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Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister BWV 181 / BC A 45
Sexagesima Sunday, February 13, 1724
The cantata Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister BWV 181 (Insincere fickle spirits) originated in early 1724, Bach’s first year in office in Leipzig, and was first heard “On Sexagesima Sunday. In St. Nicholas Church” (Am Sonntage Sexagesimae. In der Kirche St. Nikolai), as noted in a booklet of printed texts of the era. The Gospel reading assigned to the Sunday Sexagesima is the parable of the sower. It is found in the eighth chapter of Luke and in different form in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
According to Mark, Jesus told the parable before a crowd gathered on a beach while he himself stood on a ship lying at the shore. In Luke the parable then continues:
A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit a hundredfold. (8:5–8)
Later, it is explained:
This however is the parable: The seed is the word of God. That by the wayside are they that hear; then comes the devil, and takes away the word out of their hearts, that they should not believe and become saved. That on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. (8:11–15)
The unknown librettist hews unusually closely to the Sunday reading, with its sequence of scenes. However, his text has no literal biblical passages or any chorale strophes. Because of its restriction to free poetry in recitatives and arias, the cantata libretto is a textbook example of the style propagated by Erdmann Neumeister as modern—because of its close proximity to opera—in his text collection first published in Weissenfels in 1702 and reprinted in 1704 under the title Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchen-Music (Sacred cantatas instead of a church music).
The unknown author took the most important keyword for the title line from Psalm 119, which praises the glory of the word of God, and specifically from the verse “Ich hasse die Flattergeister und liebe dein Gesetz” (113; I hate the fickle spirits and love your law). The first aria connects this with the Gospel reading’s central ideas:
Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister
Rauben sich des Wortes Kraft.
Belial mit seinen Kindern
Suchet ohnedem zu hindern,
Daß es keinen Nutzen schafft.
Insincere fickle spirits
Rob themselves of the word’s power.
Belial with his children
Seeks, in any case, to hinder it
That it achieves nothing beneficial.
The beginning of the ensuing recitative takes up the parable of the trodden, unnoticed seed on the paths:
O unglückselger Stand verkehrter Seelen,
So gleichsam an dem Wege sind;
Und wer will doch des Satans List erzählen,
Wenn er das Wort dem Herzen raubt,
Das, am Verstande blind,
Den Schaden nicht versteht noch glaubt.
Oh, unhappy state of wayward souls
Who are, as it were, by the wayside,
And who would indeed recount Satan’s cunning
As he robs the heart of the word,
Which, blind to understanding,
Neither understands nor believes its harm.
The poet subsequently combines the lamented unbelief of the heart and the metaphor of the barren crags in the Gospel reading in a reflection on the opposition of true “Felsenherzen” (hearts of stone). Yet he immediately achieves an ambivalent treatment of the concept of the crag, leading, on the one hand, to the events of Christ’s death and interment and, on the other, to the divine order to Moses to strike his staff on a rock and thereby create a spring of water in the desert:
Es werden Felsenherzen,
So boshaft widerstehn,
Ihr eigen Heil verscherzen
Und einst zugrundegehn.
Es wirkt ja Christi letztes Wort,
Daß Felsen selbst zerspringen;
Des Engels Hand bewegt des Grabes Stein,
Ja, Mosis Stab kann dort
Aus einem Berge Wasser bringen.
Willst du, o Herz, noch härter sein?
Those hearts of stone
That wickedly resist
Will forfeit their own salvation
And one day go to ruin.
Christ’s last word, indeed, caused
Crags themselves to shatter;
The angel’s hand moved the stone of the grave;
Indeed, Moses’s staff could once
Bring water from a mountain.
Would you, O heart, be even harder?
The second aria, once again closely based on the Gospel passage, reads as follows:
Der schädliche Dornen unendliche Zahl,
Die Sorgen der Wollust, die Schätze zu mehren,
Die werden das Feuer der höllischen Qual
In Ewigkeit nähren.
The unending number of harmful thorns,
The troubles of the urge to increase one’s treasures,
These will nourish the fire of hellish torment
In eternity.
The last recitative emphasizes its warning that the “edle Same” (noble seed) must remain strewn in vain for him:
Wer sich nicht recht im Geiste schickt,
Sein Herz beizeiten
Zum guten Lande zu bereiten.
Who is not properly fitted in spirit
To prepare his heart in good season
For good ground.
The libretto closes with the appeal:
Laß, Höchster, uns zu allen Zeiten
Des Herzens Trost, dein heilig Wort.
Du kannst nach deiner Allmachtshand
Allein ein fruchtbar gutes Land
In unsern Herzen zubereiten.
Grant us, Most High, at all times
The heart’s consolation, your holy word.
You can with your almighty hand
Alone a fruitful good land
In our hearts prepare.
With the settings for solo voices in its first four movements, Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition adheres to the prescription of the text’s title, “Cantata.” In the opening movement the bass is accompanied only by strings, at least in the first version of the cantata from 1724. When he performed the work again twenty years later, Bach added two woodwinds—a flute and an oboe—which follow the first violin part and enrich its timbre and sharpen its contours. The pernicious gaiety described in the text, which robs the word of God of its power, is reflected musically by a thematic texture that is defined by short, quick melodic expressions that are constantly repeated and broken off; by weak harmonies that are the consequence of the narrow stepwise motion of the bass; and by the lighthearted and unstable sound of the instruments, performed pizzicato or staccato. Evasive harmonic progressions, prompted by the mention of “Belial und seine Kindern” (Belial and his children), exacerbate, as expected, the problematic nature of this procedure, which deliberately aims at a negative image.
The harmonically rich alto recitative with its intense declamation stands in clear contrast to the preceding movement. On two occasions it intensifies to arioso episodes in which the animated bass, with its own gestures, provides counterpoint to the vocal part. One could easily imagine an instrumental obbligato part for the tenor aria “Der schädlichen Dornen unendliche Zahl” to fill out in tone painting the image in the Gospel reading and further detailed by the librettist. As a result of an oversight during the distribution of Bach’s estate in 1750, the solo violin part called for here must have been separated from the other performance parts and included with the composition score. Since both have been lost, it is impossible to say how the obbligato part for the aria might have looked. Contemporary performances would be well served by an attempt at reconstructing the missing material to perform the cantata in its entirety.
The brief soprano recitative that follows and the closing chorus with its brilliant high trumpets are on more solid ground. The elated gestures of this movement’s voice leading and themes prompt the suspicion that our cantata was not originally composed for this text but that Bach drew upon an earlier, perhaps secular work. Whether this might have been a cantata movement created at Leipzig or before 1723 at Köthen cannot be determined at present.