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Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn BWV 157.1 / BC B 20
Funeral and Memorial Services, February 6, 1727
In its form as transmitted by a copy from the second half of the eighteenth century, the cantata Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn BWV 157.1 (I will not let you go unless you bless me) is designated for the Feast of Purification. However, this assignment to the first of the three annual Marian feasts, on February 2, was made at a later time. Originally, this was funeral music, composed for a particular commission and with particular performance circumstances in mind.1 The event that prompted the occasion was the death on October 31, 1726, of Johann Christoph von Ponickau of Pomßen, Naunhof, Großzschocher, and Windorf. The commission for the composition sent to Bach was the result of the family’s wish to hold a “solemn funerary service” (sollennes Leichen-Begängnis) on February 6 of the following year.As the scion of an extensive aristocratic family, possibly based at one time in Poland, Johann Christoph von Ponickau was born in March 1652 in Pomßen and, having completed his studies in Leipzig and Wittenberg, had embarked upon an educational tour of France that he had to break off almost immediately to settle inheritance matters. Five years later, he was able to put his plan into action. In the course of only four more years he rose from chamberlain to governor (Stiftshauptmann) of Wurzen. After having served in this position for thirty-eight years, he stepped down at the age of sixty-five and moved to his knightly estate, a Renaissance castle, parts of which have been preserved, in Pomßen, southeast of Leipzig. At his death nine years later he left behind a considerable fortune. He was buried in the family tomb in the late Romanesque church in Ponickau, the place of his birth.
Several months after his death, the memorial service took place in this church, the oldest in Saxony, parts of which go back to the beginning of the sixteenth century and which is famous for its organ. In this service, a funeral oration by Johann Joachim Steinhauser was flanked by a funeral music in two parts. Strictly speaking, this would not have been a single composition conceived as a coherent whole but rather two very different cantatas. One of these, performed after the sermon, goes back to the annual text cycle entitled Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer (Church offering pleasing to God) by Georg Christian Lehms, published in 1711, a text collection originally meant for Christoph Graupner in Darmstadt from which Bach composed several libretti in Weimar and Leipzig. The libretto used for the Ponickau funeral service was a cantata for the seventh Sunday after Trinity whose text was repurposed by means of various changes. Whether this libretto, which begins Liebster Gott, vergißt du mich BWV 1136 (Dear God, do you forget me), may have been used for a composition in Bach’s Weimar period and whether this composition may have been reperformed in Pomßen with minor alterations lies beyond our current knowledge.
In any case, the libretto for the work performed before the sermon was newly written, just as the work itself was surely newly composed. The librettist was the skilled Leipzig occasional poet Christian Friedrich Henrici, also known as Picander. Its starting point, as requested by the departed, was the Hebrew Bible quotation “Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn” (I will not let you go unless you bless me), from Genesis 32:26. Picander’s text, consisting of freely versified recitatives and arias, hews closely to this verse. Thus the first aria, following on the biblical passage, reads:
Ich halte meinen Jesum feste,
Ich laß ihn nun und ewig nicht.
Er ist allein mein Aufenthalt,
Drum faßt mein Glaube mit Gewalt
Sein segensreiches Angesicht;
Denn dieser Trost ist doch der beste.
I hold my Jesus firmly,
I do not let him go now or ever.
He is alone my abode;
Therefore, my faith takes hold with force
His countenance, rich with blessing,
For this comfort is indeed the best.
The second aria, a bit like a second strophe, reads as follows:
Ja, ja, ich halte Jesum feste,
So geh ich auch zum Himmel ein,
Wo Gott und seines Lammes Gäste
In Kronen zu der Hochzeit sein;
Da laß ich nicht, mein Heil von dir,
Da bleibt dein Segen auch bei mir.
Yes, yes, I hold my Jesus firmly
As I also go into heaven,
Where God and the guests of his lamb
Are in crowns at the wedding;
Then I will not part, my salvation, from you,
Then your blessing also remains with me.
This “strophe” is repeated and extended by two verses, the second of which, “Komm, sanfter Tod und führ mich fort” (Come, gentle death, and take me away), clearly alludes to a chorale text by Johann Franck. A bit later, an interpolated recitative passage reads:
Ich bin erfreut,
Das Elend dieser Zeit
Noch heute von mir abzulegen;
Denn Jesus wartet mein im Himmel mit dem Segen.
I am glad
The misery of this time
Even today to put aside from me;
For Jesus awaits me in heaven with the blessing.
The cantata libretto closes with a strophe from Christian Keymann’s hymn Mein Jesum laß ich nicht (I will not leave my Jesus).
Remarkably, the print of the text, containing the two very different librettos, the new one by Henrici and the distinctly older one by Lehms, at no point mentions either of the librettists or even Bach as the composer. Instead, the name Christoph Gottlob Wecker appears at the end of both cantata texts. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, scholarship was unable to make any progress explaining this. Only in 1934 did it become clear, based on three autograph notes by Bach—which unfortunately disappeared in 1945 under mysterious circumstances—that this person, born in Silesia, was one of Bach’s assistants in performing church music and other compositions.2 Bach testified to Wecker’s uncommon skill at the transverse flute. After applying in vain for a position in Chemnitz, Wecker returned to Silesia in early 1729 and received the post of cantor at the Church of the Trinity in Schweidnitz.3 By all appearances, he intended to perform Bach’s St. Matthew Passion BWV 244, at whose first performance he would have participated, in April 1727. However, Bach had to refuse Wecker’s request for performing materials, since Bach himself planned a reperformance in 1729. At the moment, there is no way to know in what way Christoph Gottlob Wecker was responsible for the Pomßen funeral music. It seems conceivable that he either made a guest appearance in Pomßen as a virtuoso between 1723 and 1726 or caught the interest of the family in some other way and that, with the agreement of everyone involved, he represented Bach in Pomßen.
In spite of this uncertainty, we can be sure that Bach’s cantata Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn originated as a composition for the Ponickau funeral and only later was rededicated for the Feast of the Purification of Mary. No alterations to the text were called for when it was incorporated in the corpus of de tempore cantatas, since the longing for death and assurance of salvation in Henrici’s text could easily be used in accordance with the Gospel reading for the Marian feast and the figure of the ancient Simeon. There are likewise no recognizable indications of significant alterations to the music. Instead, Bach repurposed it with minor changes to the scoring. The original obviously called for the exquisite combination of oboe d’amore, transverse flute, and viola d’amore and their unfolding in the delicate filigree of the two powerfully expressive and technically demanding aria movements. When reperformed in Leipzig’s main churches the viola d’amore was exchanged for a solo violin. Otherwise unchanged from that time forward, the composition commissioned for Pomßen has enriched Bach’s cantata repertoire.