This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort BWV 20 / BC A 95
First Sunday after Trinity, June 11, 1724
For Johann Sebastian Bach, the cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort BWV 20 (O eternity, you word of thunder) represented the initial spark of a plan that, beginning in June 1724, would claim the greater part of his creative energy for many months. His idea was to create, within a year’s time, a complete annual cycle of church cantatas that were based on appropriate chorales, textually as well as musically, with preference for the main hymns for each Sunday and feast day where possible. No one knew better than the Thomaskantor himself what such a concept would entail with regard to the never-abating demands of his position, as well as his own high standards of quality. We cannot say whether at the outset he could foresee that he would be able to complete only three-quarters of the project as he had conceived it. In any case, he started work without hesitation and without sparing any effort, even at the beginning.The new cycle did not begin with Advent, the start of the church year. This deviation from the norm had to do with Bach’s professional situation. He had made his debut as cantor of St. Thomas School exactly a year earlier, on the first Sunday after Trinity. Now, exactly a year later, he wanted to introduce the Leipzig public to a complete annual cycle of church cantatas of a new type.
The chorale he chose for this exemplary first work was a principal hymn for the first Sunday after Trinity. Written by Johann Rist in 1642, it was published the same year with a melody by Johann Schop, a city musician in Hamburg. In hymnals of the era it is found beneath the rubric “Von der Hölle” (Of hell) or “Von der Ewigkeit und Hölle” (Of eternity and hell) with the subtitle “Das Weh der Ewigkeit” (The torment of eternity). The Gospel reading for the Sunday is found in Luke 16, which contains Jesus’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The chorale text is related in that it takes up the fate of the rich man. In the parable, the rich man lived “alle Tage herrlich und in Freuden” (all his days gloriously and in joy), only after his death to land “in der Hölle und in der Qual” (in hell and in torment).
Johann Rist’s unabridged hymn contains sixteen strophes, each with eight lines. The cantata text is derived from the hymn in the fashion common to nearly all works in Bach’s chorale cantata cycle: some individual chorale strophes remain unchanged, others are reshaped to become recitatives and arias even as one or more lines maintain their original wording, while still others are reformulated without direct quotation of the original. In the case of O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, Bach’s unknown librettist drew upon all but three of the chorale’s sixteen strophes. As usual, the first strophe in Rist’s poem is adopted literally:
O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort,
O Schwert, das durch die Seele bohrt,
O Anfang sonder Ende!
O Ewigkeit, Zeit ohne Zeit,
Ich weiß vor lauter Traurigkeit
Nicht, wo ich mich hinwende.
Mein ganz erschrocken Herz erbebt,
Daß mir die Zung am Gaumen klebt.
O eternity, you word of thunder,
O sword that bores through the soul.
O beginning without end!
O eternity, time without time,
I know not, in deep sadness,
Where I should turn.
My quite terrified heart so trembles,
That my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.
The eleventh strophe, “Solang ein Gott im Himmel lebt” (All the while that a God in heaven lives), and the concluding strophe, beginning with “O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort,” were also brought into the cantata libretto without change.
The fifth movement of the cantata provides an example of how Bach revised the chorale strophes while preserving several of the original lines. Its text is based on the ninth strophe of Rist’s chorale:
Ach Gott, wie bist du so gerecht,
Wie strafest du die bösen Knecht
Im heißen Pfuhl der Schmerzen.
Auf kurze Sünden dieser Welt
Hast du so lange Pein bestellt,
Ach nimm dies wohl zu Herzen.
Betracht es oft, o Menschenkind,
Kurz ist die Zeit, der Tod geschwind.
O God, how just you are
As you punish the evil servants
In a seething pool of sorrows.
For the brief sins of this world
You have ordained such lengthy pain,
O take this well to heart.
Consider it often, O child of humankind,
Brief is time, death is swift.
As an aria text, it takes the following form:
Gott ist gerecht in seinen Werken:
Auf kurze Sünde dieser Welt
Hat er so lange Pein bestellt;
Ach wollte doch die Welt dies merken.
Kurz ist die Zeit, der Tod geschwind,
Bedenke dies, o Menschenkind!
God is righteous in his works:
For the brief sins of this world
He has ordained such lengthy pain.
Oh, if only the world wanted to heed this.
Brief is time, death is swift,
Consider this, O child of humankind!
Rist’s thirteenth strophe was handled more freely:
Wach auf, o Mensch, vom Sündenschlaf,
Ermuntre dich, verlorenes Schaf,
Und beßre bald dein Leben.
Wach auf, es ist sehr hohe Zeit,
Es kömmt heran die Ewigkeit,
Dir deinen Lohn zu geben;
Vielleicht ist heut der letzte Tag
Wer weiß, wie man noch sterben mag.
Wake up, O man, from the sleep of sin,
Rouse yourself, lost sheep,
And quickly improve your life.
Wake up, it is very high time.
Eternity approaches
To give your reward to you;
Perhaps today is the last day.
The aria text associates this wakening call with an allusion to the trumpet of the Last Judgment:
Wacht auf, wacht auf, verlorenen Schafe,
Ermuntert euch vom Sündenschlafe
Und bessert euer Leben bald.
Wacht auf, eh die Posaune schallt,
Die euch mit Schrecken aus der Gruft
Zum Richter aller Welt vor das Gerichte ruft!
Wake up, wake up, lost sheep,
Rouse yourselves from the sleep of sin
And improve your lives quickly.
Wake up before the trumpet sounds
That calls you with terror from the crypt
To the judge of all the world for judgment!
Rist’s penultimate strophe was revised in yet another fashion. Out of its beginning:
O du verfluchtes Menschenkind,
Von Sinnen toll, von Herzen blind,
Laß ab, die Welt zu lieben!
O you accursed child of humankind,
Mad of senses, blind of heart,
Leave off to love the world!
The aria text became:
O Menschenkind,
Hör auf geschwind,
Die Sünd und Welt zu lieben,
Daß nicht die Pein,
Wo Heulen und Zähnenklappen sein,
Dich ewig mag betrüben!
Ach spiegle dich am reichen Mann,
Der in der Qual
Auch nicht einmal
Ein Tröpflein Wasser haben kann!
O child of humankind,
Cease quickly
To love sin and the world,
So that the pain,
Where howling and gnashing of teeth,
May never eternally aggrieve you!
Oh, see your image in the rich man
Who, in torment,
Not even once
Can have a droplet of water!
Clearly, this refers to the Gospel reading for the first Sunday after Trinity, in particular to Luke 16:23: “As he now was in hell and in torment, he lifted his eyes up and saw Abraham from afar and Lazarus in his bosom.”1
Bach’s composition of this extremely wide-ranging libretto, with three each of chorale movements and recitatives, as well as five arias, highlights the special nature of the situation in many ways. An outward feature of his holograph score indicates this: the first page of the score contains, instead of the standard abbreviation of the invocation “Jesu Juva” (Jesus, help me), a sequence of six letters whose solution reads “In Nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christi” (In the name of our lord Jesus Christ). Moreover, the form of the opening movement is sharply distinguished from the familiar. Certainly, the model for the majority of cantata first movements is clearly recognizable here: the chorale melody is presented line by line in one voice; other voices provide either harmonic support or motet-like counterpoint; there is a motivically unified, independent instrumental component. But there is another dimension: the formal outlines of the French overture. This is seen in the complete three-part form: two solemn, slow outer sections with dotted rhythms and sweeping scales enclosing a quicker, imitatively worked central section. Bach’s choice of this characteristic form, signaling inauguration and a new beginning, was certainly no coincidence. It represents the entrance portal to the comprehensive new opus the composer had just embarked upon, the “annual cantata cycle on chorales” (Kantatenjahrgang über Kirchenlieder). Its traditional function is to announce what is about to happen; in the context of the text it can be seen to depict the anxious anticipation of eternity to come. Moreover, it allows the penultimate line of text, “Mein ganz erschrocken Herz erbebt” (My quite terrified heart trembles), to be set by the concluding slow section with its dotted (zerrissen) rhythms.
This fully developed chorale movement is contrasted by two simple four-part chorales that conclude the cantata’s two sections, performed before and after the sermon. The eight solo movements are all influenced by the linguistic richness of the libretto. In order to control this and keep the work’s dimensions within tenable limits, Bach was forced to forgo the da capo form for the most part. Only the fifth movement, an aria for bass with three oboes, uses the phrase “Gott ist gerecht in seinen Werken” as a framing device. It is worth noticing that the head motif for this movement appears in two different forms: a broken-chord motif with an unassailable, chanted quality, and a melodic, mellifluous gesture. Both are connected to the voice with the text “Gott ist gerecht”; when these motives appear in the instrumental component they can be understood as an untexted quotation. The composer works in a similar fashion in the next to last movement, a duet for alto and tenor whose text begins, “O Menschenkind, hör auf geschwind, die Sünd und Welt zu lieben.” Here, the untexted “evocative” motive is given to the basso continuo and creates the constant presence of the “O Menschenkind—hör auf geschwind.”
In addition to these architectonic devices, specific textual interpretations are found everywhere. Chromaticism, sigh motives, harmonic clashes, and other effects are given to key words such as “Schmerz” (hurt), “Qual” (torment), “Hölle” (hell), and “Pein” (pain). Rarely is the composer’s method simply one-dimensional. In the third movement, an aria for tenor and strings, the text beginning “Ewigkeit, du machst mir bange” (Eternity, you make me frightened) is set by sustained chords for “Ewigkeit” and sigh motives for “bange.” Later, the voice’s extended coloraturas depict the word “Flammen” (flames)—yet these are artfully combined with the sustained tones and sighs just mentioned, for the text speaks of “Flammen, die auf ewig brennen” (flames that burn eternally).
A more complicated interpretation appears in movement 6, an aria for alto and strings whose text begins “O Mensch, errette deine Seele” (O human, deliver your soul). What is striking about this movement is the change of meter from
4 to
2 by means of suspensions and accent displacement. It is conceivable that this “bound” style is aimed at a depiction of the shackles from which the soul must be rescued. More transparent is the bass aria found at the beginning of the second half of the cantata, “Wacht auf, wacht auf, verlornen Schafe” (Wake up, wake up, lost sheep) with its energetic, upward-striving scales, pounding, insistent rhythms, and penetrating trumpet signals.
Footnotes
- "Als er nun in der Hölle und in der Qual war, hob er seine Augen auf und sah Abraham von ferne und Lazarus in seinem Schoß."—Trans.↵