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Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein BWV 2 / BC A 98
Second Sunday after Trinity, June 18, 1724
This cantata, composed in 1724, is based on the chorale of the same name, the main hymn for the second Sunday after Trinity. The content of the chorale is closely associated with the Sunday Gospel reading, the parable of the great evening meal from the dinner table teachings of Jesus in Luke 14. The path is not long from this account to the source of the chorale, Psalm 12. The Gospel reading recounts the dismay over the absence of the invited guests at dinner and their threadbare excuses; the chorale is drawn from Psalm 12:1–8 and its complaint of the decline of the pious and the superior strength of the wicked, but also its trust in divine assistance:Help Lord! The Holy are in decline, and the believers are few among the children of humankind. Each speaks useless things with the others; they are hypocrites and teach out of divided hearts. May the Lord eradicate all hypocrisy and the tongues that speak pridefully, that say: With our tongues we shall prevail, we shall speak: Who is our Lord? Because the needy are destroyed and the poor sigh, I will arise, speaks the Lord, I want to create a help for him who longs thereafter. The speech of the Lord is purer than refined silver in an earthen crucible, purified seven times. You, Lord, shall keep them and protect us from this generation for ever! For everywhere there are the godless, where such worthless men rule among the people.
The hymn, documented as early as 1524, on Psalm 12, Salvum me fac, Domine, belongs to a series of “etliche Psalm, zu geistlichen Liedern / deutsch gemacht / Durch Dr. Martinum Luther” (several psalms made into sacred songs in German by Dr. Martin Luther) as they appear in hymnaries of the period. Luther’s six-strophe translation hews closely to the psalmist’s train of thought while expanding, explaining, and clarifying the source text. Luther formed the first strophe from “Hilf Herr! Die Heiligen haben abgenommen und der Gläubigen ist wenig unter den Menschenkindern” (Help, Lord! The saints have diminished, and the faithful are few among the children of humankind). The chorale version reads:
Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein
Und laß dichs doch erbarmen!
Wie wenig sind der Heilgen dein,
Verlassen sind wir Armen;
Dein Wort man nicht läßt haben wahr,
Der Glaub ist auch verloschen gar
Bei allen Menschenkindern.
Ah God, look down from heaven
And indeed have mercy!
How few are your saints,
We wretches are abandoned;
Your word is not believed,
Faith is also quite extinguished
Among all children of humankind.
The version set to music by Bach, adapted from the chorale by an unknown poet, is much more distant from the psalmist’s original. As seen so frequently in Bach’s chorale cantatas, only a few strophes are adopted word for word from the chorale text; all the others are more or less freely adapted. The version of Psalm 12:2, “Einer redet mit dem andern unnütze Dinge; sie heucheln und lehren aus uneinig Herzen” (Each speaks useless things with the others; they are hypocrites and teach out of divided hearts), takes the following form in Luther’s conception:
Sie lehren eitel falsche List,
Was Eigenwitz erfindet;
Ihr Herz nicht eines Sinnes ist,
In Gottes Wort gegründet;
Der wählet dies, der andre das,
Sie trennen uns ohn alle Maß
Und gleißen schön von außen.
They teach idle, false cunning,
Invented by their own wit;
Their heart is not of one mind,
Founded in God’s word;
One chooses this, the other that,
They divide us without all measure
And gleam beautifully outwardly.
From this, the cantata librettist forms a recitative that clearly refutes any attempt to substitute understanding (here called “Witz” [wit]) and reason for faith. It closes with a powerful comparison to the pair of opposites, “außen schön / innen schlimm” (outwardly beautiful / inwardly evil), choosing the grave to do so; he could have used the same vocabulary to describe the so-called apples of Sodom:1
Sie lehren eitel falsche List,
Was wider Gott und seine Wahrheit ist;
Und was der eigen Witz erdenket
O Jammer! der die Kirche schmerzlich kränket—,
Das muß anstatt der Bibel stehn.
Der eine wählet dies, der andre das,
Die töricht Vernunft ist ihr Kompaß.
Sie gleichen denen Totengräbern,
Die, ob sie zwar von außen schön,
Nur Stank und Moder in sich fassen
Und lauter Unflat sehen lassen.
They teach idle, false cunning,
Which opposes God and his truth
And which their own wit invents.
O misery! That painfully afflicts the church,
That must stand in place of the Bible.
The one chooses this, the other that,
Foolish reason is their compass.
They resemble those graves of the dead,
Which, though they indeed are outwardly beautiful,
Contain only stench and rot
In which nothing but filth can be seen.
The associated aria is developed from the psalmist’s complaint of hypocrisy, pride, and self-importance by way of Luther’s chorale strophe:
Tilg, o Gott, die Lehren,
So dein Wort verkehren!
Wehre doch der Ketzerei
Und allen Rottengeistern,
Denn sie sprechen ohne Scheu:
Trotz dem, der uns will meistern!
Erase, O God, the teachings
That pervert your word!
But resist the heresy
And all the spirit-rabble,
For they speak without shame:
Resist him who wants to master us!
The ensuing recitative is devoted in full to the assurance of God’s assistance; the words of Psalm 12:5, “Weil denn die Elenden verstöret werden und die Armen seufzen” (Because the needy are destroyed and the poor sigh), resound unmistakably in its opening lines:
Die Armen sind verstört,
Ihr seufzend Ach, ihr ängstlich Klagen
Bei soviel Kreuz und Not,
Wodurch die Feinde fromme Seelen plagen,
Dringt in das Gnadenohr des Allerhöchsten ein.
Darum spricht Gott: Ich muß ihr Helfer sein!
The poor are destroyed,
Their sighing ah, their anxious plaints,
At so much cross-bearing and distress,
Whereby the enemies plague pious souls,
Penetrate the ear of grace of the Most High.
Therefore, God says: I must be their helper!
The last aria uses Psalm 12:6: “Die Rede des Herrn ist lauter wie durchläutert im irdenen Tiegel, bewähret siebenmal” (The speech of the Lord is purer than refined silver in an earthen crucible, purified seven times), as well as the ideas introduced in Luther’s poem of probation through the cross:
Durchs Feuer wird das Silber rein,
Durchs Kreuz das Wort bewährt erfunden.
Drum soll ein Christ zu allen Stunden
Im Kreuz und Not geduldig sein.
Through fire the silver becomes pure,
Through the cross the Word is proven.
Therefore, a Christian should at all times,
In cross-bearing and distress, be patient.
The cantata’s conclusion is provided, as usual, by the unaltered final strophe of the source chorale:
Das wollst du, Gott, bewahren rein
Für diesem arg’n Geschlechte,
Und laß uns dir befohlen sein,
Daß sichs in uns nicht flechte.
Der gottlos Hauf sich umher findt,
Wo solche lose Leute sind
In deinem Volk erhaben.
Would you keep it pure, God,
In the face of this evil generation,
And let us be commended to you,
That they do not mingle with us.
The godless mob is found all around,
Where such vile folk are
Exalted among your people.
What is particularly striking about Bach’s composition is the form of the opening movement. In contrast to the majority of Bach’s chorale cantatas, the instrumentation does not perform an independent structural function. Instead, we have a texture that is purely vocal in its conception; it is a chorale motet, intentionally archaic in design. The chorale melody, whose ancestry lies in the pre-Reformation era, is heard line by line in the alto, while the other three voices prepare the chorale lines with fugal material and then provide counterpoint. Four trombones provide timbral support to the four voices; the three upper voices also have strings, and the alto, the cantus firmus part, has two oboes as well. The basso continuo is the only independent instrumental part. Its function as an autonomous bass foundation is the only deviation from what is otherwise a pure motet principle.
With his decision in favor of this compositional model,2 Bach was able to realize several objectives at the same time: he could provide variety with regard to the opening movements in his recently begun cycle of chorale cantatas, and he could arrange the ancient melody of Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein in the tradition of the organ chorale and chorale motet, thereby obviating the otherwise unavoidable obstacle that a modern concerted treatment of the Phrygian melody would have presented.
In the first recitative for tenor and basso continuo, two short sections are highlighted by the shift to an arioso Adagio: here, two verses from Luther’s second chorale strophe are quoted in their original form. A similar emphasis is found in the following aria, roughly at the beginning of the last third of the piece. Otherwise, this aria is characterized by lively competition between the alto and a solo violin, in particular because of the nearly continuous presence of the head motive, which seems to want to bring to mind the entreaty “Tilg, o Gott, die Lehren.”
The second recitative embeds the bass voice in four-part chords in the strings. The assurance of God’s assistance is highlighted; it is sounded as a contoured arioso. In the tenor aria “Durchs Feuer wird das Silber rein,” a four-part accompanimental texture, unusually dense harmonically, is similarly characteristic—although a motive for the ambitious five- and six-part textures remains unclear. In contrast to this, the warning “ein Christ soll zu allen Stunden in Kreuz und Not geduldig sein” is effectively emphasized, as it is performed without the protective sound of the instruments. The simply set closing chorale rounds out a work that attracted considerable attention as early as the eighteenth century. Copies of the entire work are documented in Saxony and Thuringia, as well as copies of the motet-like opening chorus in Berlin and even Vienna.
Footnotes
- “At the time, a favored vehicle for the comparison between outward appearance and inner condition . . . was the Sodomsapfel (apple of Sodom), the fruit of a shrub living near the Dead Sea.” See the discussion of Wiederstehe doch der Sünde BWV 54/ BC A 51.—Trans.↵
- Krummacher (1995).↵