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Ihr werdet weinen und heulen BWV 103 / BC A 69
Jubilate, April 22, 1725
This cantata was heard for the first time on April 22, 1725, presumably in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church. It thus belongs to a period in which a significant change took place in Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition of cantatas. One month before our cantata was performed for the first time, the Thomaskantor had broken off work on his annual cycle of chorale cantatas, bringing the most comprehensive compositional project of his career to a premature end. We have no idea what caused him to discontinue the chorale cantata series, begun two weeks after Pentecost 1724, before its expected conclusion in late May 1725. It is conceivable that the unknown librettist or librettists responsible for adapting chorale strophes to the modern forms of recitative and aria were no longer available. But the reason might lie with Bach himself. In a period of less than ten months he had realized the concept of chorale cantata in at least forty instances, and, in particular, he had set the opening movements according to a model: cantus firmus in large note values in one of the voices; motet-like counterpoint in the other voices; and a motivically unified, concerted orchestral part. The possibility should not be ignored that a certain fatigue had set in, coupled with the composer’s desire to construct large forms not bound to chorales.Through coincidence or a systematic search, it must have been during this period that the cantor of St. Thomas came into contact with a female Leipzig poet who up to that point had never been engaged in creating texts for Kirchenstücken, or church cantatas: Christiane Mariane von Ziegler. Born in 1695 in Leipzig, she grew up in a middle-class family that was in equal measure wealthy, highly intellectual, and interested in music. Twice married and twice widowed, she had returned to Leipzig in 1722 after years of absence in order to overcome her loneliness in social engagement and take part in poetic and musical activities. Moreover, the arrest of her father by order of the Saxon elector and his lifelong imprisonment in the castle at Königstein without an explanation of the charges and without a trial was a stroke of fate she had yet to overcome.1
Although Christiane Mariane von Ziegler’s writing career lasted less than two decades, she flourished in the circle of Johann Christoph Gottsched in Leipzig, and despite occasional criticism she earned high honors. In November 1733 the Saxon press reported: “Frau Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, a daughter of the erstwhile mayor of Leipzig, Herr Romani, in the month of October has been named Royal Poet Laureate by the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Wittenberg because of her strong and fully developed poetry, an honor that, at least within the entire University, has never been granted to a person of her gender.”2
Frau Ziegler published nine church cantata texts in her first work, Versuch in gebundener Schreib-Art, which appeared in Leipzig in 1728. Within a period of only five weeks in 1725, Johann Sebastian Bach set all nine to music and performed them. The composer must have received the texts from the librettist in advance of their publication in 1728. It is less likely that she coincidentally happened to have them on hand and helped the cantor of St. Thomas in his unforeseen need for cantata texts than that Bach asked for an unbroken sequence of texts from Jubilate Sunday to Trinity in order to be able to fill out the interrupted cantata cycle in advance. In addition, it is noteworthy that Frau Ziegler, in the second and last part of her Versuch in gebundener Schreib-Art, published in 1729, expanded the sequence of previously published texts to a complete annual cycle, though without printing the libretti set by Bach a second time. However, Bach evidently made no use of this extensive new offering.
Whether Frau Ziegler wrote the nine cantata texts on commission for Johann Sebastian Bach or whether he responded to her offer of texts and therefore allowed his chorale cantata cycle to languish is of some significance because the texts printed in 1728 often differ from those composed by Bach in 1725. It is conceivable that the poet revised her texts before publishing them, but it is just as possible that Bach or someone working for him arranged the texts for composition (and must not have been particularly squeamish about doing so).3 Still, the Ziegler text for Jubilate Sunday is certainly the least affected by this.
The libretto for Ihr werdet weinen und heulen BWV 103 (You shall weep and wail) begins with a New Testament dictum taken from the Sunday Gospel reading in John 16, which continues the farewell speeches of Jesus: “Über ein kleines, so werdet ihr mich nicht sehen; und aber über ein kleines, so werdet ihr mich sehen, denn ich gehe zum Vater” (16; For a little while, you will not see me; however, for a little while, you shall see me, for I am going to the Father). The Sunday Gospel reading closes: “Wahrlich, wahrlich ich sage euch: Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, aber die Welt wird sich freuen; ihr aber werdet traurig sein; doch eure Traurigkeit soll in Freude verkehret werden” (20; Truly, truly I say to you: you shall weep and wail, but the world shall rejoice; you, however, shall be sorrowful, yet your sorrow shall be turned into joy). Frau Ziegler’s free poetry takes up the lament of the dictum in a brief recitative and, in the ensuing aria, paraphrases the Suchmotiv (search motive), “Verbirgst du dich, so muß ich sterben” (If you hide yourself, then I must die).4 The aria begins:
Kein Arzt ist außer dir zu finden,
Ich suche durch ganz Gilead;
Wer heilt die Wunden meiner Sünden,
Weil man hier keinen Balsam hat?
No physician other than you is to be found,
I search through all Gilead;
Who will heal the wounds of my sins,
Since one has no balsam here?
The passage referred to is found in chapter 8, verse 22, of the book of the prophet Jeremiah: “Mich jammert herzlich, daß mein Volk so verderbt ist; Ich gräme mich und gehabe mich übel. Ist denn keine Salbe in Gilead, oder ist kein Arzt da? Warum ist denn die Tochter meines Volks nicht geheilt?” (I am greatly distressed that my people are so corrupted; I grieve and conduct myself badly. Is there then no balm in Gilead, or is no physician there? Why then is the daughter of my people not healed?). “Du wirst mich nach der Angst auch wiederum erquicken” (You will, after my distress, revive me again) reads the recitative that follows regarding a verse from Psalm 138. The rest of the recitative text is shortened by several lines compared to the printed version, yet without any loss of substance; hewing closely to the dictum at the beginning, it reads:
Ich traue dem Verheißungswort,
Daß meine Traurigkeit
In Freude soll verkehrt werden.
I trust the word of promise,
That my sorrow
Shall be transformed to joy.
“Sorrow and joy” is also the theme of the ensuing aria text, which begins “Erholet euch, betrübte Sinnen” (Recover, distressed minds). A strophe from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn Barmherz’ger Vater, höchster Gott (Merciful father, highest God) draws together the train of ideas in the text once again: “Ich hab dich einen Augenblick, / O liebes Kind, verlassen” (I have, for a moment, / Dear child, left you).
In Bach’s wide-ranging composition of the opening movement, the instrumental introduction anticipates the phrase “aber die Welt wird sich freuen” (but the world shall rejoice). Strings, two oboi d’amore, and a solo instrument (in the first version a piccolo recorder, in the later version a solo violin or transverse flute) join together in a lively ensemble of inner cheer that could hardly be allowed to end with the return of the initial phrase, “Ihr werdet weinen und heulen.” This appears in a brief fugal exposition full of intense chromaticism that just as quickly resolves into a confident “Aber die Welt wird sich freuen.” Upon its reappearance, the joy motive is given along with the sorrowful fugue theme in counterpoint from the start, and here, in a third, identical exposition, now with the text “Doch eure Traurigkeit soll in Freude verkehrt werden,” the joy theme—quite in the spirit of the text—proves itself the strongest. On the other hand, the bass arioso at the beginning of the last third of the movement, with its repeated warning, “Ihr aber werdet traurig sein” (You, however, shall be sorrowful), has little effect.
The ensuing recitative, though brief, is quite vivid in its dramatic gesture; in the sorrowful aria that follows, the solo instrument originally planned, the piccolo recorder, illustrates the search “durch ganz Gilead” (through all of Gilead) with its animated passages, while its ingratiating tone is meant to lend emphasis to the plea for compassion. In the tenor aria, self-confident fanfare motives and twisted harmonic progressions conflict with one another until the cantata concludes in a simple chorale movement on the melody Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit (What my God wills, that shall forever be).
Footnotes
- Franz Conrad Romanus was installed as mayor by the court of August the Strongover the objections of the Leipzig Town Council. In the winter of 1704–5 “it becameknown that he had forged town council debentures and . . . embezzled money fromthe municipal treasury and the treasury of St. Nicholas” (Maul 2018, 176).↵
- “Die Frau Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, eine Tochter des ehemaligen Herrn Bürgermeisters zu Leipzig, Herrn Romani, von der Philosophischen Facultät der Universität Wittenberg, im Monat October bei Gelegenheit einer volzogenen starcken Dicht-Kunst, zur Kayserlichen gecrönten Poeten erklärt worden, welche Ehre wenigstens von ganzen Universitäten noch keiner Person von ihrem Geschlechte ertheilet worden.”↵
- Mark Peters (2005) has cogently summarized this long-running debate and argued for Ziegler’s authorship of the changes.↵
- The Suchmotiv is the soul’s search for Jesus in the Christian reading of the Song of Songs.↵