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Unser Mund sei voll Lachens BWV 110 / BC A 10
Christmas Day, December 25, 1725
The high feast days, to which Christmas has belonged since time immemorial, regularly presented Bach—as well as his predecessors and successors— with a formidable challenge as far as the organization of church music was concerned. In Leipzig there was a long-standing custom known as "doubled church music" (doppelte Kirchenmusik); that is, on the most important holidays the cantor needed to provide festive music not just for one of the two main churches but also for the other church. In practice this meant that the most important music took place in the morning of the first holiday in the preferred church—in Bach’s era this was St. Nicholas, residence of the superintendent—and a composition of lesser significance was heard in the other church, St. Thomas. In the afternoon the circumstances were reversed: in the vespers service, the more challenging, higher-profile work from the morning at St. Nicholas was repeated at St. Thomas, and the less significant work was heard at St. Nicholas. On the second holiday, the sequence in morning and afternoon at the two churches was reversed, and on the third holiday, music was restricted to only one of the two churches. On the first holiday, there was an additional burden for the cantor of St. Thomas: by tradition he was obligated to provide music to St. Paul, the church associated with the university, as well. It may be for this reason that the work performed early in the morning and repeated in the afternoon in the city churches was also offered in the late morning. As the cantata or “main music” (Hauptmusik) was not the only demand on the cantor of St. Thomas School, his choir, the soloists, and the instrumental musicians, one can only imagine how much all participants were expected to do during the high feast days of the church year, since doubled church music required the careful allocation of all available musicians.The cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens BWV 110 (May our mouths be full of laughter), composed in 1725, also belongs to this context. Bach took the libretto from a collection of texts that he had occasionally drawn upon a decade earlier during his Weimar period. Appearing in 1711 in Darmstadt under the title Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer (Church offering pleasing to God), the collection was the work of the librarian and court poet there, Georg Christian Lehms. Lehms, born in Silesia and educated at the University of Leipzig, was already known as an author of opera libretti when he took on the task of creating a double annual cycle of texts for church cantatas. The annual text cycle of 1711 deserves the title “doubled,” because for every Sunday and holiday of the church year there is a “devotion” (Andacht) in the form of a cantata, as well as a similar “afternoon devotion” (Nachmittagsandacht). On only one occasion did Johann Sebastian Bach set such a devotion or, more precisely, “morning devotion”: in the case of the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens. A distinguishing aspect of the text is that it lacks freely written recitatives altogether; it includes only biblical text, chorale strophes, and freely written arias.
The opening movement is designated by Lehms as Psalm 126, verses 2 and 3. The cantata libretto reads: “Unser Mund sei voll Lachens und unsere Zunge voll Rühmens. Denn der Herr hat Großes an uns getan” (May our mouths be full of laughter and our tongue full of praise. For the Lord has done great things for us). On the other hand, the psalter reads, beginning with the end of verse 1:
Wenn der Herr die gefangenen Zions erlösen wird, so werden wir sein wie die Träumenden. Dann wird unser Mund voll Lachens und unsre Zunge voll Rühmens sein. Da wird man sagen unter den Heiden: Der Herr hat Großes an ihnen getan! Der Herr hat Großes an uns getan: des sind wir fröhlich.
When the Lord will release the captives of Zion, we will be like them who dream. Then will our mouth be filled with laughter and our tongue with praise. Then will it be said among the Gentiles: The Lord has done great things for them! The Lord has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.
The poet can certainly be seen to have taken a rather independent approach with the biblical text. This is seen not only in wording but also in traditional interpretation, for to use Psalm 126 for the first day of Christmas and the birth of Christ as described in the feast day Gospels is—to put the matter carefully—unusual. The method of commenting upon the Christmas story from the outside, so to speak, continues in the first aria, which praises the event with these words:
Ihr Gedanken und ihr Sinnen,
Schwinget euch anitzt von hinnen!
Steiget schleunigt himmelan
Und bedenkt was Gott getan!
Er wird Mensch, und dies allein,
Daß wir Himmels Kinder sein.
You thoughts and you senses,
Swing up away from here.
Climb swiftly to heaven
And consider what God has done!
He becomes human, and for this alone:
That we may be heaven’s children.
It is not the only aria that describes the birth of Christ as God’s deed. The biblical quote that follows was also selected for this purpose. Jeremiah 10:6 reads as follows: “Dir, Herr, ist niemand gleich, du bist groß und dein Name ist groß und kannst’s mit der Tat beweisen” (To you, Lord, there is none like. You are great and your name is great and you can prove it with your deeds.) The poet chooses God’s greatness and the lowliness and highness of the Son of man, following Psalm 8, to extend his train of thought. The psalm text reads, “Was ist der Mensch, daß du seiner gedenkst, und des Menschen Kind, daß du dich seiner annimmst?” (4; What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the child of humankind, that you care for him?), but it becomes, in the rhymed form of the aria,
Ach, Herr, was ist ein Menschenkind,
Daß du sein Heil so schmerzlich suchest?
Ein Wurm, den du verfluchest,
Wenn Höll und Satan um ihn sind,
Doch auch dein Sohn, den Seel und Geist
Aus Liebe seinen Erben heißt.
O Lord, what is a child of humankind
That you seek his salvation so painfully?
A worm, that you curse
While hell and Satan surround him,
But even your Son, whom soul and spirit,
Out of love, call their inheritance.
This is the moment to weave in a small part of the Gospel reading for the feast day (Luke 2:14): “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe und Friede auf Erden und den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen” (Glory to God in the highest and peace on Earth and goodwill to men). To attach a distinctly musical text here would seem obvious; Lehms rhymes, roughly and not exactly with inspiration:
Wacht auf, ihr Adern und ihr Glieder,
Und singt dergleichen Freudenlieder,
Die unserm Gott gefällig sein.
Und ihr, ihr andachtsvollen Saiten,
Sollt ihm ein solches Lob bereiten,
Dabei sich Herz und Geist erfreun.
Awaken, you veins and you limbs,
And sing the sort of joyful songs
As are pleasing to our God.
And you, you strings full of devotion,
Shall prepare for him such praise
As heart and spirit delight.
The fifth strophe from Kaspar Füger’s hymn Wir Christenleut (We Christian people) closes the cantata libretto.
Of the three biblical verses in his text, Bach set only the middle one to newly composed music: the passage from Isaiah “Dir, Herr, ist niemand gleich” appears as a brief recitative for bass with sharply defined motives in the accompanying strings. In the two other cases, Bach drew upon existing compositions. For the text belonging to the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke, “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe,” Bach drew upon the duet “Virga Jesse Floruit,” one of the four inserted movements for Christmas from his Magnificat in E-flat Major BWV 243.1, composed in 1723. Aside from the transposition from A major to F major and the resulting changes in setting (soprano and tenor appear in place of soprano and bass), the piece appears to have undergone only very minor changes. This is fortunate, since the Latin first version of the duet is only partially preserved but clearly can be reliably reconstructed due to its very minor deviations from the cantata version. Bach acquired the festive, broadly conceived opening movement, “Unser Mund sei voll Lachens,” from the overture from his Orchestral Suite in D Major BWV 1068. In its fast, fugal, concerto-like middle section, he partly inserted newly composed vocal parts and partly formed them from excerpts of the quick, animated parts for strings and oboes. The addition of flutes, as well as trumpets and drums, obligatory for a feast day, required a bit more compositional investment. From all appearances, neither instrumental group was envisaged in the original version of the orchestral suite. Certainly, neither instrumental group appeared in the original orchestral suite version, the trumpets and tympani at least not in the form they had in the cantata.
In addition to the simple closing chorale, the three arias are newly composed: the introverted “Ihr Gedanken und ihr Sinnen” for tenor and two concertante transverse flutes; the rueful “Ach Herr was ist ein Menschenkind” for alto and obbligato oboe d’amore, which characterizes “Höll und Satan” (Hell and Satan) through increasing chromaticism in its middle section; and the heroic, extroverted “Wach auf, ihr Adern und ihr Glieder” for bass and virtuoso trumpet.