This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht BWV 118 / BC B 23
Funeral and Memorial Services, 1736 or 1737
The single movement O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht BWV 118 (O Jesus Christ, light of my life), included among the cantatas by the Complete Bach Edition (Bach Gesamtausgabe) of the nineteenth century, has puzzled scholars up to the present day with questions of transmission, genesis, designation, and scoring and performance practice.1Regarding transmission, we probably need to begin with the fact that the two scores written out by Bach were missing for a long time after the death of the composer. There are certain indications that after the distribution of Bach’s estate in 1750, the manuscripts were inherited by Bach’s son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnickol or descendants who stayed in Leipzig and soon thereafter ended up in the possession of the Breitkopf publishing house. It remains unclear why the choral movement O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht failed to appear in any of Breitkopf’s numerous manuscript catalogs from 1760 to 1800. The earliest such catalog notice appeared in about 1810. From that time forward, the whereabouts of the piece can be traced quite reliably. Until the end of the Second World War, both scores were owned by the publisher Breitkopf in Leipzig and were finally purchased by a private collector. One manuscript is in a library at Princeton University; the other belongs to a collection in Basel.
Because Bach experts of the early nineteenth century first encountered a copy of the chorale movement O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht, they believed it to be a fragment. This is not true, however; both of Bach’s holograph scores contain only a single movement, with the first strophe of the twelve- or fifteen- strophe chorale. Absent any other clues at all, inferences as to the work’s time of origin can be based only on the watermark of the paper and the stage of development of Bach’s handwriting. These locate the older of the two versions to the period 1736 or 1737 and the younger one ten years later. Indications for the work’s assignment are similarly sketchy. In both cases, Bach uses the designation “Motetto”—which did not deter the nineteenth-century Bach-Gesamtausgabe (Complete Bach Edition) from adding the work to the cantatas, while the Neue Bach-Ausgabe (New Bach Edition) includes it with the motets. Neither of these approaches is satisfactory. In reality, this is a Kasualkomposition, a church work for a particular occasion. Knowing the circumstances of the work’s origin in 1736 or 1737 and the reasons for its reperformance ten years later would make further discussion superfluous. But unfortunately there are no reliable clues, and we have only hypothesis and logical inference to work with.
The hymn O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht, written by Martin Behm and first documented in 1608, sometimes appears in eighteenth-century hymnals among passion chorales and other times among hymns of illness, death, and dying. It occasionally appears beneath the heading “Christliches Bet-Lied, Christo in der letzten Noth allein anzuhangen, und auf sein theuer Verdienst fröhlich und selig abzuscheiden” (Christian song of prayer to follow Christ in final distress and depart happily and blessedly on his dear merit). The designation as funeral music is easily compatible with the heading chosen by Bach, “Motetto.” The same is true of the unusual scoring, particularly regarding the older version. Here, in addition to the four choral voices, Bach’s score calls for cornet and three trombones—the typical Stadtpfeiffer ensemble—as well as two “litui.” Researchers were long unable to clarify what lay behind this unusual term. In 1921 Curt Sachs was the first to prove that by “litui” Bach meant horns in their upper range.2 It is conceivable that the rather obscure term goes back to Bach’s circle of friends in Dresden. It is striking that in 1738—very close to the date of our first version—one of the most famous hornists in the Royal Electoral Capelle is designated “Lituista Regius”: royal hornist.
Bach’s choice of an ensemble consisting of winds only suggests an outdoor performance, perhaps for a funeral procession or at the graveside. The regulations of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School, published in 1723, expressly allowed for the possibility of performing chorales figurally during funeral processions. However, the regulations called for restricting this to persons “who have lived in a noble position of honor or otherwise served in churches and schools, bequeathed something to them, or otherwise [have] made a good contribution.”3 Similar stipulations seem likely to narrow the search for the performance occasion for Bach’s “Motetto” and make it more precise. But even then the number of persons in question is still so large that a reliable identification is not possible. The list of names of notables who died in 1736 and 1737 reaches from Johann Friedrich Steinbach, senior deacon at the New Church, in October 1736; to Christian Weiß, the pastor of St. Thomas Church, who died in December of the same year; to councilman Johann Ernst Kregel von Sternbach, who died at his home in Neumarkt in early February 1737. Shortly afterward, a solemn funeral procession transported his body to his properties outside the city, where he was laid to rest. The situation regarding the reperformance in 1746 or 1747 is similarly uncertain. The instruments were changed: taking the place of cornet and trombones were string instruments that, depending on the occasion, could be augmented with oboes or bassoon. However, the litui—a peculiar scoring that was atypical for Leipzig—are found here once again.
This points the discussion in another direction. It concerns the death of Duke Johann Adolph II of Weissenfels on March 16, 1746, in Leipzig. The duke had visited the Leipzig fair and died in his accommodations, Küstners Haus, in Petersstraße. Four days later, his body was transported to the nearby Weissenfels Palace. It is in no way far-fetched to assign the funeral music to this occasion and to regard the litui as horns from Weissenfels. By analogy, the first version of our chorale movement could be associated with the death of Johann Adolph’s predecessor, Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels, on July 28, 1736. It would then need to be investigated if he was the one who first conferred the title “Saxe-Weissenfels royal director of music” (Hochfürstlich Sächsisch-Weißenfelsicher würklichen Capellmeister). Bach would then have delivered the funeral music ex officio, so to speak. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort can be proven.