This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Kommt, eilet und laufet, ihr flüchtigen Füße BWV 249 / BC D 8
Easter Sunday, April 6, 1738
Compared to its well-known sibling work, the Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248.2), the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4/5 is clearly less popular with the public. The reasons for this certainly do not lie with the music and its quality. With its catchy freshness of invention, it lacks nothing in comparison to its younger but much better known sibling. The text, however, poses problems, if only at first glance. It certainly found no favor with the classic Bach biographer of the nineteenth century, Philipp Spitta: “It cannot but surprise us to find that Bach could have been satisfied with such a text,” reads the summary from his rather unsympathetic overview:The text, of which the author is unknown . . . begins with a duet between John and Peter, who are informed of Christ’s resurrection by the women, and who run joyfully to the sepulcher to convince themselves ( John 20, 3 and 4). There Mary the mother of James, and Salome, reproach them with not having also purposed to anoint the body of the Lord and thus testifying their love for Him. The men excuse themselves, saying that their anointing has been “with briny tears, and deep despair and longing.” Then the women explain that these, happily, are no longer needed, since the Lord is risen. They gaze into the empty tomb; John asks where the Saviour can be, to which Mary Magdalene replies what the men have long known: “He now has risen from the dead. / To us an angel did appear, / Who told us, lo He is not here.” Peter directs his attention to the “linen cloth,” and this leads him to recall the tears he had shed over his denial of Jesus, a very tasteless episode. The women next express their longing to see Jesus once more; John rejoices that the Lord lives again, and the end is a chorus: “Thanks and praise / be to Thee for ever, Lord! / Satan’s legions now are bound, / his dominion now hath ceased, / let the highest heaven resound / with your songs, ye souls released. / Fly open, ye gates! / Open radiant and glorious! / The Lion of Judah comes riding victorious.”1
Spitta and others were prevented from issuing a more just assessment of the Easter Oratorio by what they could not know, namely, its origin as a secular cantata, a Tafelmusik (banquet music) of 1725 for Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. This was discovered in about 1940, when Friedrich Smend came across evidence of a relationship between the Easter music and a lost “shepherds’ colloquy” (Schäfergespräch) by Christian Friedrich Henrici. Even so, at first the knowledge of the Easter Oratorio’s secular parentage was hardly useful. The persistent prejudice against anything resulting from what is called “parody procedure”—supplying existing music with a new text— simply opened the libretto to further criticism. It was seen as reflecting a profoundly meaningful event for the church, but without Gospel narratives or chorale strophes, and thus it was reduced to an intermediate text prepared with nonchalance and without sympathy in order to make good use of an elaborate composition that would otherwise have lain idle.
More recently, theological studies have highlighted how the new text, focused on the feast of the Resurrection, draws upon the centuries-old tradition of Easter plays in many ways and perhaps in all of its aspects.2 In doing so, it consciously avoids any attempt at a dramatic fiction: neither angels nor the Risen One are included in the action. Even so, the play is at once a dramatic realization and a proclamation of praise. Thus the first vocal movement takes up the race between Peter and John to the grave of Jesus from the book of John; but with its text beginning “Kommt eilet und laufet” (Come, make haste and run) it also functions as an appeal to meditatio, comparable to the opening of the St. Matthew Passion’s opening chorus, “Kommt, ihr Töchter hilft mir klagen” (Come, you daughters, help me lament). The tone of the “mysticism of the bride,” going back to the Song of Songs, is hard to ignore in the recitatives (the first, in particular), as well as in Maria Jacobi’s aria “Seele, deine Spezereien” (Soul, your spices [shall no longer be myrrh]). The connection to medieval traditions is particularly strong in Peter’s aria and its associated recitative, whose meditations include Jesus’s cast-off grave clothes and mention his shroud in particular. The linkage of the stories of the disciples at the grave of Jesus and the awakening of Lazarus in John 11 and 20, respectively, follow ancient tradition. The account of Lazarus was understood as an anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus and the reawakening of the dead and thus symbolizes the hope for a resurrection to eternal life. In this sense, the cast-off grave clothes in Peter’s aria become recognized as a sign of the Resurrection of the Lord and convey the certainty that one’s own death will be but a sleep.
On the whole, the unidentified librettist deserves every recognition for his work to appropriately transform the arias and ensembles of the secular original into the subject matter of Easter with verbal skill and fealty to content.
In 1725 Bach’s efforts were confined to the composition of recitatives and the arrangement of the voices in the arias and ensemble movements. At first probably designated as a cantata for Easter (BWV 249.3), the work was reperformed in 1738 (BWV 249.4) with minor alterations but with the title Oratorio.3 Whether the role designations Maria Jacobi, Maria Magdalena, Petrus, and Johannes were still used at this time cannot be known for certain, but they were certainly omitted in the final performances in 1745 and April 1749 (BWV 249.5).
Significantly, in this late version the original duet for Peter and John was refashioned as a four-part chorus, so that the motif of the disciples’ race recedes even further behind the invitation to contemplation.
Otherwise, there was little change to the core musical substance, which goes back to the Weissenfels Tafelmusik of 1725. The work begins with two instrumental movements: a cheerful concertante Allegro that exploits timbral contrasts between instrumental groups (trumpets and drums, oboes with bassoon, and string instruments), as well as a mournful Adagio with an expressive solo for oboe (flute in a later version). Both movements may go back to an earlier instrumental concerto. This is perhaps also true of the first vocal movement, which seems to have an unusually robust instrumental accompaniment for a duet. The later transformation to a four-part chorus mitigates this discrepancy somewhat. In the soprano aria, voice and flute compete in a vivid representation of love for Jesus. Peter’s slumber aria unfolds in beguiling coloration, with layered timbres of string instruments and recorders in octaves, radiating a heavenly serenity. The alto aria is situated between energetic focus and sensitive encouragement. The work concludes with an ensemble that, by combining a solemn, hovering opening with a brisk fugal ending, follows the model of the Sanctus of 1724 (232.1), later incorporated in the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232.4).
Footnotes
- Spitta (1899, 2:591).—Trans.↵
- Steiger and Steiger (1983).↵
- Peter Wollny has identified a copyist previously known as Anonymous Vj, who participated in preparing the sources for the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4, as Johann Wilhelm Machts; Wollny (2016, 91) proposes April 6, 1738, as the date of its first performance.—Trans.↵