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Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: An Interactive Companion

Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret BWV 31 / BC A 55

Easter Sunday, April 21, 1715

This cantata belongs to the surprisingly small group of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach for Easter Sunday. The relatively modest corpus of works for this high-ranking feast day suggests that there may have been losses in the transmission of sources, possibly after Bach’s death and in association with the distribution of his musical estate, but possibly during his lifetime as well. (Dilatory borrowers come to mind in this regard.) However, a more plausible theory would seem to be that after 1750 Bach’s feast day cantatas—among them those meant for Easter—went to the oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, who, as music director of the Liebfrauenkirche in Halle at midcentury, had great need of exactly that sort of church music and that they went astray in his later years for various reasons.

And so, at present there are three known cantatas meant for the first day of Easter: the partita per omnes versus Christ lag in Todes Banden BWV 4, presumably a very early work; the composition known as the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4, an arrangement of a secular cantata (Entfliehet, verschwindet, entweichet ihr Sorgen BWV 249.1); and the cantata Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret BWV 31 (Heaven laughs, the earth rejoices). This work (BWV 31.1) originated in 1715, a year after Bach’s promotion to concertmaster at the court of Weimar. It was the first Easter cantata by the newly appointed concertmaster for the congregation at the Weimar castle church. The situation was similar nine years later in Leipzig, when Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret was performed in April 1724 (BWV 31.2); it was the first Easter cantata by Bach in his new position as the cantor of St. Thomas School. A surviving text booklet from that year confirms that, in accordance with the custom in Leipzig, the work was performed in the morning main service in St. Nicholas and in the afternoon at vespers in St. Thomas. The same sequence demonstrably took place again in 1731, and we have documentation of some further performances, while others are hinted at.

Thus our cantata assumed a permanent, immovable place in Bach’s repertoire. But this is in no way obvious, and indeed for reasons regarding the text. Several decades ago, Arnold Schering formulated the problems thusly:

For ourselves, who since ancient times have associated the concept of Easter with thoughts of triumph, victory, and resurrection, Salomon Franck’s . . . text takes a turn that is difficult to understand insofar as it turns away from the joy of Easter in its course and ultimately leads to thoughts of death. The usual path would have been to take up the deathly horrors of the earlier Passion and gradually transition to the brightness of Easter morning. Instead, poet and musician write pieces for the last two movements that could just as well appear in a funeral cantata.1


Johann Sebastian Bach found the text in a collection entitled Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer (Protestant Devotional Offering), which he was obliged to use for his cantata compositions after its publication by Salomon Franck, the Weimar ducal consistory secretary, in early 1715. “Triumph, victory, and resurrection” are found particularly at the beginning of Franck’s cantata text for Easter in the aria that Bach composed as a choral movement:

Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret 
Und was sie trägt in ihrem Schoß;
Der Schöpfer lebt! der Höchste triumphieret 
Und ist von Todesbanden los.
Der sich das Grab zur Ruh erlesen, 
Der Heiligste kann nicht verwesen.

The heavens laugh! The earth rejoices 
And what it carries in its bosom;
The Creator lives! the Most High triumphs 
And is from the bonds of death released.
Who chose the grave for rest, 
The holiest cannot be decayed.


With the last line, the poet alludes to a verse in Psalm 16 that belongs to the lesson for Easter Monday: “Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht dem Tode lassen und nicht zugeben, daß dein Heiliger verwese” (10; For you will not leave my soul in death and will not allow your holy one to be decayed). If this reference to death seems simply apt, what follows increasingly strengthens the “turning away from the joy of Easter,” as Schering calls it. Instead of the Gospel reading for the Sunday from Matthew 16, the second movement, a recitative, draws on the Revelation of St. John on several occasions, as in these verses from the first chapter: “Fürchte dich nicht! ich bin der Erste und der Letzte und der Lebendige; ich war tot, und siehe, ich bin lebendig von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit und habe die Schlüssel der Hölle und des Todes” (17–18; Fear not! I am the first and the last and the living one; I was dead, and behold, I am living from eternity to eternity and have the keys of hell and of death). The recitative’s conclusion proclaims:

Der sein Gewand
Blutrot bespritzt in seinem bittern Leiden,
Will heute sich mit Schmuck und Ehren kleiden.

He whose clothing
Was spattered blood red in his bitter suffering 
Will today be clothed in jewels and honor.


It is also quoting the Revelation of St. John where, in the nineteenth chapter, it says of the appearance of Christ: “Und er war angetan mit einem Kleide, das mit Blut besprengt war; und sein Name heißt ‘Das Wort Gottes’” (13; And he was dressed in a garment that was spattered with blood, and his name was “The Word of God”). “Fürst des Lebens, starker Streiter” (prince of life, powerful champion) begins the text of the aria that follows, rhymed immediately, however, with “des Kreuzes Leiter” (of the ladder of the Cross) and speaking of chains and “Purpurwunden” (purple wounds).

It is not until the closing lines of the ensuing recitative that the Resurrection from the Gospel of St. Mark is taken up, depicting the scene with Mary Magdalene and Mary Jacobi at the grave:

Ein Christe flieht
Ganz eilend von dem Grabe! 
Er läßt den Stein,
Er läßt das Tuch der Sünden 
Dahinten
Und will mit Christo lebend sein.

A Christian flees
Quite quickly from the grave! 
He leaves the stone,
He leaves the cloth of sins 
Behind
And wishes to be alive with Christ.


It seems to be symptomatic for the author’s conception of the text that while he indeed pursues the idea of resurrection further in the next aria text, he does so indirectly by way of Adam’s Fall:

Adam muß in uns verwesen, 
Soll der neue Mensch genesen, 
Der nach Gott geschaffen ist.

Adam must decay within us 
If the new man is to be saved
Who is created in God’s image.


Dying as a precondition of resurrection is also at the center of the last movement pair, a recitative and the aria that begins “Letzte Stunde, brich herein, / Mir die Augen zuzudrücken” (Last hour, break in, / And close my eyes). Salomon Franck’s cantata libretto closes with the chorale strophe “So fahr ich hin zu Jesu Christ” (Then I go forth to Jesus Christ), which was added as early as 1575 to Nikolaus Herman’s chorale Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist (When my final hour is at hand).

For the composer, this wide-ranging but rather problematic text posed a challenge that he was willing to employ any and all means to overcome. “Employ any and all means” is to be understood as both compositional and technical details of performance. Only rarely did Bach deploy more extensive performance forces than he did here. Five each of strings and woodwinds, as well as trumpets and drums, contest one another in the opening movement alone, a sonorously magnificent sonata featuring unison fanfare motives by the entire orchestra, whose subtle concertizing reflects Bach’s ongoing engagement with the works of his Italian contemporaries. Augmented by a five-part chorus, the choral movement “Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret” begins with the entire magnificent ensemble and indeed with two identical fugue expositions that differ only in the text that underlies them—lines 1 and 2, then lines 3 and 4. The fugal voices are alternately unaccompanied or heralded by unison fanfare motives by the entire orchestra. At times, it seems to anticipate the “et Resurrexit” from the Mass in B Minor BWV 232. At the text line “Der sich das Grab zur Ruh erlesen” the outward splendor turns to quiet inwardness, although after a few adagio measures the quick opening tempo is resumed. The closing section is determined by the line of text “Der Heiligste kann nicht verwesen,” whereby the formal principle of canon becomes symbolic, representing Law, Dogma, the Unshakable.

Canonic constructions with the same significance also characterize the larger part of the bass recitative. Essential to the aria that follows, “Fürst des Lebens, starker Streiter,” are the bass voice as embodiment of power and the angular, marchlike rhythm symbolizing bravery and majesty. In contrast, the recitative and aria for tenor that follow, with their harmony-saturated texture for strings, yield scarcely any hint of the character of their text. Philipp Spitta, writing in the first volume of his Bach biography, published in 1873, called Salomon Franck’s “Adam muß in uns verwesen” “one of those sets of words which express no emotion, but are of purely dogmatic import.”16 The soprano aria probes even deeper, its pensive dialogue between voice and obbligato oboe blending with the sonorous voices of the united string instruments and sounding like a choral movement. The “Letzte Stunde, brich herein” of the contemporary text is connected with a quotation of the melody, whose meaning cannot be in doubt: the first strophe of Nikolaus Herman’s chorale: “Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist, werd ich im Grab nicht bleiben” (When my final hour is at hand, I shall not remain in the grave). The cantata concludes with the last strophe of the same chorale, quite subdued after the brilliance of its beginning. An instrumental voice ascends to celestial heights, so to speak, an eloquent symbol for the lines “So fahr ich hin zu Jesu Christ” and “der wird die Himmelstür auftun, mich für’n zum ew’gen Leben” (Who will open the door of heaven, leading me to eternal life).

Footnotes

  1. Schering (1942, 47). 

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