Mit Fried und Freud (Buxtehude)

Mit Fried und Freud and Klag-Lied
by Dieterich Buxtehude
Title page of the bundle
Full	Fried- und Freudenreiche Hinfarth
Catalogue	BuxWV 76

"Mit Fried und Freud" ("With peace and joy"), BuxWV 76, is the common name for a piece of funeral music composed by Dieterich Buxtehude as an homage to his father in 1674. The composer named the work Fried- und Freudenreiche Hinfarth (Departure enriched by Peace and Joy) when he published it the same year. It is a bundle of two compositions, the earlier Mit Fried und Freud, BuxWV 76a, a setting of Luther's hymn Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin composed in 1671 reflecting the death of Menno Hanneken, and the elegy Klag-Lied (Song of mourning, lament), BuxWV 76b, an aria in seven stanzas. The incipit of the elegy, Muß der Tod denn auch entbinden, translates roughly to "Even if death must separate us". It is one of few compositions published during Buxtehude's lifetime.

In 1671, Buxtehude composed funeral music on the death of Menno Hanneken (), a superintendent and minister at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, where Buxtehude performed his concert series, the Abendmusiken. Buxtehude composed a canon, Divertisons nous (BuxWV 124), written in an album of Menno's son and dated 1670, showing that he had good relations with the Hanneken family. Buxtehude set Luther's hymn "Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin", the German paraphrase of the Nunc dimittis, or Song of Simeon.

Buxtehude's father Johann Buxtehude had died on 22 January 1674, having worked at St Olaf's, Helsingør, as an organist, and having moved to his son's household after the death of his wife in 1671 and after his own retirement, possibly in 1673. The composer wrote Klag-Lied as an homage to his father, on a poem in seven stanzas which he possibly wrote himself. Both works were probably performed at the funeral.