This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Ich habe meine Zuversicht BWV 188 / BC A 154
Twenty-first Sunday After Trinity, October 17, 1728
This cantata, for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, probably originated in mid-October 1728. Bach took its text from a collection that the Leipzig postal secretary and skilled poet Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander) had just begun to publish. He provided the collection, Cantaten auf die Sonn- und Fest-Tage durch das gantze Jahr, verfertiget durch Picandern (Cantatas for Sundays and holidays throughout the entire year prepared by Picander), with a descriptive foreword: “To honor God, in response to the desire of good friends, and to promote much devotion, I have decided to prepare the present cantatas. I have undertaken this plan even more happily, since I may flatter myself that perhaps whatever is lacking in poetic charm will be replaced by the loveliness of the incomparable Herr Music Director Bach and will resound in the most important churches of devout Leipzig.”1 It remains unclear whether Henrici/Picander undertook this project with the agreement of the Thomaskantor, whether Bach could have promised to compose the entire annual cycle, and to what extent he was in any position to fulfill such a promise. The collection was published in four parts in 1728–29 and once again a few years later with the texts in a different order.Even today scholars do not agree whether the texts provided Bach with the basis for his fourth annual cycle of cantatas or whether the cantor of St. Thomas School simply used a selection from Picander’s offering. If Bach indeed set Picander’s entire annual text cycle to music, then this portion of his oeuvre must be regarded as lost for the most part. Scarcely ten compositions2—about a sixth of a complete cycle—can be documented at present.3
Thus with the cantata Ich habe meine Zuversicht BWV 188 (I have placed my confidence) we are dealing with one of those works that may be all that remains of a much larger corpus. This is especially true of our cantata because, in the form as it is known today, it is the remnant of what was once a much larger whole. Bach’s holograph manuscript originally comprised eighteen pages in folio format, the first ten of which went missing long ago. They contained the largest part of the opening instrumental movement. Apparently, a subsequent owner, perhaps Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, separated these pages from the manuscript and gave them to someone; the pages have vanished without a trace. The rest of the score, pages 11 to 18, found their way into the hands of private collectors and were separated into single pages in the early nineteenth century. Four pages were preserved in their original format, but two pages were cut into two pieces each and another two into three pieces each—parallel to the staves. All of these fragments passed through various private collections and later ended up either in public libraries or in private collections, or they have been lost entirely. The four intact pages are today in Berlin, Paris, Washington, DC, and Vienna; the half pages are in Berlin, Stockholm, and Vienna, as well as in a private collection; and the smaller fragments—as far as is known—are in Eisenach, Paris, and St. Petersburg, as well as in various private collections. Bach’s holograph score thus suffered a fate similar to that of the autograph scores of Mozart’s Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A Major K. 386 for piano and Franz Schubert’s song Death and the Maiden D. 531.
Because of the loss of the title folder and the first part of the score, Bach’s notations regarding the place of the cantata within the church calendar remain unknown. But this deficit is easily remedied by consulting Picander’s cantata texts. Without knowing this publication, it would be very difficult to assign this composition to any particular Sunday or feast day. The arias and recitatives do not betray a connection to the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. Instead, they deal very generally with confidence in faith and trust in God. Thus the first aria announces:
Ich habe meine Zuversicht
Auf den getreuen Gott gericht’,
Da ruhet meine Hoffnung feste.
Wenn alles bricht, wenn alles fällt,
Wenn niemand Treu und Glauben hält,
So ist doch Gott der allerbeste.
I have placed my confidence
In our faithful God,
There rests my hope securely.
When everything breaks, when everything falls,
When no one holds up loyalty and faith,
God then is indeed the best of all.
The ensuing recitative takes up these thoughts and concludes with these words:
Der Herr verwandelt sich in einen grausamen,
Um desto tröstlicher zu scheinen;
Er will, er kanns nicht böse meinen.
Drum laß ich ihn nicht, er segne mich denn.
The Lord changes into a cruel [Lord]
In order to appear all the more comforting;
He will not, nor can he, intend evil,
Therefore, I will not let him go unless he blesses me.
This trust in God, fortified by a verse from Genesis 32, also characterizes the second aria:
Unerforschlich ist die Weise,
Wie der Herr die Seinen führt.
Selber unser Kreuz und Pein
Muß zu unserm Besten sein
Und zu seines Namens Preise.
Unfathomable is the way
In which the Lord leads his people.
Even our cross and pain
Must be in our best interest
And for the praise of his name.
A brief recitative leads to the opening strophe of the chorale Auf meinen lieben Gott trau ich in Angst und Not (In my dear God I trust in fear and distress), which closes the train of thought in catechetical fashion.
The fragments that remain from Bach’s holograph score show that the cantata begins with a concerto movement for organ and orchestra. This is the concluding movement of that D minor concerto, originally for violin, that was rearranged as a cembalo concerto (BWV 1052) about ten years after Bach composed our cantata. This makes it possible to reconstruct, approximately, the missing portions. However, a complete reconstruction is not possible because in addition to the strings, Bach planned three oboes, for which a parallel source tradition does not exist. Consequently, only a compromise version of the opening movement can be created. The first aria, set for tenor, string instruments, and one obbligato oboe, approaches the dance type of the sarabande; its measured pace apparently follows the text “Da ruhet meine Hoffnung feste.” Only in the middle section does it become more lively, where “fällt” and “bricht” are at issue.
The second aria, in which the alto is joined by an obbligato organ part, is more eventful. Chromatic progressions consistently accompany the key words “Kreuz und Pein”; in addition, there is the obvious possibility of setting the “Unerforschlich ist die Weise, / Wie der Herr die Seinen führt” with musical uncertainty. The aria ritornello moves with wandering, unstable melody and tricky rhythms along winding paths until the opening key returns suddenly and unexpectedly. The course of the overall aria is scarcely less difficult, so that it is only the closing chorale that grants a sense of stability.
Footnotes
- “Gott zu Ehren, dem Verlangen guter Freunde zur Folge und vieler Andacht zur Beförderung habe ich entschlossen, gegenwärtige Cantaten zu verfertigen. Ich habe solches Vorhaben desto lieber unternommen, weil ich mir schmeicheln darf, da vielleicht der Mangel der poetischen Anmuth durch die Lieblichkeit des unvergleichlichen Herrn Capell-Meisters Bachs, dürfte ersetzet, und diese Lieder in den Haupt-Kirchen des andächtigen Leipzigs angestimmet werden.”—Trans.↵
- Two texts from Picander’s 1727–28 collection also appear in an annual text cycle published by Christoph Birkmann in Nuremberg in 1728: Welt, behalt du das Deine for Quasimodogeniti and Ich kann mich besser nicht versorgen for Misericordias Domini. Birkmann studied theology at the University of Leipzig and regularly attended Bach’s performances at St. Thomas. He did not own Picander’s collection, suggesting strongly that Birkmann heard these previously unknown compositions performed by Bach. See Blanken (2015b).—Trans.↵
- Häfner (1975).↵