"Liebster Gott, wann werd ich sterben"[a] ("Dearest God, when will I die")[8][b] is a Lutheran hymn which Caspar Neumann, an evangelical theologian from Breslau, wrote around 1690.

[22] Less than a year after having been assigned court preacher in Altenburg in 1678, he returned to his native town, where he became pastor at the St Mary Magdalene Church in 1689.

Herrscher uber Tod und Leben,[V, 1] mach einmal mein Ende gut;[V, 2] Lehre mich den Geist aufgeben mit recht wohlgefasstem Muth,[V, 3] hilf, dass ich ein ehrlich Grab neben frommen Christen hab,[V, 4] und auch endlich in der Erde nimmermehr zu Schanden werde.

Grant that I an honoured grave With the holy dead may have, Earthly grief and toil forsaking, Nevermore to shame awaking.

Another linking of phrases from the hymn, and paraphrases thereof, to biblical passages can be found in Melvin P. Unger's 1996 book with interlinear translations of Bach's cantata texts.

[32] Copies of the 1720 and 1721 prints of Franz Anton von Sporck's Verschiedene Buß-Gedancken Einer Reumüthigen Seele, Uber Die Sterblichkeit deß Menschens are extant.

[34][35][36] In 1789, Benjamin Friedrich Schmieder [wikisource] published Hymnologie, oder, Ueber Tugenden und Fehler der verschiedenen Arten geistlicher Lieder, in which he presented an improved version of Neumann's hymn.

[37] Shortly after Neumann's death, in 1715, his collected prayers and hymns were published in Breslau, under the title Kern Aller Gebete und Gesänge.

[38] The publication mentions two possible pre-existing hymn tunes for "Liebster Gott, wann werd ich sterben":[39] The second, Zahn No.

[1][34][41] This tune was originally published for a French (1551), and later a German (1587), version of Psalm 42 ("As the hart panteth after the water brooks"), before it was used for the "Freu dich sehr o meine Seele" hymn in the early 17th century, with which it was later generally associated.

(...) Dergleichen löbwurdige Sterbens-Gedancken hat auch / bey gesunden tagen / der Geistreiche und wegen des / bey allen andächtigen Betern sehr beliebten Büchleins / Kern aller Gebete genannt / besonders wohlbekannte Theologus und Prediger in Breßlau / Herr Mag.

Caspar Neumann / in dem schönen Liede: Liebster Gott wenn werd ich sterben &c Mit poetischer Feder entworffen: Dessen Composition mir Herr Jacobus Wilisius, Breßlauischer Cantor zu St. Bernhardi ehemals aufgetragen / immassen derselbe solches bey seiner Beerdigung abzusingen verordnet hatte / wie auch nachgehends Anno 1695. würcklich geschehen / mittlerzeit aber ist dieses Lied / durch so viel Verstimmelung sehr unkäntlich worden / dannenhero ich vor nöthig befunden / demselben seine vorige Gestalt wiederumb zu geben / und vielen andächtigen Gemüthern hier an diesem Orte zu Liebe / welche bey glückseligem zustande zugleich ihres Todes offters ingedenck zu seyn nicht ermangeln / diesem Wercke beyzufügen / auch einen langsamen Tact, so viel nur möglich / dabey zu recommandiren.

Jacob Wilisius, at the time cantor of St. Bernard in Breslau [commons], commissioned me to set this hymn, and then ordered this to be sung at his funeral: this eventually happened in 1695.

In the meanwhile, the hymn's setting has become unrecognisable by much mutilation, thus I found it necessary to restore its erstwhile form, and present this work, for which I also recommend as much as possible a slow tempo, here for the benefit of many devout souls, who even in a state of bliss don't fail to often ponder their death.

[41] There was a copy of the 1713 volume of Vetter's Musicalische Kirch- und Hauß-Ergötzlichkeit in the household of Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach.

[25][34][65] Its last movement, in E major like the first, is a reworked version of Vetter's four-part setting, for SATB choir, colla parte instruments and figured bass, with the last stanza of Neumann's hymn as text.

[16] In 1736, a voice and continuo arrangement of Vetter's hymn tune, attributed to Bach (BWV 483), in the same key, was included in Schemellis Gesangbuch.

[71] When Bach's pupil Johann Friedrich Doles had become Thomaskantor some years after the composer's death, the BWV 8 cantata was performed again in Leipzig.

[72] According to the American musicologist David Yearsley [nl], the widowed Anna Magdalena may have heard such performance, finding consolation in the hymn's text and setting.

I/23 of the NBE also contains both the E and D major versions of Bach's chorale fantasia on Vetter's "Liebster Gott, wann werd ich sterben" with which the BWV 8 cantata opens.

[79] In 2005, Richard D. P. Jones translated Dürr as writing, in his 1992 book on Bach's cantatas, that BWV 8/6 was "borrowed from Daniel Vetter, albeit with radical alterations.

"[35] Johann Balthasar Reimann [de] published his Sammlung alter und neuer Melodien Evangelischer Lieder (Collection of old and new melodies of Evangelical songs) in 1747.