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Ach lieben Christen, seid getrost BWV 114 / BC A 139
Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, October 1, 1724
The cantata Ach lieben Christen, seid getrost BWV 114 (Ah, dear Christians, be consoled), for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, is part of Bach’s chorale cantata annual cycle and was first performed on October 1, 1724. Its Gospel reading is found at the beginning of Luke 14 and concerns Jesus’s healing of a man with edema on the Sabbath as well as the admonition to humility and modesty, culminating in the passage “Wer sich selbst erhöht, der soll erniedrigt werden; und wer sich selbst erniedrigt, dersoll erhöht werden” (11; Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted).The hymn upon which our cantata is based, a six-strophe poem written in 1561 by Johannes Gigas, is not normally associated with this particular Sunday. Instead, hymnaries of the era assign it to the second day of Christmas, to the tenth or sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, and to the Purification of Mary because of its mention of the ancient Simeon. It is even found beneath the heading “Klag- und Trost-Lieder” (Hymns of lament and consolation) with the subtitle “In Pest-Zeiten und bey ansteckenden Krankheiten” (In times of plague and infectious diseases). Bach incorporated the cantata in his chorale cantata cycle using the most common method: literal adoption of the first and last strophes, more or less free paraphrase of the internal chorale texts, and inclusion of ideas from the Gospel reading of the day as appropriate.
As usual, the cantata begins with the unaltered first strophe of the chorale:
Ach lieben Christen, seid getrost,
Wie tut ihr so verzagen?
Weil uns der Herr heimsuchen tut,
Laßt uns von Herzen sagen:
Die Straf wir wohl verdient han,
Solchs muß bekennen jedermann,
Niemand darf sich ausschließen.
Ah, dear Christians, be consoled,
Why do you despair?
Because the Lord afflicts us,
Let us say from our hearts:
The punishment we have well deserved.
This everyone must confess.
No one may exclude themselves.
After this confession of sin, the second chorale strophe formulates submission to God’s will:
In deine Händ uns geben wir,
O Gott, du lieber Vater!
Denn unser Wandel ist bei dir;
Hie wird uns nicht geraten:
Weil wir in dieser Hütten sein,
Ist nur Elend, Tübsal und Pein;
Bei dir der Freud wir warten.
In your hands we place ourselves,
O God, you dear Father!
For you are the goal of our life’s course;
Here nothing will turn out well for us.
While we are in these dwellings,
There is only misery, affliction, and pain;
With you we await joy.
From this, the unidentified librettist for our cantata fashioned the following aria text:
Wo wird in diesem Jammertale
Vor meinen Geist die Zuflucht sein?
Allein zu Jesu Vaterhänden
Will ich mich in der Schwachheit wenden;
Sonst weiß ich weder aus noch ein.
Where in this vale of tears
Will there be refuge for my spirit?
To Jesus’s fatherly hands alone
I will turn in my weakness;
Otherwise, I know not where to go.
It is worth mentioning that the chorale speaks of “Gott-Vaters Händen” (God the Father’s hands), while the words “Jesu Vaterhänden” (Jesus’s fatherly hands) appear in the aria. Thus the aria anticipates the next chorale strophe, which concerns death, resurrection, and Christ’s act of redemption:
Kein Frucht das Weizenkörnlein bringt,
Es fall denn in die Erden;
So muß auch unser irdscher Leib
Zu Staub und Aschen werden,
Eh er kömmt zu der Herrlichkeit,
Die du, Herr Christ, uns hast bereit’,
Durch deinen Gang zum Vater.
The little grain of wheat bears no fruit
Unless it falls into the earth;
So too must our earthly body
Turn to dust and ashes
Before it comes to the glory
That you, Lord Christ, have prepared for us
Through your journey to the Father.
In the cantata text, this strophe—the third in Johannes Gigas’s chorale—is adopted literally as the fourth movement.
The preceding movement, third in the cantata, is a recitative that is mostly independent of the chorale and instead interprets the Gospel reading of the day. It relates to sin, the illness mentioned there, as well as to arrogance in the face of modesty:
O Sünder, trage mit Geduld,
Was du durch deine Schuld
Dir selber zugezogen!
Das Unrecht säufst du ja
Wie Wasser in dich ein,
Und diese Sündenwassersucht
Ist zum Verderben da
Und wird dir tödlich sein.
Der Hochmut aß vordem von der verbotenen Frucht,
Gott gleich zu werden;
Wie oft erhebst du dich mit schwülstigen Gebärden,
Daß du erniedrigt werden mußt.
O sinner, bear with patience
What you through your guilt
Have brought upon yourself!
Iniquity you do indeed pour
Like water into yourself,
And this sinful dropsy
Is there for your ruin
And will be deadly to you.
Pride once ate of the forbidden fruit
To become like God;
How often do you exalt yourself with pompous gestures
That you must be abased.
The closing second part of this recitative speaks of redemption through blessed death and thus creates a transition to the third chorale strophe, adopted without change, and the aria that follows it, which is based on the fourth strophe. Although this aria incorporates the essential ideas of the chorale strophe—casting off the fear of death and remembering Simeon—it fails linguistically. In its attempt at long, iambic lines, it relies on superfluous words:
Du machst, o Tod, mir nun nicht ferner bange,
Wenn ich durch dich die Freiheit nur erlange,
Es muß ja so einmal gestorben sein.
Mit Simeon will ich in Friede fahren,
Mein Heiland will mich in der Gruft bewahren
Und ruft mich einst zu sich verklärt und rein.
You make, O death, me now no longer fearful.
If I do but attain freedom through you,
Then I must indeed die one day.
With Simeon I will depart in peace.
My savior will preserve me in the grave
And call me one day to himself, transfigured and pure.
The penultimate cantata movement, once again a recitative, relies upon the next to last chorale strophe. Similarly to the first aria, it diverges from its model on an essential point: where Gigas’s text reads at the beginning: “Dein Seel bedenk, bewahr dein’n Leib, / Laß Gott den Vater sorgen” (Consider your soul, protect your body, / Let God the Father care), the cantata librettist writes:
Indes bedenke deine Seele
Und stelle sie dem Heiland dar;
Gib deinen Leib und deine Glieder
Gott, der sie dir gegeben, wieder.
Meanwhile, consider your soul
And present it to the savior;
Give your body and your limbs
Back to God, who gave them to you.
The cantata libretto closes with the chorale's final strophe, “Wir wachen oder schlafen ein” (Whether we wake or fall asleep).
In its opening and closing movements, as well as in the chorale bicinium found in the cantata’s middle,1 Bach’s composition uses the same pre-Reformation chorale melody that was nearly ever present in a work he had composed nine weeks earlier, Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält BWV 178. In contrast to the eventful, varied first movement of that work—which seems marked above all by the text line “wenn unsre Feinde toben” (when our enemies rage)—the beginning of the cantata Ach lieben Christen, seid getrost is instead a rather measured concertante, if with a tight rhythmic structure that is nevertheless associated with subtle interpretation of the text.
The first aria, however, presents a set of strong contrasts. Powerfully expressive motives by the tenor and obbligato flute that are suffused with sighs and progressions that sometimes seem to lead into the unknown elucidate the anxious yet futile search for a “Zuflucht” (refuge) in the earthly “Jammertal” (vale of tears). Only trust in “Jesu Vaterhände” (Jesus’s fatherly hands) provides help out of tortuous hopelessness: key and meter change, and an animated, driving concertante replaces the earlier stasis. But the contrasting center section of the aria ends all too quickly, and the depressing scenario of the beginning comes back again. Outwardly, this recurrence of the initial situation seems a consequence of the formal type, the da capo aria. In actuality, this regression to the vale of tears, thought to have been overcome, is the precondition for the cantata’s further progress. First of all, a search of the conscience is called for, as stipulated by the Gospel reading of the day, and the pointed, urgently declaimed recitative is given to the bass, the traditional vox Christi. Afterward, the strophe taken unaltered from the chorale announces the will to a blessed departure from this impermanence. Here the soprano may be understood to embody Anima, the Soul. Only afterward can the line “Du machst, o Tod, mir nun nicht ferner bange” (You make, O death, me now no longer fearful) be heard in the second aria, embedded in a full instrumental texture, uttered in unshakable conviction.
Footnotes
- A bicinium, originating in the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, is a composition for only two parts. It was often used to teach counterpoint.—Trans.↵