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• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:56+00:00 Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen BWV 12 / BC A 68 10 Jubilate. First performed 04/22/1714 at Weimar. Text by Salamon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T14:42:52+00:00 1714-04-22 BWV 12 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 24Jubilate Jubilate BC A 68 Johann Sebastian Bach Salamo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12 / BC A 68" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 212 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Jubilate, April 22, 1714

  
  Bach composed this cantata in April 1714, a few weeks after his promotion to concertmaster of the court chapel at Weimar, in accordance with his new obligation to perform new cantatas on a monthly rotation. The work is for the third Sunday after Easter, or Jubilate Sunday. While the libretto contains no literal quotation from the Gospel reading of the day, it is related in many respects. In particular, it concerns that part of the Gospel reading in John 16:19, 20, and 22 that refers to Jesus’s farewell speeches: “For a little while, you will not see me; and however for a little while, you shall see me. Truly, truly I say to you: You shall weep and wail; yet your sadness will be turned into joy. ...And you have now sorrow; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one shall take your joy from you.”
  
  The librettist of the cantata is not known. It is conceivable that the libretto is the work of the Weimar chief ducal consistory secretary Salomon Franck, whose libretti Bach set fairly frequently beginning in late 1714. In any case, the librettist was a well-educated author who demonstrates his erudition right away at the beginning of the first aria. As recent research has shown, the parataxis (a sequence of words or phrases unconnected by conjunctions) found here goes back to a Latin cry of lament often used in ancient times.¹ Only the conclusion, therefore, is new; it creates a connection to the sorrow that is the subject of the Gospel reading:

  Weinen, Klagen, 
  Sorgen, Zagen, 
  Angst und Not
  Sind der Christen Tränenbrot, 
  Die das Zeichen Jesu tragen.
  
  Weeping, wailing, 
  Sorrows, trembling, 
  Anguish and need
  Are the Christian’s bread of tears, 
  They who bear the mark of Jesus.

  
  In the following movement, the poetic effusion of this beginning turns to the sober seriousness of a passage from Acts 14:22: “Wir müßen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen” (We must go through much tribulation to enter the Kingdom of God). But immediately afterward, the librettist once again gives free rein to his predilection for wordplay: this time it is alliteration (“Kreuz,” “Kronen,” “Kampf,” “Kleinod”), the stave rhyme, that marks the line beginnings in the next aria text:

  Kreuz und Kronen sind verbunden, 
  Kampf und Kleinod sind vereint. 
  Christen haben alle Stunden
  Ihre Qual und ihren Feind,
  Doch ihr Trost sind Christi Wunden.
  
  Cross and crowns are bound together, 
  Contest and prize medal are united. 
  Christians have, at every hour,
  Their suffering and their enemy.
  Yet Christ’s wounds are their comfort.

  
  In spite of the verbal artifice, the content of the strophe is clear: the cross stands for suffering and redemption, the crown for ascension into heaven.
  
  The paraphrase of the emulation of Christ in the ensuing aria thus appears as a logical continuation:

  Ich folge Christo nach,
  Von ihm will ich nicht lassen
  Im Wohl und Ungemach,
  In Leben und Erblassen. 
  Ich küsse Christi Schmach,
  Ich will sein Kreuz umfassen. 
  Ich folge Christo nach,
  Von ihm will ich nicht lassen.
  
  I follow after Christ,
  I will not let go of him,
  In well-being and misfortune 
  In life and in death.
  I kiss Christ’s humiliation, 
  I will embrace his cross,
  I follow after Christ,
  I will not let go of him.

  
  The aria that follows promises a reward for this fidelity, associated with the high trumpet’s quotation of the chorale melody Jesu meine Freude:

  Sei getreu, alle Pein
  Wird doch nur ein Kleines sein. 
  Nach dem Regen
  Blüht der Segen,
  Alles Wetter geht vorbei. 
  Sei getreu, sei getreu!
  
  Stay faithful, all pain
  Will indeed be but a little while. 
  After the rain
  Blessing blooms, 
  Every storm passes.
  Stay faithful, stay faithful!

  
  The concluding chorale strophe, the last in Samuel Rodigast’s 1674 hymn, functions catechetically as it summarizes the threads of thought in the entire cantata text:

  Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, 
  Dabei will ich verbleiben,
  Es mag mich auf die rauhe Bahn 
  Not, Tod und elend treiben,
  So wird Gott mich Ganz väterlich
  In seinen Armen halten:
  Drum laß ich ihn nur walten.    
  
  What God does, that is done well, 
  I will abide by this,
  Though I may, on the rough road,
  Be driven by need, death, and misery, 
  Then God will,
  Quite fatherly,
  Hold me in his arms:
  Therefore, I just let him rule.

  
  Bach begins his composition of this text—which is entirely free of recitatives—with a sinfonia in F minor that outwardly resembles the slow movement of a concerto. The accompaniment—tightly regulated, nearly static, and consisting of four string instruments above a spare basso continuo—and the intensely expressive voice of the oboe enter into a distinctively tense relationship with each other. The accompaniment’s unusual dimensions point to a barely restrained, individual, and emotional interpretation of the cry of lament drawn from the ancient tradition. The phrase “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” in four-part choral setting appears with the greatest possible expressive power, with many sighing suspensions and chromatic modulations but disciplined and restrained at the same time. The framing sections of this tripartite movement prove to be a sequence of twelve variations on the archaic lamento bass, which descends by half steps through the interval of the fourth. One sees how greatly Bach treasured this strictly constructed yet intensively expressive chaconne in the fact that he adopted it, without its middle sections, as the Crucifixus in his “great Catholic mass”—later known as the Mass in B Minor BWV 232.
  
  The accumulated solemnity of this beginning radiates over the movements that follow. The biblical passage recitative, given to the alto, begins in a dark C minor. But the space unexpectedly opens; as the basso continuo descends to low C, the solo violin, undeterred, strides upward along the C major scale as it leads the accompaniment, a fine interpretation of the text “Wir müßen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen”—a subtle means of interpreting the text, trusting in the imagery of such symbols. In the ensuing aria, also for alto and obbligato oboe, the density of texture seems to want to outdo the terse stave rhymes of “Kreuz und Kronen sind verbunden, Kampf und Kleinod sind vereint.” The stubbornness in keeping to one and the same motivic idea could be conditioned by the text passages containing “Kampf ” and “Feind.”
  
  The aria that follows, for bass and two obbligato violins, is similarly tenacious in its adherence to motivic material formulated at the very start. Certainly, the prevailing idea is clear enough: the characteristic rising head motive is given to the text beginning “Ich folge Christo nach,” and, wherever possible, it is woven into imitative textures, a manifest image of “following.” The cantata’s last aria is an elaborately sophisticated chorale arrangement, a tribute to the art of Bach, the widely known Weimar court organist. Above an obstinately repeating bass foundation (idiomatic to the organ pedal), an expressive tenor, rich in coloratura, unfolds its “Sei getreu, alle Pein wird doch nur ein Kleines sein” (Stay faithful, all pain will indeed be but a little while). In addition, a high trumpet, undeterred, sounds the chorale melody Jesu meine Freude. Musically, it functions as the cornerstone to the movement structure; at the same time, it is an invitation to the listener to consider the aria text in conjunction with the words of the chorale, as a second level, so to speak.
  
  With the concluding chorale in a bright B-flat major on the chorale melody Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, from the late seventeenth century, Bach underscores the completed ascent from the sorrow of the cantata’s beginning. He adds a fifth, high-range instrumental part to the four voices that not only enriches the movement technically and harmonically but also lends it an unexpected dimension similar to the undaunted soaring ascent of the violin in the accompanied recitative “Wir müßen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen.”

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  Footnotes

  1. Ambrose (1980).↵