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

Komm, du süße Todesstunde BWV 161 / BC A 135

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 27, 1716

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde BWV 161 (Come, you sweet hour of death) at the age of about thirty for the worship service in the castle chapel at the court of Weimar. The Weimar ducal consistory secretary, Salomon Franck, provided the libretto, published in his collection Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer, which appeared in print in 1715 in Weimar. The composition is for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, in Luke 7, gives the account of Jesus’s raising of the widow’s son at Nain. Salomon Franck’s libretto is based on this Gospel reading only to the extent that the text is suffused with longing for death and the certainty of resurrection. The story itself is not recounted.

In the view of the music historian Arnold Schering, 

with its strengthening of faith in Jesus, Pietism had fostered a human race that anticipated death with joy and regarded the repose in the little burial chamber as but a brief nap from which Jesus would awaken the Soul to unearthly glory.... What is terrifying and horrible about this process of passing away is indeed not ignored but mitigated and covered by images and feelings that lead directly to consolation and hope. Freely and with poetic power . . . the librettist develops that which will make the moment of death seem happy and attractive to faithful souls. All is dissolved in longing and ardent yearning.1


Schering’s description applies to the text of our cantata in general and is helpful for understanding most of the verses. Even so, the opening movement, an aria, calls for close consideration. Salomon Franck’s text reads:

Komm, du süße Todesstunde, 
Da mein Geist
Honig speist
Aus des Löwen Munde. 
Mache meinen Abschied süße, 
Säume nicht,
Letztes Licht,
Daß ich meinen Heiland küße.

Come, you sweet hour of death, 
When my spirit
Dines on honey
Out of the lion’s mouth. 
Make my departure sweet, 
Do not linger,
Last light,
That I might kiss my savior.

Here Franck has drawn a reference to Samson’s battle with the lion, found in Judges 14. With his bare hands, Samson had killed a young lion. After several days, he found honey in the cadaver. At his wedding celebration, he gave the guests a riddle to solve. A late seventeenth-century sermon provides an exegesis of this passage: “When Samson found honey in the lion, he devised this riddle in the Book of Judges Chapter 14 verse 14: ‘Sweetness poured out of the horrible.’ What is more horrible than death when it crushes bones like a lion? . . . Nevertheless, a Christian finds honey in lions and consolation in death.” Apart from this rather remote allusion in the unidentified sermon, Erdmann Neumeister’s influence can be discerned in Franck’s aria text. In Neumeister’s first annual text cycle, prepared in Weissenfels in 1702, the libretto for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (immediately before the Sunday in question) contains the following formulation:

Komm doch, komm doch, süße Stunde!
Da mein Geist
Sich der Eitelkeit entreißt.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mich verlangt von Herzens-Grunde.
Komm doch, komm doch, süße Stunde!

But come, but come, sweet hour! 
When my spirit
Wrests itself from vanity.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I long for you from the bottom of my heart. 
But come, but come, sweet hour!


The second movement of Franck’s cantata libretto, a recitative, characterizes the transitoriness of existence with opposing concepts:

Welt, deine Lust ist Last,
Dein Zucker ist mir als ein Gift verhaßt, 
Dein Freudenlicht
Ist mein Komete,
Und wo man deine Rosen bricht, 
Sind Dornen ohne Zahl
Zu meiner Seele Qual.

World, your pleasure is a burden, 
Your sugar is hateful to me as poison, 
Your joyful light
Is my comet.2
And where one picks your roses, 
There are thorns without number 
To the torment of my soul.


Truly poetic expressions stand out effectively from the preceding:

Der blasse Tod ist meine Morgenröte, 
Mit solcher geht mir auf die Sonne 
Der Herrlichkeit und Himmelswonne.

Pale death is my sunrise, 
With it arises for me the sun
Of glory and heavenly delight.


The recitative closes with a paraphrase of Philippians 1:23. The biblical passage reads, “Ich habe Lust abzuscheiden, und bei Christo zu sein” (I desire to depart and be with Christ); in Franck’s words:

Ich habe Lust bei Christo bald zu weiden,
Ich habe Lust, von dieser Welt zu scheiden 

I desire soon to graze with Christ, 
I desire to part from this world.


The beginning of the third movement, another aria, continues in this vein almost without change:

Mein Verlangen
Ist, den Heiland zu empfangen 
Und bei Christo bald zu sein.

My longing
Is to embrace the savior 
And soon to be with Christ.


The fourth movement, a recitative, proceeds purposefully with this chain of ideas with these expressions:

Der Schluß ist schon gemacht, 
Welt, gute Nacht!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So brich herein, du froher Todestag,
So schlage doch, du letzter Stundenschlag.

The decision is already made, 
World, good night!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So break forth, you joyous day of death, 
So strike, you stroke of the final hour.

The last aria, whose text begins “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille” (If it is my God’s will), culminates in the exclamation:

Jesu, komm und nimm mich fort! 
Dieses sei mein letztes Wort!

Jesus, come and take me away! 
This shall be my last word!


The fourth strophe from Christoph Knoll’s 1611 hymn Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Sincerely do I long) finishes the cantata text and concludes the chain of ideas with the pertinent “Was schädt mir denn der Tod?” (How then does death harm me?).

Johann Sebastian Bach may have intended to set this text for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity in 1715; the performance would have been due in early October. But a tragic event at court thwarted his plan: at barely nineteen years of age, the extraordinarily musically gifted Prince Johann Ernst died after a long illness at Frankfurt am Main. Shortly afterward, an official period of mourning was decreed in the principality during which even polyphonic music at the court church was silenced for some time.3 Hence the first performance would have taken place the following year, at the end of September 1716, and the work probably was composed at that time. It shows the Weimar concertmaster and court organist at the height of his creative powers. In invention and design, the opening movement presents itself masterfully: urgent and seductive in equal measure, a pair of recorders, playing mostly in parallel thirds and sixths, intensifies the alto’s “Komm, du süße Todesstunde.” Counterpoint is provided by the organ, which performs the melody “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” phrase by phrase in long note values. Since the melody inevitably elicits a textual association, a dual textuality results for the listener comprising Franck’s aria poetry and Christoph Knoll’s chorale strophe. At the same time, the apparently freely composed aria proves to be a wide-ranging chorale arrangement worthy of the art of a court organist.

The ensuing tenor recitative flows into an arioso section, which expressively underscores the “Ich habe lust, von dieser Welt zu scheiden” through stubbornly repeated bass figures. The tenor aria “Mein Verlangen ist, den Heiland zu umfangen” (My desire is to embrace the savior), accompanied by the strings, is also characterized by intensive text declamation, combined with a measured, dancelike stride. The alto recitative, accompanied by all the instruments, “Der Schluß ist schon gemacht,” enters the realm of tone painting. Sinking figuration and sustained tones symbolize sleep, just as ascending passages evoke “awakening”; the pealing sounds of the plucked string instruments and the flutes suggest the “striking of the last hour.” The last freely versified movement, “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille,” was designated an aria by Franck but composed as a chorus or at least a four-part ensemble of soloists by Bach. Its thematic material harks back to the opening movement; judging by its nearly ecstatic longing it is rather filled by an inner joy, expressed by the dancelike, animated meter as well as the playful passagework of the two woodwind instruments. In the concluding chorale setting, the flute and oboe form an obbligato part in high register, rich in syncopations, that expands the texture to five parts and lends it the character of a figurative chorale prelude. The bridge back to the opening movement is created not only by the identity of the chorale melody but also by its compositional procedure, which is similar to several movements from the Orgelbüchlein BWV 599–644, to which it is close chronologically.

By all appearances, the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde was heard not simply in Weimar in 1716 but also in Bach’s Leipzig period.4 In addition to several changes in setting, the Leipzig version is different from the Weimar one in particular because the chorale melody in the opening movement is given to a voice, so that the multitextuality is not simply an associative effect but an actual occurrence. In his last years, the cantor of St. Thomas undertook a final change: he augmented the designation for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity with an assignment to the Feast of the Purification of Mary and thereby converted the longing for death in the cantata text associated with the story of the boy at Nain to the account of the ancient Simeon found in the Gospel of Luke.

Footnotes

  1. Schering (1942, 129–30). The questions of what Pietism is and Bach’s relation
    to it are complex and controversial. A recent overview of these can be found in Leaver
    (2021, 219–47).—Trans.    ↵
  2. A symbol of calamity.—Trans.↵
  3. Glöckner (1985).↵
  4. Franck’s text for BWV 161 also appears in the annual text cycle Gott-geheiligte Sabbaths-Zehnden, published in Nuremberg in 1728 by Christoph Birkmann, who studied at the University of Leipzig from December 1, 1724, to early September 1727 and during that time frequently heard church music performed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Birkmann’s cycle contains thirty-one cantatas by Bach known to have been performed at Leipzig during Birkmann’s period of study there. Since Franck’s text for BWV 161 is also included in the cycle, it is now believed to have been performed in Leipzig on September 16, 1725. See Blanken (2015b, 70).—Trans.↵

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