio performed "Because all men are brothers" on their album "Summit Sessions".
caption: Hans Leo Hassler
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