Sexagesimae Sunday

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. (5–8)

Later, it is explained:

This however is the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those 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. The ones on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while, but in time of temptation they 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. (8–15)

The cantata’s text first appeared in a collection published in 1711 in Gotha under the title Geistliches Singen und Spielen, Das ist: Ein Jahrgang von Texten, welche dem Dreyeinigen Gott zu Ehren bey öffentlicher Kirchen-Versammlung in Eisenach musikalisch aufgeführt von Georg Philipp Telemann (Sacred singing and playing, that is: An annual cycle of texts, to honor the triune God in public church congregations in Eisenach, performed by Georg Philipp Telemann). The author of the collection was Erdmann Neumeister, then active in a spiritual role at the court of the count of Promnitz in Sorau, Silesia. Shortly thereafter, Neumeister went to Hamburg, where he worked for decades as lead pastor at St. Jacobi and died in 1756 at the age of eighty-five. In 1720 he attempted in vain to have Johann Sebastian Bach installed as organist at Neumeister’s Hamburg church. He failed in this effort, as the congregation leadership made the appointment contingent upon a payment into the church coffers, an arrangement not unusual for the period. As a result, Neumeister slipped an angry aside into his Christmas sermon, which had to do with the music of the angels at the birth of Christ: “He firmly believed that even if one of the angels of Bethlehem came from heaven, who played divinely, and wanted to be organist at St. Jacobi, who however had no money—he would have to fly away again.”¹

In his day, Neumeister enjoyed a fine reputation as a poet of cantata texts. As early as 1714, Telemann called him “the most famous and only good poet in spiritual affairs.”² While Telemann set a great many of Neumeister’s over five hundred texts, Bach set hardly half a dozen. Posterity long regarded Neumeister as the inventor of what is known as the mixed text form for church music works, a mixture of free poetry, chorale strophes, and biblical passages. More recent research has unassailably demonstrated that this characterization does not apply: the mixed text form—which characterizes the majority of Bach’s cantatas as well as the cantata Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt—is found in Thuringia at least as early as 1704. Erdmann Neumeister followed this line only later, indeed in 1711, with the publication of the text cycle in Eisenach for Telemann.

Neumeister’s true achievement in the development of the church cantata lies in another area. In 1702, then active in the circle around the court of Weissenfels, the thirty-one-year-old dared to import the recitative and da capo aria from the arsenal of opera.³ He later entitled these poems of his Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchenmusik (Sacred cantatas instead of church music), whereby with “church music” he meant “what was usual for until now” (bisher üblichen Kirchenmusik). Neumeister himself compared the form of the text in his Geistliche Cantaten to “a piece from an opera, combining the recitative style with arias.” In the same breath, he maintained, regarding this bold innovation, that he had written the texts for his private devotion, “according to the regular official duties of the Sunday.” He only published them, he wrote, “at the behest of several artists and musical friends.” Neither chorale strophes nor biblical texts are to be found in these true cantata texts; occasionally they are paraphrased in free madrigalistic poetry.

The mixed text form that does include biblical passages and chorale strophes as well as free poetry is found a few years after 1702, alongside these madrigalistic cantata texts, and the two forms continued thereafter in peaceful coexistence.

Bach’s Sexagesima cantata is based on a libretto of the mixed form type. It starts with an extended quote from Isaiah 55, an exact counterpart to the Gospel reading described above:

Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt und nicht wieder dahin kommet, sondern feuchtet die Erde und macht sie fruchtbar und wachsend, daß sie gibt Samen zu säen und Brot zu essen: Also soll das Wort, so aus meinem Munde gehet, auch sein: es soll nicht wieder zu mir leer kommen sondern tun, das mir gefället, und soll ihm gelingen, dazu ich’s sende. (10–11)

Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there but moisten the earth and make it fruitful and growing that it gives seeds to sow and bread to eat: Thus shall the word, which goes out of my mouth, also be: it shall not return to me empty but do what pleases me, and shall achieve the purpose for which I send it. 

Erdmann Neumeister’s text takes up these thoughts in a recitative and immediately establishes the connection to the Gospel reading of the Sunday:

Mein Gott, hier wird mein Herze sein:
Ich öffne dir’s in meines Jesu Namen;
So streue deinen Samen
Als in ein gutes Land hinein.
Laß solches Frucht, und hundertfällig bringen.

My God, here my heart will be:
I open it to you in my Jesus’s name.
So scatter your seeds into it
As into good soil.
Let it bring fruit, and a hundredfold.

After an invocation taken from Psalm 118:25 (“O Herr, Herr, hilf: o Herr, laß wohlgelingen” [O Lord, Lord, help: O Lord, let us prosper]), there follows a passage from what is known as the Litany in Martin Luther’s translation: “Du wollest deinen Geist und Kraft zum Worte geben. / Erhör uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (May you grant your spirit and power together with your word. / Hear us, dear Lord God!). Neumeister’s poem returns to the Gospel reading and takes up its warning of “des Teufels Trug” (the devil’s deception) threatening the word, and once again there follows a passage from the Litany: “Den Satan unter unsre Füße treten. / Erhör uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (Trample Satan beneath our feet. / Hear us, dear Lord God!). In the same manner, the extremely extensive recitative continues: Neumeister’s text paraphrases the deterioration of faith out of fear of persecution and “zeitliche Weh” (temporal pain) and quotes from the Litany the appeal for protection from “des Turks und des Papsts grausamen Mord und Lasterungen, Wuten und Toben” (the Turks’ and the pope’s gruesome murderousness and blasphemies, raging and ranting). Finally, the seductions of the world are attacked and abolished with the decisive quotation from the Litany that concludes the recitative. The renunciation of the treasures of this world is also the subject of the aria that follows: “Fort mit allen, fort, nur fort! / Mein Seelenschatz ist Gottes Wort” (Away with them all, away, just away! / My soul’s treasure is God’s word). The libretto concludes with a chorale strophe taken from Lazarus Spengler’s 1524 hymn Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt: 

Ich bitt, o Herr aus Herzensgrund
Du wollst nicht von mir nehmen
Dein heilges Wort aus meinem Mund. 

I plead, O Lord, from the bottom of my heart,
May you not take from me
Your holy word out of my mouth. 

Bach’s composition of Neumeister’s text originated in Weimar, perhaps in early 1714 or possibly a year earlier. In any case, the work is one of his early cantatas. Even for this early period, the setting is peculiar and old-fashioned; it excludes woodwind and brass instruments and even the violins. Instead, four violas serve as the highest string instruments.When he added his Weimar cantatas to his repertoire In Leipzig, Bach reperformed the work in 1724 with the addition of two recorders. These double the two upper viola parts an octave above, and the cantata is usually performed today in this brighter version. 

In contrast to his contemporary Telemann, who may have set the Neumeister text to music in 1711 or 1712, Bach avoided tone painting in his composition of the Isaiah verse “Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee.” Instead, the bass carries the text, alternating between simple declamation and gently shaped arioso, in keeping with its role as vox Christi. The cantata begins with a sinfonia that emulates the form of the modern Italian concerto, combined, however, with the principle of ostinato variation, a principle native to organ music, thus finding a rigor and unity appropriate to the gravity of the scriptural passage that follows.

In contrast to the concentrated and inward composition of the Isaiah text, the ensuing recitative, Neumeister’s free poetry with insertions from the Litany, is laid out in a freer, more colorful pictorial fashion. The Litany excerpts, with their characteristic sequence of solo soprano and responding chorus, are juxtaposed with recitatives alternating between bass and tenor, in which the instruments become an independent partner and are only rarely restricted to mere harmonic support. Unusual intervallic leaps or modulations are assigned to textual components such as “des Teufels Trug” (the devil’s deception) and “irregehen” (go astray); a virtuoso coloratura underscores the single word “Verfolgung” (persecution). The ensuing soprano aria also strives for vividness: the glittering passages for the four violas playing in unison, brightened by the high register of the recorders, symbolize the seductive brilliance of the treasures of this world, which are to be renounced. The distinctive instrumental effect of such an “Aria con Violette all’ Unisono” (Aria with violas in unison) had topicality: in 1713, possibly the year Bach composed our cantata, the Hamburg music theorist Johann Mattheson judged that similar arias found in opera “sound truly unique and elegant because of the depth of the accompaniment.”⁴ With the simple setting of the pre-Reformation melody Durch Adams Fall, the cantata finds its way back to the inwardness of its beginning.