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Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: An Interactive Companion

Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit BWV 115 / BC A 156

Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, November 5, 1724

This cantata, Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit BWV 115 (Make yourself ready, my spirit), designated for the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity, belongs to Bach’s second annual cycle of cantatas, the sequence of chorale cantatas. It was performed for the first time in early November 1724. However, the ten-strophe chorale, published in 1697 by the Dresden judicial and privy counselor Johann Burkhard Freystein, is not used as a main hymn for the Sunday in question. Other references to the Gospel reading of the day—the parable of the wicked servant in Matthew 18—are likewise absent in the cantata text. Since the chorale appears in hymnals beneath the rubric “Von dem christlichen Leben” (Of the Christian life) and because hymns of this sort were often assigned to the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity, there is at least a loose relationship between the hymn and the date in the church calendar. In addition, Freystein’s hymn on the words “Wachet und betet” (Watch and pray) from Matthew 26 has a certain apocalyptic sense about it; regarding the Last Judgment, its last strophe in fact reads: 

Drum so laßt uns immerdar
Wachen, flehen, beten,
Weil die Angst, Not und Gefahr
Immer näher treten; 
Denn die Zeit
Ist nicht weit,
Da uns Gott wird richten
Und die Welt vernichten.

Then let us always
Watch, plead, pray,
Because anxiety, distress, and danger
Come ever closer:
For the time
Is not distant
When God will judge
And destroy the world.


The tone of the hymn is encapsulated in “Wachen, flehen, beten” (Watch, plead, pray); it would be entirely suitable for the last Sunday in the church year. 

Aside from the Apocalypse, the Tempter plays a significant role in Freystein’s chorale text—indeed, in the first stanza, which, along with the closing stanza, cited above, is adopted without change in the cantata libretto, as is usual for Bach’s chorale cantatas:

Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit,
Wache, fleh und bete,
Daß dich nicht die böse Zeit 
Unverhofft betrete;
Denn es ist
Satans List
Über viele Frommen
Zur Versuchung kommen.

Make yourself ready, my spirit,
Watch, plead, and pray
That the evil time may not
Come on you unexpectedly;
For it is
Satan’s cunning
That has come over many devout souls
In temptation.


As is also characteristic of Bach’s chorale cantatas, the interior strophes of Freystein’s chorale text are reshaped to become recitatives and arias. In this case, the unknown librettist had abundant material to draw upon: for the four cantata movements he had twice as many hymn strophes at his disposal. Freystein’s second strophe presents the metaphor of Sündenschlaf (sleep of sin) and its corrupting consequences:

Aber wache erst recht auf
Von dem Sündenschlafe,
Denn es folget sonst darauf
Erst lange Strafe,
Und die Not
Samt dem Tod
Möchte dich in Sünden
Unvermutet finden.

But awaken fully
From the sleep of sin,
For there will otherwise follow
Only long punishment,
And the distress
Including death
Might find you in sin
Unexpectedly. 


The librettist converts this to lively dactylic verse, although sacrificing the keyword Sündenschlaf:

Ach schläfrige Seele, wie? Ruhest du noch?
Ermuntre dich doch! 
Es möchte die Strafe dich plötzlich erwecken
Und, wo du nicht wachest,
Im Schlafe des ewigen Todes bedecken.

Ah, slumbering soul, what? Do you still rest?
But bestir yourself!
The punishment might awaken you suddenly
And, should you not wake,
Cover you in the sleep of eternal death.


In contrast to this rather relaxed reshaping, the ensuing recitative is packed with ideas. In only fourteen verses it summarizes the content of four chorale strophes, including all essential keywords:

Gott, so vor deine Seele wacht,
Hat Abscheu an der Sünden Nacht;
Er sendet dir sein Gnadenlicht
Und will vor diese Gaben
Die er so reichlich dir verspricht,
Nur offne Geistesaugen haben.
Des Satans List ist ohne Grund, 
Die Sünder zu bestricken;
Brichst du nun selbst den Gnadenbund,
Wirst du die Hilfe nie erblicken.
Die ganze Welt und ihre Glieder
Sind nichts als falsche Brüder;
Doch macht dein Fleisch und Blut hiebei
Sich lauter Schmeichelei.

God, who watches over your soul,
Has a horror of the night of sin;
He sends you his light of grace
And wants, for these gifts
That he so richly promises you,
To have only the open eyes of your spirit.
The cunning of Satan is, without reason,
To ensnare sinners;
If you now break the covenant of grace,
You will never glimpse salvation.
The entire world and its parts
Are nothing but false brothers,
Yet your flesh and blood make 
Pure flattery out of them.


The fourth movement, the second aria, adopts the beginning of the seventh chorale strophe literally but then continues freely, without any connection to the chorale text:

Bete aber auch dabei
Mitten in dem Wachen!
Bitte bei der großen Schuld
Deinen Richter um Geduld, 
Soll er dich von Sünden frei
Und gereinigt machen.

But pray too, even 
Amid your watch!
Ask, in your great guilt,
Your judge for forbearance.
He shall make you free of sin
And purified.


The final recitative once again summarizes several strophes—in this case, strophes 8 and 9—and calls for prayer in Jesus’s name. As previously mentioned, the final strophe of Freystein’s hymn text closes the libretto.

As usual for the chorale cantata annual cycle, Bach places an expansively executed chorale arrangement at the beginning of his composition in which the instrumental component predominates. An unusual feature worth mentioning is that the higher strings—violins and violas—play in unison, producing a particularly sonorous timbre. Transverse flute, oboe d’amore, and strings fill out the quartet texture, whose concertante intentions take into account, perhaps unconsciously, the secular origin of the chorale melody Straf mich nicht in deinem Zorn (Do not punish me in your rage). 

The aria “Ach schläfrige Seele, wie? Ruhest du noch?” for alto, oboe d’amore, and strings follows the model of the siciliano dance type in rhythm and meter but reduces the tempo to Adagio and develops a veritable scene of slumber by means of calm leading of the bass, along with mellifluous passages and long sustained tones by the woodwinds, in which the anxious exhortation “Ermuntre dich doch!” (But bestir yourself!) dies away without effect. The second text section, “Es möchte die Strafe dich plötzlich erwecken” (The punishment might awaken you suddenly), prompts a change to a rapid tempo, even as a return to the Adagio follows just as suddenly—but now to depict the danger of the “Schlafe des ewigen Todes” (sleep of eternal death). A verbose though brief and concentrated bass recitative is followed by the soprano aria “Bete aber auch dabei”: another movement in slow tempo, here marked Molto adagio. Above a spare, foundational bass, the voice and transverse flute as well as the violoncello piccolo develop a tightly woven texture that strives urgently to bring to the fore the earnest call to prayer with its continuous descending figures and expressive suspensions and appoggiaturas. A brief tenor recitative with arioso close leads to the four-part chorale that closes the cantata, in which one is struck by the unusually active lower voices, perhaps unconsciously paying tribute to the melody’s secular origin, as in the opening movement. 

After Bach’s death, the score of our cantata came into the possession of his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, then into a private collection in Berlin. It is now among the treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. Bach’s performing parts remained at St. Thomas School in Leipzig; one of Bach’s successors, August Eberhard Müller, used them to reperform the cantata early in the nineteenth century. This singular performance, which aroused considerable notice, constitutes a significant milestone in the reception history of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

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