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Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe BWV 25 / BC A 129
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, August 29, 1723
This cantata, Es ist nichts gesundes an meinem Leibe BWV 25 (There is nothing healthy in my body), was heard for the first time in Leipzig on August 29, 1723. Its text follows the Gospel reading for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity in Luke 17, the account of the healing of the ten lepers:
And it came to pass that as he traveled toward Jerusalem, he passed through Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a market, he was met by ten men who were lepers, who stood far off and raised their voices and spoke: Jesus, dear master, have mercy upon us! And as he saw them he said to them: Go forth and show yourselves to the priests! And it happened, as they went there, they were cleansed. But one among them, as he saw that he was healed, turned around and praised God with a loud voice and fell upon his face at his feet and thanked him. And that was a Samaritan. But Jesus answered and spoke: Are not ten of you cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found who returned to give glory to God other than this stranger? And he spoke to him: Arise, and go on your way; your faith has helped you! (11–19)
The relationship presented here between faith and healing, on the one hand, and sin and illness, on the other, is extensively explored in this cantata libretto. The key point is Exodus 15:26, which reads: “If you will obey the voice of the Lord your God and do what is good in his eyes and listen to his commandments and keep to his laws, then I will put none of the diseases upon you which I have put upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord your physician.” A scriptural passage at the beginning of the cantata text, taken from Psalm 38:3, a lament under severe affliction, suffering, and enmity, refers to the situation of humanity without Christ: “Es ist nichts gesundes an meinem Leibe vor deinem Dräuen und ist kein Friede in meinen Gebeinen vor meiner Sünde” (There is nothing healthy in my body in the face of your threatening, and there is no peace in my bones because of my sins). The ill health, metaphorically meant, is vividly depicted in the ensuing recitative by the unknown librettist, and its origins are considered. Here and elsewhere, the Leipzig cantata librettist appears to have relied on Geistliche Poesien in zwey Theilen (Sacred poems in two parts), published in Halle in 1720 by the budding theologian Johann Jacob Rambach.
In his recitative, Rambach begins with Adam’s fall and later laments:
Die ganze Welt ist ein Spital
Wo eine Schaar von unzählbarer Zahl
An tausend Seuchen lieget.
Der fühlet in der Brust
Das hitzge Fieber böser Lust,
Den macht der Ehrgeitz mißvergnüget;
Wenn die Begierde nach dem Geld
Den dritten auf der Folter hält.
Und wer kann alle Marter zählen,
Die Adams krancke Kinder quälen;
Wer giebt sich nun auf diesen Jammer-Plan
Zum Artzt und Helfer an?
The entire world is a hospital
Where a throng of countless number
Lies afflicted by a thousand plagues.
One feels within his breast
The heated fever of sinful joy,
Ambition makes that one dissatisfied;
When craving after money
Binds the third one to the rack,
And who can count all the torments
That torture Adam’s ailing children;
Who would now, on this scene of misery,
Declare himself physician and helper?
The librettist of the Bach cantata does not stop with a description of original sin as the cause but gets straight to the point with his lament regarding the state of the world:
Die ganze Welt ist nur ein Hospital,
Wo Menschen von unzählbar großer Zahl
Und auch die Kinder in der Wiegen
An Krankheit hart darniederliegen.
Den einen quälet in der Brust
Ein hitzges Fieber böser Lust;
Der andre lieget krank
An eigener Ehre hässlichem Gestank;
Den dritten zehrt die Geldsucht ab
Und stürzt ihn vor der Zeit ins Grab.
Der erste Fall hat jedermann beflecket
Und mit dem Sündenaussatz angestecket.
Ach! Dieses Gift durchwühlt auch meine Glieder.
Wo find ich Armer Arzenei?
Wer stehet mir in meinem Elend bei?
Wer ist mein Arzt, wer hilft mir wieder?
The entire world is but a hospital
Where humans in uncountably great number
And also children in the cradle
Lie grimly low with illness.
The one is tortured in his breast
By a heated fever of evil desire;
The other lies sick
By the hateful stench of self-honor;
Avarice consumes the third,
Which hurls him before his time into the grave.
The Fall of man has stained everyone
And infected them with the leprosy of sin.
Ah! This poison also ravages my limbs.
Where shall I, poor one, find remedy?
Who stands beside me in my misery?
Who is my physician who will restore me to health?
Taking up the powerful Baroque language of the recitative, the “erste Fall” (Adam’s Fall) and the helpful physician, already introduced by Moses, are bound in the associated aria to a verse from Jeremiah 8, where it is asked: “Ist denn keine Salbe in Gilead, oder ist kein Arzt da? Warum ist denn die Tochter meines Volks nicht geheilt?” (22; Is there no balm in Gilead, or is no physician there? Why, then, is the daughter of my people not healed?). In the text by Johann Jacob Rambach there is, in the same place, a passage from the Book of Wisdom: “Es heilte sie weder Kraut noch Pflaster, sondern dein Wort, Herr, welches alles heilet” (16:22; Neither herb nor plaster healed them but rather your word, Lord, which heals everything). Bach’s librettist drew on both biblical passages to formulate this passage focused on Jesus as rescuer:
Ach, wo hol ich Armer Rat?
Meinen Aussatz, meine Beulen
Kann kein Kraut noch Pflaster heilen
Als die Salb aus Gilead.
Du, mein Arzt, Herr Jesu, nur
Weißt die beste Seelenkur.
Ah, where shall I, poor one, get counsel?
My leprosy, my boils,
Neither herbs nor poultice can heal
Other than the balm of Gilead.
Only you, my physician, Lord Jesus,
Know the best cure for the soul.
The ensuing recitative turns out to be a prayer, for which the librettist draws upon the Sunday Gospel reading:
O Jesu, lieber Meister,
Zu dir flieh ich;
Ach stärke die geschwächten Lebensgeister,
Erbarme dich, du Arzt und Helfer aller Kranken,
Verstoß mich nicht
Von deinem Angesicht,
Mein Heiland, mache mich von Sündenaussatz rein,
So will ich dir
Mein ganzes Herz dafür
Zum steten Opfer weihn
Und lebenslang vor deine Hülfe danken.
O Jesus, dear master,
To you I flee;
Ah, strengthen my weakened vital spirits,
Have mercy, you physician and helper of all the sick,
Do not banish me
From your countenance,
My savior, make me
Clean of the leprosy of sin.
Then I shall consecrate to you
My entire heart in return
As constant offering
And give thanks, lifelong, for your help.
This “lifelong thanks” takes the form of a hymn of thanksgiving, an aria:
A chorale strophe taken from Johannes Heermann’s 1630 hymn Treuer Gott, ich muß dir klagen (Faithful God, I must lament to you) draws together the train of thought for the entire libretto:Öffne meinen schlechten Liedern,
Jesu, dein Genadenohr;
Wenn ich dort im höheren Chor
Werde mit den Engeln singen,
Soll mein Danklied besser klingen.
Open to my artless songs,
Jesus, your ear of grace;
When I in the superior choir there
With the angels am singing,
My song of thanks shall sound better.
Ich will alle meine Tage
Rühmen deine starke Hand,
Daß du meine Plag und Klage
Hast so herzlich abgewandt.
Nicht nur in der Sterblichkeit
Soll dein Ruhm sein ausgebreit’:
Ich wills auch hernach erweisen
Und dort ewiglich dich preisen.
I will, all my days,
Praise your mighty hand
Because you my torment and lament
Have so sincerely averted.
Not only in this mortal life
Shall your glory be spread abroad:
I will bear witness to it hereafter
And praise you there eternally.
Bach’s composition, based on a six-movement libretto in a pattern typical of the era, is dominated by the expansively designed setting of the psalm text at the beginning. Surprisingly, however, this movement does not restrict itself to traditional approaches but moves into the territory of the chorale arrangement. To the first level, the four-part chorus’s performance of the psalm text in a motet-like, predominantly fugal texture, the composer adds a second dimension, also a four-part texture comprising cornet (with recorders at the octave) and three trombones that sound the chorale Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Sincerely do I long) line by line in long note values. Between the two—at least in the movement’s first half—is a harmonically dense, three-part texture of oboes and string instruments presenting a wide band of sigh motives. In addition, the opening line of the chorale melody appears at the beginning of the movement in the continuo. A device that indicates what is coming, it signals to the listener that the chorale melody will be central to musical events. The high artistic demands of this movement are indicated by the fact that it incorporates up to ten independent parts. But more important than this artificial measure is the inner cohesion achieved by musical means: the listener’s knowledge of the text of the chorale Herzlich tut mich verlangen, taken for granted, enables the simultaneous experience of the sung psalm text and the chorale, performed wordlessly. In addition, the thematic material that appears to be independent of the chorale turns out to be derived from it and in this way creates a multidimensional effect. In particular, the motivic similarity is unmistakable between the fugue theme “Es ist nichts gesundes an meinem Leibe” and the last line of the chorale, “O Jesu, komm nur bald” (O Jesus, but come quickly). Similarly, the sigh motives in the oboes and strings in the first section of the movement can be traced back to the appeal “O Jesu” in this very same chorale and thus be understood to be its continuation.
After this extraordinarily challenging opening chorus, the remaining movements are noticeably withdrawn. In the aria “Ach, wo hol ich Armer Rat?” the bass voice is joined only by the basso continuo, a common means of making manifest a sense of anguish and abandonment. The stubborn motivic repetitions may be interpreted as a depiction of limited options. The soprano aria, the next to last movement, offers the opposite. Textually presented as “music within the cantata,” the instruments dominate, with a cheerful sequence of alternating and amicable cooperation of recorders, on the one hand, and oboes and string instruments, on the other. The closing chorale, Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele (Rejoice greatly, O my soul), carefully avoids any connection to the gloom of the beginning.