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Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende BWV 27 / BC A 138
Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, October 6, 1726
This cantata was composed in the autumn of 1726 for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel reading for this Sunday is found in Luke 7:11–17 and gives the account of Jesus raising the boy at Nain from the dead:And it happened afterward that he went into a city called Nain; and his disciples went with him and many people. But as he came near the city gate, behold, a corpse was carried out who was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and many people of the city went with her. And as she saw the Lord, she cried to him, and he said to her: Do not cry! And he went close and touched the bier, and the bearers stood. And he spoke: Young man, I say to you, stand up! And the dead one arose and began to speak; and he gave him to his mother. And there came upon everyone a great fear, and they praised God and spoke: A great prophet has appeared among us, and God has visited his people! And this talk of him was heard in the entire land of Judea and in all surrounding lands.
The unknown author of our cantata’s text takes up this reading and its interpretive tradition and concentrates on fear of death and preparation for it, salvation, longing for heaven, and a blessed departure from the world. The libretto begins with a chorale strophe interleaved with freely versified lines of recitative, thus reviving the tradition of Bach’s chorale cantata annual cycle. The chorale is a funeral hymn written by Ämilie Juliane, countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, in 1686. Its first strophe reads:
Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende?
Hin geht die Zeit, her kommt der Tod,
Ach wie geschwinde und behende
Kann kommen meine Todesnot!
Mein Gott, ich bitt durch Christi Blut,
Machs nur mit meinem Ende gut!
Who knows, how near to me is my end?
Time goes forth, death approaches.
Ah, how speedily and agilely
My agony of death can come!
My God, I pray through the blood of Christ,
Only make my end good!
The interpolation of recitatives creates a complex structure:
The first recitative concerns a blessed death as the goal of life. At its close it reads:Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende?
Das weiß der liebe Gott allein,
Ob meine Wallfahrt auf der Erden
Kurz oder länger möge sein.
Hin geht die Zeit, her kommt der Tod,
Und endlich kommt es doch so weit,
Daß sie zusammentreffen werden.
Ach wie geschwinde und behende
Kann kommen meine Todesnot!
Wer weiß, ob heute nicht
Der Mund die letzten Worte spricht.
Drum bet ich allezeit:
Mein Gott, ich bitt durch Christi Blut,
Machs nur mit meinem Ende gut!
Who knows how near to me is my end?
Dear God alone knows that,
Whether my pilgrimage on Earth
Might be short or longer.
Time goes forth, death approaches,
And at last it will come so far
That they will meet together.
Ah, how speedily and agilely
My agony of death can come!
Who knows whether or not today
My mouth will speak its final words.
Therefore, I pray for all time:
My God, I pray by the blood of Christ,
Only make my end good!
Drum leb ich allezeit
Zum Grabe fertig und bereit,
Und was das Werk der Hände tut,
Ist gleichsam, ob ich sicher wüßte,
Daß ich noch heute sterben müßte;
Denn Ende gut, macht alles gut!
Therefore, I live at all times
Ready and prepared for the grave,
And what the work of my hands does,
Is as if I surely knew
That even today I had to die;
For a good end makes everything good!
The associated aria harks back to an idea that appeared shortly after 1700 in the cantata libretti of Erdmann Neumeister. Neumeister’s aria begins:
Willkommen! Will ich sagen,
Sobald der Tod ans Bette tritt.
Er bringt den Himmelswagen
Zu meiner frohen Abfahrt mit.
Welcome! I will say
As soon as death steps to my bed.
He brings along the heavenly wagon
For my happy departure.
In our cantata, this becomes:
Willkommen! Will ich sagen,
Wenn der Tod ans Bette tritt.
Fröhlich will ich folgen, wenn er ruft,
In die Gruft,
Alle meine Plagen
Nehm ich mit.
Welcome! I will say
When death steps to my bed.
Happily I will follow when he calls.
Into the tomb,
All my troubles
I will take with me.
Flight from the world, longing for death, and, in particular, separation from the vanities of earthly existence: these characterize the second recitative-aria pair. The recitative reads:
Ach wer doch schon im Himmel wär!
Ich habe lust zu scheiden
Und mit dem Lamm,
Das aller Frommen Bräutigam,
Mich in der Seligkeit zu weiden.
Flügel her!
Ach wer doch schon im Himmel wär!
Ah, were one already in heaven!
I have desire to depart
And with the Lamb,
The bridegroom of all the devout,
To pasture myself in salvation.
Wings, come!
Ah, were one already in heaven!
The aria begins with the traditional farewell of the soul:
Gute Nacht, du Weltgetümmel!
Itzt mach ich mit dir Beschluß;
Ich steh schon mit einem Fuß
Bei dem lieben Gott im Himmel.
Good night, you worldly tumult!
I now make an end with you;
I already stand with one foot
Beside dear God in heaven.
The first strophe of Johann Georg Albinus’s hymn Welt, ade! Ich bin dein müde (World, adieu! I am weary of you) concludes the libretto and summarizes its train of ideas.
In the vocal part of the opening movement, Bach’s composition combines the simply harmonized melody Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten (Whoever only lets dear God rule) with expressive, concentrated recitative episodes and, in the instrumental realm, wide-ranging, bell-like basses, as well as rapid chord progressions in the strings in resolute descending motion with short, pleading motives and sighing passages in the oboes. The greeting of welcome in the first aria appears with an unusually songlike melody in the voice, as well as the darkly tinged obbligato part in the oboe da caccia. When the cantata was reperformed, a second obbligato part for organ was implemented. By all appearances it seems originally to have been meant for cembalo. Even more plausible, not in terms of range but regarding key and instrumental idiom, would be an obbligato lute or similar plucked instrument due to the timbral symbolism associated with its manner of playing. In that light, the cembalo—and, later, the organ—would perhaps not have provided an entirely satisfactory replacement.
The second aria is characterized by an abrupt change from the “good-night greeting of the soul,” with its calm harmonies and slow dance rhythms of the sarabande, to the banal depiction of the “worldly tumult” to be left behind. Remarkably, the aria is given not to the soprano, the soul’s usual personification, but to the bass. For the closing chorale, instead of the familiar simple four-part texture we have a somewhat more challenging five-part composition by Johann Rosenmüller, who composed it in 1649 for the burial of a young daughter of the Leipzig archdeacon Abraham Teller and performed it again three years later for a similar memorial. Finding this work, nearly three-quarters of a century old, caused Bach little trouble; the Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch by Gottfried Vopelius of 1689 contained a recent reprint.