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O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad BWV 165 / BC A 90
Trinity, June 16, 1715
This cantata, O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad BWV 165 (O Holy Spirit and water bath), for the Sunday after Pentecost, the Feast of Trinity, probably originated in June 1715 in Weimar for a service in the court chapel. It was performed again nine years later in Leipzig, possibly with minor alterations to its setting. Bach drew the text from the collection Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer (Protestant devotional offering), published in 1715 by the Weimar librettist “with jurisdiction” (zuständigen), the ducal consistory secretary Salomon Franck.As might be expected, Franck’s libretto takes up the Gospel reading for the Sunday, found in the third chapter of John, which recounts Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus:
There was, however, a man among the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and spoke to him: Master, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can work the miracles that you do, unless God is with him. Jesus answered and spoke to him: Truly, truly, I say to you: unless someone be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him: How can a person be born again, if he is old? Can he go into his mother’s body a second time and be born? Jesus answered: Truly, truly I say to you: unless someone is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. (1–5)
The text at the end of the Gospel reading for Trinity reads: “If you do not believe, if I tell you of earthly things, how will you believe, if I were to tell you of heavenly things? And no one has ascended to heaven, except he who has descended from heaven, namely the Son of man, who is in heaven. And as Moses in the desert lifted up a snake, so must the Son of man be lifted up so that those who believe in him will not be lost but shall have eternal life” (John 3:12–15). Franck’s text hews closely to the formulations of the Gospel reading “daß jemand geboren werde aus Wasser und Geist” (unless someone is born of water and spirit) and dedicates the first aria to purification of the baptismal covenant:
O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad,
Das Gottes Reich uns einverleibet
Und uns ins Buch des Lebens schreibet!
O Flut, die alle Missetat
Durch ihre Wunderkraft ertränket
Und uns das neue Leben schenket.
O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad.
O Holy Spirit and water bath,
Which embodies God’s kingdom for us
And inscribes us in the book of life!
O flood, which all iniquity
Through its miraculous power drowns
And grants us the new life.
O Holy Spirit and water bath.
The ensuing recitative establishes the necessity of baptism by alluding to original sin:
Die sündige Geburt verdammter Adamserben
Gebieret Gottes Zorn, den Tod und das Verderben.
The sinful birth of damned Adam’s legacy
Bears the wrath of God, death, and ruin.
The conclusion of the recitative deals with salvation through baptism and the sacrificial death of Christ:
Wie selig ist ein Christ!
Er wird im Geist- und Wasserbade
Ein Kind der Seligkeit und Gnade.
Er ziehet Christum an
Und seiner Unschuld weiße Seide,
Er wird mit Christi Blut, der Ehren Purpurkleide,
Im Taufbad angetan.
How blessed is a Christian!
He becomes, in the spirit and water bath,
A child of salvation and grace.
He puts on Christ
And his white linen of innocence.
He is attired in Christ’s blood, the purple robe of honor,
In the baptismal font.
Earlier, Salomon Franck had woven similar passages alluding to a passage in the seventh chapter of Revelation into his cantata text for the fourth Sunday of Advent. The cantata, Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn BWV 132 (Prepare the ways, prepare the path), was composed by Bach in late 1715. Near the end of an aria from that work the text reads:
Christus gab zum neuen Kleide
Roten Purpur, weiße Seide,
Diese sind der Christen Staat.
Christ gave new clothing,
Scarlet purple, white silk,
These are the Christian’s raiment.
In our Trinity cantata, the poet stays with the topic of baptism in the third movement, an aria, but now composes his text from the perspective of the individual believer:
Jesu, der aus großer Liebe
In der Taufe mir verschriebe
Leben, Heil und Seligkeit,
Hilf, daß ich mich dessen freue
Und den Gnadenbund erneue
In der ganzen Lebenszeit.
Jesus, who out of great love
In baptism assured me
Life, salvation, and blessedness,
Help me to rejoice over this
And renew the covenant of grace
In my entire lifetime.
At the beginning of the recitative that follows, the librettist alludes to a church hymn closely associated with Weimar: Seelenbräutigam, Jesu, Gottes Lamm (Soul’s bridegroom, Jesus, lamb of God). The text and perhaps also the melody of this chorale are ascribed to Adam Drese, court music director at Weimar in the mid-seventeenth century. In Franck there is a clear reference to the model:
Ich habe ja, mein Seelenbräutigam,
Da du mich neu geboren,
Dir ewig treu zu sein geschworen,
Hochheilges Gotteslamm;
Doch hab ich, ach! Den Taufbund oft gebrochen
Und nicht erfüllt, was ich versprochen.
I have indeed, my soul’s bridegroom,
As you have given me new birth,
Sworn to be eternally true to you,
Most holy lamb of God;
Yet I have, oh! often broken the baptismal covenant
And not fulfilled what I have promised.
Here as well one hears an echo of the previously mentioned Advent cantata with the passage “Hab ich dir zwar stets feste Treu versprochen; / Ach! aber ach! Der Taufbund ist gebrochen” (I have indeed always pledged my firm fealty to you; / Ah! but ah! The baptismal covenant is broken).
The close of the recitative takes up the formulation in the Gospel reading, that “Mose eine Schlange in der Wüste erhöht hat” (Moses lifted up a snake in the wilderness), but conceives the image of the snake in the traditional ambivalence: on the one hand as symbol of the tempter, on the other, as metaphor of Jesus, the bringer of salvation. Accordingly, Franck writes:
Erbarme, Jesu, dich
Aus Gnaden über mich,
Vergib mir die begangne Sünde,
Du weißt, mein Gott, wie schmerzlich ich empfinde
Der alten Schlangen stich;
Das Sündengift verderbt mir Leib und Seele,
Hilf, daß ich gläubig dich erwähle,
Blutrotes Schlangenbild,
Das an dem Kreuz erhöhet, das alle Schmerzen stillt
Und mich erquickt, wenn alle Kraft vergehet.
Have mercy, Jesus,
Out of grace upon me.
Forgive me the sins I have committed.
You know, my God, how painfully I feel
The ancient snake’s bite;
The sinful venom ruins body and soul.
Help me to choose you in faith,
Blood-red snake’s image,
Raised upon the cross, that stills all pain
And restores me when all strength vanishes.
The final aria also explores Jesus as the snake of salvation:
Jesus, meines Todes Tod,
Laß in meinem Leben
Und in meiner letzten Not
Mir für Augen schweben,
Daß du mein Heilschlänglein seist
Vor das Gift der Sünde.
Heil, Jesu, Seel und Geist,
Daß ich Leben finde!
Jesus, death of my death,
Let, in my life
And in my last agony,
Hover before my eyes,
That you are my serpent of salvation
In place of the venom of sins.
Heal, Jesus, soul and spirit,
That I may find life!
Briefly and concisely, the concluding chorale strophe encapsulates the libretto’s chain of ideas. It comes from Ludwig Helmbold’s hymn Nun laßt uns Gott dem Herren (Now let us to God, the Lord):
Sein Wort, sein Tauf, sein Nachtmahl
Dient wider allen Unfall,
Der heilge Geist im Glauben
Lehrt uns darauf vertrauen.
His word, his baptism, his evening meal
Serves against all catastrophe.
May the Holy Spirit in faith
Teach us to trust upon it.
As expected, Bach places the center of gravity on the first movement of his composition. He honors the meaning and earnestness of the text appropriately: the instrumental component, including strings, a bassoon, and basso continuo, seems at several points about to become a fugal movement but abandons this style with the entry of the voice and its partner, an obbligato solo violin. Even so, the impression of dense and strict fugal writing remains in force from beginning to end.
The second movement, a recitative for bass, generally keeps to syllabic declamation but grants the enrichment of arioso to a few preferred expressions, all the more effective for being so infrequent. The strict restriction to voice and continuo persists in the third movement, an alto aria. The dance-like, animated
8 meter of this aria, the extensive movement of voice and accompaniment, and in particular the emphatic leaps of the sixth lend the movement an expressiveness that stands in contrast to its sparse setting.
With the fourth movement, another bass recitative, Bach leaves the ascetic timbral world. Everywhere, the voice indulges in arioso excursions, and, rather than hardening into simple supportive chords, the accompanying instruments direct all their energies in melodic ornamentation. The close relation between music and text lasts until the very last tone: “wenn alle Kraft vergehet” (if all power vanishes), reads the text as the strings fall silent and an empty bass tone brings the work to a close. In the associated tenor aria, Bach assigns an obbligato part comprising the unison strings to the voice. The resulting articulation in the instrumental part is as striking as the thoroughgoing preference for intervals of the third and, particularly, the fourth. Whether Bach hereby intended to depict the twisting snake—here, the snake of salvation—is a question that must remain open. One might also think of a symbolism of death after the text’s beginning, “Jesu, meines Todes Tod” (Jesus, death of my death).
A serene four-part chorale follows the restlessness of this aria to conclude on the sixteenth-century melody Nun laßt uns Gott dem Herren. It is unclear whether this movement was composed in Weimar as part of the entire cantata in 1715 or if it was added in Leipzig in 1724.