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Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn BWV 132 / BC A 6
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn BWV 132 (Prepare the ways, prepare the path) in late 1715 and performed it several days before Christmas in the castle church in Weimar. After his promotion to concertmaster of the Royal Chapel in March 1714 he was obligated to compose and perform, every month, a new “piece,” that is, a church piece—in other words, a cantata. However, the resulting four-week rotation was interrupted in the summer of 1715 by the death at only eighteen of Prince Johann Ernst, with whom Bach obviously enjoyed a close friendship. A period of mourning in the principality was immediately established; it brought even church music to a halt for a quarter year. It was not until early November that an arrangement was made to at least allow music making in the churches again: “By the most gracious Royal Order, your Christian Loves are informed that on the upcoming 21st Sunday after Trinity, God willing, the organs and instrumental music may once again be used in local churches in this principality; in weddings and other gatherings, however, as well as public thoroughfares, all entertainment and instrumental music must remain suspended until further most gracious decree and the complete halt of the mourning period still in effect, which everyone must observe.”1Although months remained before the mourning period was entirely lifted, official church music could proceed as normally. Bach’s cantata for the fourth Sunday of Advent was his second composition after the resumption of church music. The Weimar concertmaster and court organist drew the text from the annual “appropriate” (zuständig) cycle for the current year, which had appeared in print only several months before: “Evangelical Devotional Offering, to the Most Serene Prince and Lord, LORD Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of Saxony, Jülich, Cleve, and Berg, also Engern and Westphalia etc., etc, for our most gracious reigning Landed Lords, a Nobly Pious Arrangement in sacred CANTATAS which on the regular Sunday and Feast Days in the Princely Entire-Saxon Court Chapel in the Wilhelmsburg in the Year 1715, illumined to be set to music by Salomon Franck, Entire Royal Saxon Ducal Consistory Secretary in Weimar.”2 The word “Entire,” which turns up twice in this long-winded title, points toward the peculiar situation of the Weimar court, namely, that the court was to be governed jointly between two brothers and their heirs, according to the terms of an estate settlement executed in the seventeenth century. As a consequence, during Bach’s tenure in Weimar there were two separate court administrations as well as a joint one. For the most part, Bach’s responsibilities had to do with the joint court administration; his librettist was also among the joint servants of the court.
Salomon Franck’s libretto “On the fourth Sunday of Advent” follows the Gospel reading for this Sunday. Found in the first chapter of John, it contains the witness of the Lamb of God:
And this is the witness of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you? And he confessed, and did not lie; but confessed, I am not Christ. And they asked him, What then? Are you Elias? And he said, I am not. Are you that prophet? And he answered, No! Then said they unto him, Who are you? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What do you say about yourself? He said: I am the voice of the preacher in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. And they who had been sent, they were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said to him, Why do you baptize then, if you are not Christ, nor Elias, nor that prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there stands one among you, whom you do not know. It is he, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose sandal thongs I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. (19–28)
The cantata text begins with an aria that paraphrases the words of the prophet Isaiah mentioned in the Gospel passage. “Richtet den Weg des Herrn” (Prepare ye the way of the Lord) goes back to Isaiah’s formulation: “Es ist eine Stimme des Predigers in der Wüste: Bereitet dem Herrn den Weg, macht auf dem Gefilde eine ebene Bahn unserm Gott!” (40:3; It is the voice of the preacher in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God). In the text by Salomon Franck, this becomes:
Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn!
Und machet die Stege
Im Glauben und Leben
Dem Höchsten ganz eben,
Messias kommt an!
Prepare the ways, prepare the path!
And make the bridges
In faith and life
For the Most High quite smooth,
The Messiah arrives!
Isaiah’s continuation is also entered in the cantata text: “Alle Täler sollen erhöht werden, und alle Berge und Hügel sollen erniedrigt werden” (40:4; Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low). The end of the first recitative reads:
Indes, mein Herz, bereite
Noch heute
Dem Herrn die Glaubensbahn
Und räume weg die Hügel und die Höhen,
Die ihm entgegenstehen.
Wälz ab die schweren Sündensteine,
Nimm deinen Heiland an,
Daß er mit dir im Glauben sich vereine.
Meanwhile, my heart, prepare
Yet today
The path of belief for the Lord
And clear away the hills and the heights
That stand in his way.
Roll away the heavy stones of sin,
Receive your savior,
That he may be united with you in faith.
The turn from Gospel and words of the prophet to the individual believer, begun in the first aria and recitative, is continued in the second aria, where the question directed to John the Baptist, “Wer bist du?” (Who are you?), is elevated to a fundamental question of belief:
Wer bist du? Frage dein Gewissen,
Da wirst du sonder Heuchelei,
Ob du, o Mensch, falsch oder treu,
Dein rechtes Urteil hören müßen.
Wer bist du? Frage das Gesetze,
Das wird dir sagen, wer du bist,
Ein Kind des Zorns in Satans Netze,
Ein falsch und heuchlerischer Christ.
Who are you? Ask your conscience,
Then you, without hypocrisy, must hear
Whether you, O Man, are false or true,
Your just judgment.
Who are you? Ask the commandment,
Which will tell you who you are,
A child of rage in Satan’s net,
A false and hypocritical Christian.
This philippic is followed by an eloquent confession of regret in the second recitative:
Als, Jesu, mich dein Geist- und Wasserbad
Gereinigt von meiner Missetat,
Hab ich dir zwar stets feste Treu versprochen;
Ach, aber ach! der Taufbund ist gebrochen,
Die Untreu reuet mich!
Ach Gott erbarme dich,
Ach hilf, daß ich mit unverwandter Treue
Den Gnadenbund im Glauben stets erneue.
When, Jesus, your spirit and baptismal bath
Cleansed me of my misdeeds
I have indeed always pledged firm fealty to you;
Ah, but ah! the baptismal covenant is broken,
The disloyalty I regret!
O God, have mercy,
Ah, help, that I, with unswerving loyalty,
May constantly renew in faith the covenant of grace.
Admonishingly, the accompanying aria points toward the forgiveness of sins through the sacrificial death of Jesus and thereby goes back to a passage in the Revelation of St. John that answers the question “Who are these, with white clothing on, and whence have they come?” with “These are the ones, who have come from great tribulation, and have washed their clothing and have made their clothing bright through the blood of the Lamb” (7:13). Franck’s text reads as follows:
Christi Glieder, ach bedenket,
Was der Heiland euch geschenket
Durch der Taufe reines Bad!
Bei der Blut- und Wasserquelle
Werden eure Kleider helle,
Die befleckt von Missetat.
Christus gab zum neuen Kleide
Roten Purpur, weißen Seide,
Diese sind der Christen Staat.
Members of Christ, ah, consider
What the savior has given you
Through the pure bath of baptism!
With this spring of blood and water
Your clothing becomes bright,
Which were soiled by misdeed.
Christ gave new clothing,
Scarlet purple, white silk,
These are the Christian’s raiment.
As closing chorus, Franck’s libretto calls for a strophe from Elisabeth Kreuziger’s hymn Herr Christ, der einig Gottes Sohn (Lord Christ, the only son of God), which begins:
Ertöt uns durch dein Güte,
Erweck uns durch dein Gnad.
Mortify us through your goodness,
Awaken us through your grace.
The chorale is not found in Bach’s score; it contains only the free poetry, three arias, and two recitatives. The composer sets the beginning, “Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn,” with its joyous anticipation, to the dance-like verve and overflowing joy of a gigue in which the soprano voice and obbligato oboe seem to outbid one another with unending coloraturas. The swerve into related minor keys in the middle section brings a reflective moment, but this episode is quickly forgotten with the return of the dominating beginning. The second movement, a recitative for tenor, changes on two occasions to the more rhythmically structured writing of the arioso in service of a more intense projection of the text, in which there is no lack of tone-painting effects, such as the “Wälzen” (rolling) of the “Sündensteine” (sin stones). The tormenting question "Wer bist du?" is given to the bass, accompanied only by a continuo that covers nothing, glosses over nothing, and is filled with pitilessly unyielding, stubbornly returning motives. In the second recitative, the rueful confession of sin in the alto voice is granted a modicum of shelter by an accompanying texture of string instruments. The introverted closing aria allows the same voice to engage in solitary dialogue with the ostentatious display of the virtuoso violin. The violin solo may have been played by the supremely gifted concertmaster in Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach. Whether a concluding chorale allowed a return to the main key remains unknown. Bach’s score contains nothing of the sort, nor can anything suitable be found anywhere else that could easily be appended to the very expressive Weimar composition. For Bach, the matter seems to have ended with his composition’s only performance in December 1715. In Leipzig, the fourth Sunday in Advent belonged to the tempus clausum without music, and the cantor of St. Thomas School obviously did not attempt to revise his cantata, unusable in Leipzig, for any other purpose.
Footnotes
- “Auf Gnädigsten Fürstlichen Befehl wird Euer Christlichen Liebe vermeldet, daß auf nechstbevorstehenden 21. Sonntag nach Trinitatis, geliebts GOtt, die Orgeln und Instrumental-Musik in denen Kirchen hiesigen Fürstentums wieder gebrauchet, auf Hochzeiten und andern Zusammenkünften aber, wie auch auf öffentlichen Gassen, mit allen Freuden- und Saitenspiel noch ferner, bis auf anderweitige gnädigste Verordnung und gänztliche Aufhebung der noch währenden Landes-Trauer innen gehalten werden soll, wornach ein jeder sich zu achten wissen” (Glöckner 1985, 159–61).—Trans.↵
- "Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer, Auf des Durch. Fürsten und Herrn, HERRN Wilhelm Ernstens, Herzogens zu Sachsen, Jülich, Cleve und Berg, auch Engern und Westphalen etc. etc, Unsers gnädigsten regierenden Landes-Fürstens und Herrns Christ-Fürstliche Anordnung in geistlichen CANTATEN welche auf die ordentliche Sonn- und Fest-Tage in der Fürstlich Sächsischen gesamten Hof-Capelle zur Wilhelmsburg Anno 1715 zu musicieren angezundet von Salomon Francken, Fürstlich-Sachßischen gesamten Ober-Consistorial-Secretario in Weimar.”—Trans.↵