This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Gott soll allein mein Herze haben BWV 169 / BC A 143
Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, October 20, 1726
This cantata, Gott soll allein mein Herze haben BWV 169 (God alone shall have my heart), was performed for the first time on October 20, 1726. It is the first of a group of six works that precede the start of the Advent season in 1726. With one exception, they are solo cantatas. Admittedly, in four of the five cases the final chorale is performed with all four choral voices. We do not know what prompted Bach to concentrate at this particular time on the very individual expressive world of the solo cantata: perhaps consideration of a temporary lapse in the capabilities of his choir, or perhaps the need to reduce his workload. Similarly, the relationship of cause and effect regarding text and music remains unknown. One might infer that Bach intentionally sought out or commissioned texts that lent themselves to composition as a solo piece. But by the same token, it would be equally conceivable that all the texts available to him at that time—a group that included the Kreuzstab Cantata BWV 56—were so intensely focused on individual devotion that there seemed no other option than to set each of them to a solo voice. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the origins of these five texts, so it cannot even be determined whether they are by the same author.1In the case of our cantata, the librettist addresses the first part of the Sunday Gospel reading. This is found in Matthew 22 and gives the account of the dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisee scribes. At the beginning, it reads: “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, saying: Master, which is the most important commandment in the law? Jesus, however, said to him, ‘You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. But the other is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments depend the entire law and the prophets” (34–40).
The commandments formulated or cited here go back to the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. In a parallel place in the New Testament, in Luke 10, they appear in connection with the parable of the good Samaritan and are assigned along with it to the Gospel reading for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. As a result, they found their way into the text and composition of Bach’s cantata Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 (You shall love God, your Lord).
In view of these relationships between the Gospel readings for the thirteenth and eighteenth Sundays after Trinity, it is no wonder that the cantatas Gott soll allein mein Herze haben BWV 169 and Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 share many commonalities. If our cantata begins with the almost incantation-like “Gott soll allein mein Herze haben,” the other work, older by three years, reads, a bit more soberly, “So muß es sein! / Gott will das Herz vor sich alleine haben” (So must it be! / God will have the heart for himself alone). Overall, the language of our cantata is more emphatic and emotional, in line with the genre tradition, than that of the earlier work. In the first two movements of the solo cantata, the title line serves as a kind of motto, a slogan that, repeated like a leitmotif, is used as a means of artistic integration.
The opening recitative first links the ideas of the love of God and renunciation of the world and then attributes peace of mind to the effects of God’s goodness:
Gott soll allein mein Herze haben.
Zwar merk ich an der Welt,
Die ihren Kot unschätzbar hält,
Weil sie so freundlich mit mir tut,
Sie wollte gern allein
Das Liebste meiner Seele sein.
Doch nein —
Gott soll allein mein Herze haben:
Ich find in ihm das höchste Gut.
Wir sehen zwar
Auf Erden hier und dar
Ein Bächlein der Zufriedenheit,
Das von des Höchsten Güten quillet;
Gott aber ist der Quell, mit Strömen angefüllet,
Da schöpf ich, was mich allezeit
Kann sattsam und wahrhaftig laben:
Gott soll allein mein Herze haben.
God alone shall have my heart,
Indeed I note of the world—
Which values its dreck as priceless—
It is so friendly to me because
It alone would be
The most beloved of my soul.
But no—
God alone shall have my heart.
I find in him the highest goodness.
We see indeed
On Earth here and there
A brooklet of contentment
That springs from the goodness of the Most High;
But God is the spring, filled with streams,
Where I find that which for all time
Can fully and truly refresh me:
God alone shall have my heart.
The associated aria begins with the motto from the middle of the preceding recitative and adopts it literally as a framing component:
Gott soll allein mein Herze haben,
Ich find in ihm das höchste Gut.
Er liebt mich in der bösen Zeit
Und will mich in der Seligkeit
Mit Gütern seines Hauses laben.
God alone shall have my heart,
I find in him the highest goodness.
He loves me in this evil time
And in salvation would
Refresh me with the goods of his house.
After these confessions of love of God in the third movement there follows a recitative with a series of reflections on the love of God; they flow into allusions to the ascent of the prophet Elijah with fiery horses and wagon depicted in 2 Kings 2:11 and to the return to the bosom of Abraham:
Was ist die Liebe Gottes?
Des Geistes Ruh,
Der Sinnen Lustgenuß,
Der Seele Paradies.
Sie schließt die Hölle zu,
Den Himmel aber auf;
Sie ist Elias Wagen,
Da werden wir im Himmel nauf
In Abrahms Schoß getragen.
What is the love of God?
The spirit’s repose,
The delight of the senses,
The paradise of the soul.
It shuts hell
But opens heaven,
It is Elijah’s chariot,
In which we will be carried up to heaven
Into the bosom of Abraham.
And even more energetically than the first recitative, the second aria formulates rejection and renunciation of the world in favor of the love of God:
Stirb in mir,
Welt und alle deine Liebe,
Daß die Brust
Sich auf Erden für und für
In der Liebe Gottes übe;
Stirb in mir,
Hoffahrt, Reichtum, Augenlust,
Ihr verworfnen Fleischestriebe!
Die in me,
World and all your love,
That my breast
On Earth forever and ever
May practice the love of God.
Die in me,
Pride, wealth, desire of the eye,
You depraved urges of the flesh!
In all of this, the love of one’s neighbor, portrayed as equal in the Sunday Gospel reading, is neglected. Only at the very end does the cantata librettist dedicate a few minimally inspired lines to it:
Doch meint er auch dabei
Mit eurem Nächsten treu!
Denn so steht in der Schrift geschrieben:
Du sollst Gott und den Nächsten lieben.
But this also means,
Be true to your neighbor!
For as it is written in the scriptures:
You shall love God and your neighbor.
The third strophe of Luther’s Nun bitten wir den heilgen Geist (We now implore the Holy Spirit) concludes the libretto’s sequence of ideas:
Du süße Liebe, schenk uns deine Gunst,
Laß uns empfinden der Liebe Brunst,
Daß wir uns von Herzen einander lieben
Und in Friede auf einem Sinn bleiben.
Kyrie eleis.
You sweet love, grant us your favor,
Let us feel the fervor of your love,
That we may love one another from the heart
And remain in peace of one mind.
Lord, have mercy.
As he did in two companion works of the late Trinity season in 1726, Johann Sebastian Bach placed an independent concerto movement at the beginning of the solo cantata. The festive D major sinfonia combines concertante organ, oboes, and strings; the string instruments lead off with a spirited ritornello, while the solo instrument remains silent. Nonetheless, a recent view holds that this is a genuine organ concerto, possibly composed originally by the cantor of St. Thomas School for a guest appearance at the St. Sophia Church in Dresden in September 1725, where he would have performed on the Silbermann organ.2Older opinion, on the other hand, preferred not to see the version for concertante organ as original and instead proceeded from a version in D major with oboe d’amore as solo instrument. Bach’s later reshaping of this movement to become the opening movement of a cembalo concerto (BWV 1053) does little to solve the puzzle, because the solo instrument’s notation contains few clues as to what the original instrument might have been. The middle movement of the lost concerto, preserved in the cembalo concerto arrangement, also found its way into our concerto; it provides the essential substance for the second aria, whose text begins: “Stirb in mir, Welt” (Die in me, world). Concertante organ and strings are involved here once again, although the oboes fall silent; instead, a new solo part for alto voice is skillfully woven in. With its characteristic
8 meter, this movement exemplifies the expressive siciliano type so often found in Bach—particularly the densely woven texture of the outer sections, whose passionate intensification contrasts with the rather static, barely moving musette bass. In contrast to the opulence of the sinfonia and this aria, the other movements are rather sparsely set. This applies to the opening portion with its recitative and arioso sections, as well as to the first aria with virtuoso concertante organ. In particular, in the first movement, the self-imposed requirement “Gott soll allein mein Herze haben” is made manifest by restricting accompaniment to the basso continuo.
Footnotes
- In 2015 Christine Blanken proposed that Christoph Birkmann may be the librettist for these six works. Birkmann, a musically active student of theology at the University of Leipzig from December 1724 to September 1727 who regularly attended Bach’s performances, published an annual cycle of cantata texts in 1728 that contains thirty-one works known to have been performed in Leipzig during Birkmann’s time there, among which are twenty-three known cantatas by Bach. See Blanken (2015b).—Trans.↵
- Wolff (2006).↵