This page was created by James A. Brokaw II.  The last update was by Angela Watters.

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

Der Friede sei mit dir BWV 158 / BC A 61

Easter Tuesday, before 1734

Any consideration of the cantata Der Friede sei mit dir BWV 158 (May peace be with you) must leave several questions open, especially regarding its genesis and purpose. The work is transmitted only in copies made roughly two decades after the composer’s death, and they reveal hardly anything about the nature of the exemplar from which they were copied. Moreover, they exhibit a certain ambivalence regarding their assignment within the church calendar: the cantata could be used for the Purification of Mary as well as the third day of Easter, or Easter Tuesday. This dual purpose does not seem to stem from coincidence or uncertainty; rather, it seems to reflect the complicated structure of the work, suggesting that it consists of two cantata fragments that did not originally belong together. Whether Bach himself joined the two together or it was carried out only after his death cannot be determined at present. On the other hand, any doubt as to the authenticity of the entire work or its individual components seems uncalled for. It remains uncertain, however, whether the version handed down to us can be considered to be complete.

The text, assembled by one or more unknown authors, strongly suggests that a composition for the Purification of Mary forms the cantata’s nucleus, to which the opening and concluding movements were later added. In contrast to the concluding chorale, which is usually assigned to Easter, the content of the opening movement focuses on the Gospel reading for the third day of Easter, found in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, in particular its beginning: “Da sie aber davon redeten, trat er selbst, Jesus, mitten unter sie und sprach zu ihnen: Der Friede sei mit euch! Sie erschraken aber und fürchteten sich, meinten, sie sähen einen Geist” (36–37; As they were talking about it, Jesus himself stepped in their midst and spoke to them: Peace be with you! They were startled, however, and were afraid, believing they were seeing a ghost). The librettist connects this greeting of peace with the metaphor of the “himmlischen Kaufmann” (heavenly shopkeeper), who, as mediator between God and humankind, has torn up the ledger book of sins, and the “Blutlamm” (sacrificial lamb), the sacrificial death of Christ, through which the “Fürst dieser Welt” (prince of this world), Satan, is dethroned:

Der Friede sei mit dir,
Du ängstliches Gewissen!
Dein Mittler stehet hier,
Der hat dein Schuldenbuch
Und des Gesetzes Fluch
Verglichen und zerrissen.
Der Friede sei mit dir;
Der Fürste dieser Welt,
Der deiner Seele nachgestellt,
Ist durch des Lammes Blut bezwungen und gefällt.
Mein Herz, was bist du so betrübt,
Da dich doch Gott durch Christum liebt?
Er selber spricht zu mir:
Der Friede sei mit dir!

Peace be with you,
You anxious conscience!
Your mediator stands here
By whom your book of debts
And the law’s curse
Have been settled and ripped up.
Peace be with you;
The prince of this world,
Who laid traps for your soul,
Is through the blood of the lamb subdued and laid low.
My heart, why are you so troubled
When indeed God loves you through Christ?
He himself says to me:
Peace be with you!

 
Abruptly, the focus shifts from the realm of Easter to the aged Simeon’s longing for death in accordance with the Purification of Mary. In the account found in Luke 2, Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms in the Temple with the words: “Lord, now allow your servant in peace to depart, as you have said; for my eyes have seen your savior” (29–30).

In the cantata text, the longing for heaven appears first and foremost as a compound of chorale strophe and free poetry. The cornerstone of the movement—at first glance, at least—is the opening strophe of a funeral hymn by Johann Georg Albinus of 1649:

Welt, ade, ich bin dein müde,
Ich will nach dem Himmel zu,
Da wird sein der rechte Friede
Und die ewig stolze Ruh.
Welt, bei dir ist Krieg und Streit,
Nichts denn lauter Eitelkeit;
In dem Himmel allezeit
Friede, Freud und Seligkeit.

World, adieu, I am weary of you,
I would go to heaven.
There will be true peace
And eternal, glorious rest.
World, with you is war and strife,
Nothing other than glaring vanity;
In heaven evermore
Peace, joy, and blessedness.


The associated free poetry, which appears as an interpolation in the movement complex, begins with the same words as the chorale:

Welt, ade, ich bin dein müde,
Salems Hütten stehn mir an,
Ich will nach Himmel zu,
Wo ich Gott in Ruh und Friede
Ewig selig schauen kann.
Da bleib ich, da hab ich Vergnügen zu wohnen,
Da prang ich gezieret mit himmlischen Kronen.

World, adieu, I am weary of you.
Salem’s refuges await me.
I would go to heaven,
Where, in rest and peace,
Eternally blessed, I will be able to see God.
There I remain, there I am delighted to live,
There I shine, adorned with a heavenly crown.


This duplicate phrasing makes it seem likely that the chorale strophe did not necessarily belong to the original text but was only to be heard as an instrumental quotation. In keeping with a very common custom of the era, the chorale text would have been unmistakably called to mind by the identical beginning of the free text. 

The key word “Friede,” common to both texts, may have encouraged the unknown arranger to have the chorale follow the opening movement in spite of their divergent content. For the third movement, a recitative, even this artifice was not sufficient; the weak connection to the libretto’s beginning is largely abandoned here. All the more striking is the close connection to the preceding aria, specifically through the quotation-like echoing of its text—a well-known effect from Bach’s Kreuzstab cantata:

Nun, Herr, regiere meinen Sinn,
Damit ich auf der Welt,
So lang es dir, mich hier zu lassen, noch gefällt,
Ein Kind des Friedens bin,
Und lasse mich zu dir aus meinen Leiden
Wie Simeon in Frieden scheiden!
Da bleib ich, da hab ich Vergnügen zu wohnen,
Da prang ich gezieret mit himmlischen Kronen.

Now, Lord, govern my mind
That I may, in the world,
As long as it pleases you to leave me here,
Remain a child of peace.
And let me come to you from my suffering,
Like Simeon, departing in peace!
There I remain, there I delight to live,
There I shine, adorned with a heavenly crown.


After this clear reference to the Gospel of the Purification of Mary and the desire of the aged Simeon, reflected in the metaphor of the crown for admission to heaven, the fifth strophe, “Hier ist das rechte Osterlamm” (Here is the true Easter lamb), from Luther’s hymn Christ lag in Todes Banden (Christ lay in the bonds of death), leads directly back to the realm of Easter.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition offers precious few clues to the puzzles that attend this odd textual conglomerate. As expected, the opening movement is limited to a setting for voice and basso continuo and recitative declamation that only intensifies to arioso for the thrice-given greeting of peace. In view of its almost literal conformity with the Gospel reading for Easter, the bass voice can here be understood only as the vox Christi, the voice of Christ. However, in the second and third movements, the same bass voice is just as unambiguously meant as the voice of Simeon—an opposition that can hardly dispel concerns about the cantata text.

The second movement, which appears beneath the heading “Aria con Corale,” combines four very different voices in masterful fashion. A demanding vocal part for the bass voice unfolds above a steady “walking” eighth-note motion in the basso continuo, above which the soprano presents, line by line, Johann Rosenmüller’s chorale melody Welt, ade, ich bin dein müde (World, adieu, I am weary of you). An expressive, highly virtuoso obbligato part, ostensibly for solo violin, is added to this, mostly in its higher register; it does not go below d′. It thus remains unclear whether Bach composed this part for the solo violin or whether the assignment was made by an arranger in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the same vein, it is questionable whether the chorale melody was set in the first place for soprano and colla parte oboe or was perhaps purely instrumental originally as a quotation of melody without text. Bach favored things of this sort during his Weimar period, between 1714 and 1716. On the other hand, the range and treatment of the virtuoso obbligato part point to the transverse flute, an instrument that Bach did not use in Weimar, according to our knowledge today. The riddle posed by this movement in particular is unlikely to be resolved, save by a fortuitous discovery. 

As indicated by the analysis of the text, the second half of the ensuing recitative reaches back motivically to the preceding aria, changing to arioso when it does so. 

The heterogeneous solo cantata for bass, as significant musically as it is questionable textually, closes with a four-part chorale, probably from Bach’s Leipzig era, on the Easter hymn Christ lag in Todes Banden.

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