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Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig BWV 26 / BC A 162
Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, November 19, 1724
Bach composed and performed the cantata Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig BWV 26 (Ah, how fleeting, ah, how empty) in November 1724 as part of his annual cycle of chorale cantatas; it is for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. Its text is based on the hymn of the same name by Michael Franck. As is usually the case for Bach’s chorale cantatas, some of the chorale’s strophes appear without change in the libretto, while others are paraphrased to form recitatives and arias. Franck’s thirteen-strophe chorale deals with the transitoriness of this life. The main idea comes from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible, which begins with the words “Es ist alles eitel” (It is all vanity).Michael Franck literally knew this all too well. Franck was born in 1609 in Schleusingen, Thuringia, and his father died when he was only thirteen. Family resources allowed only two of his brothers to go to school, so he was forced to learn a trade in spite of being highly talented. After finishing an apprenticeship as a baker in Coburg, he should have been able to travel as a journeyman baker but was prevented from doing so by the dangers of war. As a result, he became a master baker in the city of his birth but was hardly able to live a happy life: burglary and street robbery as well as plunder by marauding soldiers left him completely destitute. With his wife and child he finally fled to Coburg but was only able to find a makeshift livelihood as an assistant. In spite of all this, he developed his skills in the evenings and on holidays as a poet and composer in the hope of making a career and establishing himself in those fields. In fact, in 1644 he was unexpectedly appointed teacher for the lowest classes in the city school in Coburg. With the end of the Thirty Years’ War a few years later, Franck could finally dedicate himself fully to his poetic and musical goals. He made connections to Simon Dach, Georg Neumark, and others, and in 1659 he was made poet laureate and later was inducted into the Elbschwanenorden (Order of Elbe Swans).
Michael Franck was never able to overcome his lack of formal education, and so in many of his hymns the earthy old style of the Meistersingers shows through. Even so, he often succeeded in creating verses of great popular appeal with a strong sense of faith.
For the most part, his chorales deal with the opposition between temporality, which was to be poorly regarded, and eternity, to be striven for. This certainly applies to the chorale Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig, written only four years after the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1652. The remarkable construction of its strophes—two unrhymed verses and three identically rhyming verses—allowed the poet to introduce highly various ideas: life and things, joy and knowledge, honor and writing poetry. This scheme limits the tedious search for suitable rhymes to the closing commentary. The opening strophe shows this procedure in its purest form:
Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig,
Ist der Menschen Leben!
Wie ein Nebel bald entsteht
Und auch wieder bald vergehet,
So ist unser Leben, sehet!
Ah, how fleeting, ah, how empty
Is the life of humankind!
Just as a mist quickly develops
And also quickly fades away again,
So is our life, behold!
The approach in the structure of the recitatives and arias is not at all similar. The librettist, whose name remains unknown, worked freely here. He created the first aria from strophes 2 and 3. Regarding the fleeting nature of life, Franck wrote:
Wie ein Strom beginnt zu rinnen
Und mit Laufen nicht hält innen,
So eilt unsere Zeit von hinnen.
As a stream begins to flow
And in its course is not contained,
So our time hurries away from us.
And as to human joy:
Wie sich wechseln Stund und Zeiten,
Licht und Dunkel, Fried und Streiten,
So sind unsere Fröhlichkeiten.
As hours and eras change,
Light and darkness, peace and strife,
So do our times of happiness.
The aria version reads (not terribly elegantly):
So schnell ein rauschend Wasser schießt,
So eilen unsre Lebenstage.
Die Zeit vergeht, die Stunden eilen,
Wie sich die Tropfen plötzlich teilen,
Wenn alles in den Abgrund schießt.
As quickly as rushing water shoots,
So our days of life hurry by.
Time passes, the hours hurry,
As the raindrops suddenly divide,
When everything shoots into the abyss.
But the librettist achieves a masterstroke of summary in the first recitative: in only seven verses he combines the main ideas from just as many chorale strophes:
Die Freude wird zur Traurigkeit,
Die Schönheit fällt als eine Blume,
Die größte Stärke wird geschwächt,
Es ändert sich das Glücke mit der Zeit,
Bald ist es aus mit Ehr und Ruhme,
Die Wissenschaft und was ein Mensche dichtet,
Wird endlich durch das Grab vernichtet.
Joy turns into sadness,
Beauty withers like a flower,
The greatest strength is weakened,
Fortune changes with time;
It is soon over with honor and fame,
Knowledge and whatever a person fashions
Is finally destroyed by the grave.
The last two verses here are based on Franck’s ninth strophe, where the fleeting nature of human creativity is expressed by the following Abgesang:1
Der, so Kunst hat liebgewonnen
Und manch schönes Werk ersonnen,
Wird zuletzt vom Tod erronnen.
The one who has dearly acquired skill
And conceived many a beautiful work
Is at last overrun by death.
Like the first, the second aria makes use of the chorale only to a limited extent. Franck’s tenth strophe is rather deliberate and almost fatalistic:
Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig
Sind der Menschen Schätze!
Es kann Glut und Flut entstehen,
Dadurch, eh wir uns versehen,
Alles muß zu Trümmern gehen.
Ah, how fleeting, ah, how empty
Are the treasures of humankind!
Blazes and floods may arise
Through which, before we are aware,
All must go to ruin.
The librettist pulls out all the stops of his literary skill to give vent to his access of holy rage:
An irdische Schätze das Herze zu hängen,
Ist eine Verführung der törichten Welt.
Wie leichtlich entstehen verzehrende Gluten,
Wie rauschen und reißen die wallenden Fluten,
Bis alles zerschmettert in Trümmern zerfällt.
To hang one’s heart upon earthly treasures
Is a seduction of the foolish world.
How easily do consuming embers form,
How the surging floods rush forth and tear apart,
Until all is smashed in fallen rubble.
In a by now familiar fashion, the last recitative summarizes several chorale strophes, in this case, the eleventh and twelfth, which concern rule and worldly power. The last, unaltered strophe of Franck’s chorale serves as finale, with an unexpectedly powerful turn of phrase at the end:
Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig
Sind der Menschen Sachen!
Alles, alles, was wir sehen,
Das muß fallen und vergehen.
Wer Gott fürcht, bleibt ewig stehen.
Ah, how fleeting, ah, how transitory
Are the concerns of humankind!
Everything, everything that we see,
It must fall and pass away.
Whoever fears God abides eternally.
Bach begins his composition with a chorale arrangement in keeping with his second annual cantata cycle at Leipzig: the cantus firmus performed line by line, with an independent orchestral part. In contrast to the procedure in many sibling works, however, the structural elements are intentionally left unconnected. The shadowy ascending and descending runs, symbolizing the vanitas mundi (vanity of the world), are reserved for the strings, woodwinds, and basso continuo; alto, tenor, and bass apprehensively chant their text in syllabic declamation, often in unison; and only the chorale melody creates coherence and steadfastly follows its path.
Tone painting is particularly pronounced in the first aria, where tenor and obbligato flute first illustrate the quick rushing of water and hurry of time with long garlands of sixteenth notes and then vividly trace the scattering of raindrops. The way the solo violin is employed as a second obbligato instrument merits close attention: it sometimes follows the contours of the flute part, sometimes grounding it harmonically, or maintains a suitable distance alongside it or at the ready for a complementary interplay.
The alto recitative, with unusually powerful expressivity, in whose text seven chorale strophes are woven, is followed by the bass aria, a dance movement in the style of a bourrée. Yet the stiff texture in the oboes seems scarcely appropriate to “Verführung der törichten Welt” (seduction of the foolish world); the image of the danse macabre seems more proximate. The quick passages in the middle of the aria belong to the context of the end times, where blazes and floods, smashing and rubble are at issue. The last recitative and the concluding chorale are able to alter little; it is only the final “Wer Gott fürcht, bleibt ewig stehen” (Whoever fears God abides eternally), sure of victory, that leads back to solid ground.
Footnotes
- In the AAB formal scheme of the chorale, known as Bar form, the Abgesang is the concluding B section.—Trans.↵