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Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit BWV 111 / BC A 36
Third Sunday after Epiphany
This cantata, a member of Bach’s cycle of chorale cantatas, was heard for the first time on January 21, 1725, in Leipzig. As is so common among Bach’s chorale cantatas, it is based on a hymn whose first and last strophes are left unchanged, while the inner strophes are freely adapted to become recitative and aria texts. In the four-strophe form used here, the hymn appeared in print for the first time in 1554. An older version—surely the original—with only three stanzas appeared seven years earlier; its author was Margrave Albrecht of Prussia.Albrecht, born in 1490 in Ansbach, was named grand master of the Teutonic League (Hochmeister des deutschen Ordens) as a young man and reigned over the Ordensland (State of the Teutonic Order) in Prussia. In 1525 he adopted the Reformation and transformed the Ordensland into a secular duchy. Here, in what was later known as East Prussia, the royal court at Königsberg, with its superb court chapel, became a world-famous performance venue for polyphonic art music. Duke Albrecht brought musicians to his court such as the Netherlandish composer Adrianus Petit Coclico, creator of musica reservata, and the Hungarian lutenist Bálint Bakfark.1He maintained correspondence with others, among them Lucas Osiander, Ludwig Senfl, Thomas Stoltzer, and Johann Walter, and collected their compositions.
In the hymn collections of the era, Duke Albrecht’s hymn Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit (What my God wills, may that happen always) is occasionally (but by no means consistently) assigned to the third Sunday after Epiphany. The Gospel reading for that day, from Matthew 8, recounts the healing of a leper and of a gout-ridden man. Remarkably, this story had little if any influence on any of the various cantatas written by Bach for the third Sunday after Trinity. Instead, these libretti focus on the central idea “surrender to God’s will” (Ergebung in Gottes Willen).
The unknown librettist took a similar approach in our cantata. As mentioned, he let the first strophe stand in its original form:
Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit,
Sein Will, der ist der beste;
Zu helfen den’n er ist bereit,
Die an ihn gläuben feste.
Er hilft aus Not,
Der fromme Gott,
Und züchtigt mit Maßen:
Wer Gott vertraut, fest auf ihn baut,
Den will er nicht verlassen.
What my God wills, may that happen always,
His will, that is the best.
He is ready to help those
Who believe in him firmly.
He helps those in need,
The righteous God,
And corrects in just measure:
Whoever trusts God, builds securely on him,
Will not be forsaken by him.
The inner strophes were adapted very freely, since in order to adapt them into two each of aria and recitative texts, their scope needed to be substantially expanded. The second chorale strophe begins:
Gott ist mein Trost, mein Zuversicht,
Mein’ Hoffnung und mein Leben,
Was mein Gott will das mir geschicht,
Will ich nicht widerstreben.
God is my comfort, my faith,
My hope, and my life.
What my God wants sent to me
I will not strive against.
It was accordingly transformed into the following aria:
Entsetze dich, mein Herze, nicht,
Gott ist dein Trost und Zuversicht
Und deiner Seele Leben.
Ja was sein weiser Rat bedacht,
Dem kann die Welt und Menschenmacht
Unmöglich widerstreben.
Do not be upset, my heart,
God is your comfort and faith
And the life of your soul.
Yes, what his wise counsel deems prudent
The world and human might
Cannot possibly strive against.
Similarly, the close of the same strophe became the ensuing recitative. Albrecht writes:
Sein Wort ist wahr,
Denn all mein Haar
Er selber hat gezählet:
Er hüt’ und wacht,
Stets für uns tracht’t,
Auf daß uns ja nichts fehlet.
His word is true,
For all my hair
He himself has counted.
He guards and watches,
Always considers for us
That we want for nothing.
The cantata poet’s version reads as follows:
Auch unser Denken ist ihm offenbar,
Und unsers Hauptes Haar
Hat er gezählet.
Wohl dem, der diesen Schutz erwählet
Im gläubigen Vertrauen,
Auf dessen Schluß und Wort
Mit Hoffnung und Geduld zu schauen.
Even our thinking is plain to him,
And the hair on our head
He has counted.
Blessed is he who chooses this protection
In faithful trust,
Looking to his decision and word
With hope and patience.
However, the librettist cannot omit a warning against doubts of faith; he places the admonition at the beginning of the recitative:
O Törichter! der sich von Gott entzieht
Und wie Jonas dort
Vor Gottes Angesichte flieht.
O fool! Who withdraws himself from God
And like Jonah there
Flees before God’s countenance.
This allusion refers to the prophet Jonah, who tried to escape God’s order to preach in Nineveh and in fleeing by ship fell into mortal danger.
Duke Albrecht’s third chorale strophe deals with death, dying, and the surrender to God’s will. The aria derived from it exhibits few if any discernible commonalities of text:
So geh ich mit beherzten Schritten
Auch wenn mich Gott zum Grabe führt.
Gott hat die Tage aufgeschrieben,
So wird, wenn seine Hand mich rührt,
Des Todes Bitterkeit vertreiben.
So I go with courageous steps
Even when God leads me to the grave.
God has recorded my days
So that when, if his hand touches me,
The bitterness of death will be driven away.
The last verse of this aria text once more alludes to a rather obscure place in the Hebrew Bible, a statement by the king of the Amalekites, a Bedouin people slain by Saul. As the king was brought before Samuel, looking death in the eye, he said: “Also muß man des Todes Bitterkeit vertreiben” (1 Samuel 15:32; So must one drive away the bitterness of death). Like the aria, the recitative that follows is very freely derived from the chorale; Albrecht states modestly:
O frommer Gott,
Sünd, Höll und Tod
Hast du mir überwunden.
O pious God,
Sin, hell, and death
You have overcome for me.
His lines are traced in bold strokes by the newer poem:
Wenn Teufel, Tod und Sünde mich bekriegt
Und meine Sterbekissen
Ein Kampfplatz werden müßen.
If devil, death, and sin besiege me
And my pillows of death
Must become a battleground.
As expected, the final strophe remains unchanged:
Noch eins, Herr, will ich bitten dich,
Du wirst mirs nicht versagen:
Wenn mich der böse Geist anficht,
Laß mich doch nicht verzagen.
Hilf, steur und wehr,
Ach Gott, mein Herr,
Zu Ehren deinem Namen.
Wer das begehrt,
Dem wirds gewährt;
Drauf sprech ich fröhlich:
Amen.
Yet one thing, Lord, I would ask of you,
You will not deny me:
When the evil spirit tempts me,
Do not let me despair.
Help, guide, and defend
O God, my lord,
To the honor of your name.
Whoever desires it,
For him it is reserved;
To that I gladly say:
Amen.
As usual, Bach’s composition of this libretto begins with a broadly conceived, concerted arrangement of the chorale, with the melody presented in long note values by the soprano and the other voices in counterpoint in the manner of a motet. The relatively fast alla breve meter, the energetic chordal accents of the strings and woodwinds, and the continuous interplay of the two instrumental groups with an anapestic figure lend the movement a sense of the resolute and unswerving, in the sense of the not-at-all passively understood statement “Was mein Gott will, das gescheh allzeit.”
In the first aria, “Entsetze dich, mein Herze, nicht,” the bass voice is accompanied only by basso continuo in order to strengthen the gravity of the admonition by eliminating the distraction of any externalities. The continuous presence of the accompaniment’s head motive, frequently repeated, allows one to grasp the calming quality of “Entsetze dich, mein Herze, nicht.” The second aria movement, “So geh ich mit beherzten Schritten / Auch wenn mich Gott zum Grabe führt,” features a purposeful, striding rhythm in the strings, with the first violin often emerging with virtuosity, as well as the voices, alto and tenor, which follow one another imitatively or coupled in parallel and encourage one another along the dangerous path. The middle section of this movement leaves the self-confident region of G major for the related keys of E minor and B minor, where the characteristic head motive appears in inversion. The following recitative assigns two oboes to the soprano and accompanying basso continuo; the oboes underscore the closing “sighs” in the arioso “O seliges, gewünschtes Ende” (O blessed, desired end). The cantata closes with a simple four-part chorale on the originally secular melody, belonging to a 1529 chanson composition.
Footnotes
- The term is used by Coclico in his Compendium Musices of 1552, in which he praises the music of Josquin for reviving a more text-oriented style of composition. NHDM, s.v. “Musica reservata.”—Trans.↵