This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 177 / BC A 103
Fourth Sunday after Trinity, July 6, 1732
In early 1732, Johann Sebastian Bach closed a long-standing gap in his annual cycle of chorale cantatas with Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 177 (I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ). The reason for this gap was an idiosyncrasy of the church calendar. In 1724, when Bach was hard at work on the cycle, the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin fell on the fourth Sunday after Trinity, July 2, 1724. As usual, the higher-ranking holiday was celebrated—in this case, the Marian feast—and, accordingly, Bach composed a cantata based on the chorale Meine Seele erhebt den Herren BWV 10 (My soul doth magnify the Lord) as part of his cycle of chorale cantatas, which he had begun only a few weeks before. At that time, he appears not to have taken the precaution of composing a cantata for the omitted occasion, the fourth Sunday after Trinity. It was certainly not his plan to run a thriving business of complete cantata cycles, as did many of his contemporaries, and he could defer filling the gap to a later time. Hence it would seem that the unidentified librettist working for Bach had already been notified that he could spare himself the adaptation of an appropriate chorale text in the direction of recitative and aria forms. It is less likely that a libretto was prepared in 1724 for a cantata to be composed in the future—one that the cantor of St. Thomas School then discarded eight years later.In any case, the unchanged wording of the main hymn of this Sunday, the chorale Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, served as text for Bach’s chorale cantata. Documented in 1529 and ascribed at various times to Johann Agricola or Paul Speratus, the five-strophe chorale is unanimously assigned to the fourth Sunday after Trinity, especially in view of its relation to the epistle of the day, a passage from Romans 8.
And so the discovery in 1970 of a Leipzig publication of the text from 1725 caused something of a stir, since it assigned the same five-strophe cantata libretto not to the fourth but rather to the third Sunday after Trinity.1 On this basis, a date of origin for our cantata seven years earlier was proposed, along with an attempt to explain Bach’s date of 1732 in his own hand as a reperformance. But these hypotheses do not convince. It would appear that, during the weeks in question in 1725, the Thomaskantor performed several works by other composers, mainly Telemann, and may have now and again had someone else stand in as performance director. Whether he himself or his representative caused the chorale text actually belonging to the fourth Sunday after Trinity to be assigned to the Sunday a week earlier we do not know. One justification, while not entirely conclusive, could be provided by the fact that in 1725—just as in 1724—the fourth Sunday after Trinity was omitted, this time because of its coincidence with St. John’s Day.
The hymn Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ belongs to the group of hymns “Vom christlichen Leben und Wandel” (Of the Christian life and progress). Several hymnals of the period apply headings to the strophes and set the word “Glaube” (faith) above the opening strophe:
Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ,
Ich bitt, erhör mein Klagen,
Verleih mir Gnad zu dieser Frist,
Laß mich doch nicht verzagen;
Den rechten Glauben, Herr, ich mein,
Den wollest du mir geben,
Dir zu leben,
Mein’m Nächsten nütz zu sein,
Dein Wort zu halten eben.
I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ,
I pray, hear my lament,
Grant me grace at this time,
But let me not despair:
The true faith, Lord, I mean,
You would give to me,
To live for you,
To be of use to my neighbor,
To abide by your word.
It is worth mentioning here that, in most of the hymnals of Bach’s era, the fifth verse of this strophe is given as “Den rechten Weg, o Herr” (The true way, O Lord), while the version composed by Bach reads “Den rechten Glauben, Herr” (The true faith, Lord). The second strophe of the chorale text appears beneath the heading “Hoffnung” (hope), the third strophe beneath “Liebe” (love):
Verleih, daß ich aus Herzensgrund,
Mein’ Feinden mög vergeben,
Verzeih mir auch zu dieser Stund,
Gib mir ein neues Leben;
Dein Wort mein Speis laß allweg sein,
Damit mein Seel zu nähren,
Mich zu wehren,
Wenn Unglück geht daher,
Das mich bald möcht abkehren.
Grant that I, from the bottom of my heart,
Might forgive my enemies.
Pardon me too at this hour,
Grant me a new life:
Let your words always be my meal
With which to nourish my soul,
To defend me
When misfortune comes
That might soon turn me away.
“Abkehren” here is aimed at the concept of “Kehraus” (clean sweep, final dance, etc.), a word that is etymologically related to the much more threatening “Garaus” (death). Accordingly, the last two strophes pray for constancy in faith and help in conflict and danger.
The scope of the individual movements in Bach’s composition matches the richness of text in the chorale strophes. This applies in particular to the opening movement, nearly three hundred measures long in
4 meter. The main reason for the length is the instrumental component, which is independent of the chorale’s content and dominated by a solo violin. At the beginning, the violin enters alone against the motet-like counterpoint of the voices; the other instruments enter only after the entrance of the soprano with the chorale melody. In the further course of the movement, the texture thickens until near the end the soprano / cantus firmus and all other voices enter at once, without preparation. Even the solo violin must pay tribute to this transformation, evidently meant to amplify the urgent pleas in the text, giving up its independence in favor of a stronger integration.
There are no recitatives among the inner strophe settings; all appear in the form of arias. The second movement is laid out in two parts; the alto, with a particularly clear-cut and distinctive theme, is accompanied only by basso continuo. The third movement is in three parts: the soprano and basso continuo are joined in the tenor range by the muted coloration of an oboe d’amore. The fourth movement is in four parts; it employs the exquisite combination of solo violin, bassoon, tenor, and basso continuo. The cheerful virtuoso play of the upper voices—in which the basso continuo attempts to participate, in vain—experiences a darkening shortly before the end, when the text speaks of rescue from death.
The closing chorale develops an unusual melodic elegance, as if the composer wanted to demonstratively set apart his compositional style of the 1730s from that of the previous decade.