I have not seen the 'Erhalt uns, Herr' in the Vatican II Hymnal, but the one in Worship III is a variant of the tune, ornamented with passing tones & cet, and is better known as 'Spires'. (See The Hymnal 1940, no. 61)

I should add: until two weeks ago, there was an error in the organ accompaniment book. The "Alternate Tune" provided was meant to be the one which is more well known. Unfortunately, until the error was caught, many of the accompaniment books have been missing the more well known version.

The good news is that the "Alternate Tune" was corrected about two weeks ago (both in the website and the accompaniment books for sale).

CLICK HERE and view Page 243 "Alternate" version of "The Glory Of These Forty Days."

Again, I apologize for the confusion. I suppose it is normal with a project this large to have a few "glitches." However, I still feel bad. None of the other errors we have found have been as major as this one, thanks be to God!

Incidentally, if I am allowed to venture an opinion, I would like to suggest that the opening few bars of the "more well known" tune present problems from the viewpoint of compositional excellence. To be quite blunt, it suffers from an acute case of what my composition professors used to call "wander-itis." This is the reason we favored the other variant, although we always included the other version as an alternate.

The "less well-known" version (I suppose JMO means less well-known to Catholics and/or Anglicans) of ERHALT UNS HERR is very well-known to Lutherans and appears in several of their hymnals. The various forms of the tune as used by Bach are all different from this, including the "well-known" familiar version (aka SPIRES in the Hymnal 1940).

This is not really anything new as regards how various German chorales have come down to us, especially as refined and harmonized by J.S. Bach. For example, the "PASSION CHORALE" (of "O sacred Head..."), is the tune HERZLICH TUT MICH VERLANGEN, and all of Bach's harmonizations of this tune from the St. Matthew Passion differ from what (usually termed "rhythmic" as opposed to "isorhythmic") you will find in many Lutheran hymnals. My favorite Bach harmonization of this tune happens to be the final instance of the tune in the St. Matthew Passion, to the text "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden" - so much more intense and reflective than the other Bach version usually printed in our hymnals.

Some claim a relationship of ERHALT UNS HERR with the Ambrosian chant "Veni Redemptor gentium", but my understanding is that this chant is related more to NUN KOMM DER HEIDEN HEILAND (albeit with a metre change from 88.88 to 77.77).