This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe BWV 34.2 / BC A 84
Pentecost, June 1, 1727
In its form for the first day of Pentecost, this cantata (BWV 34.2) belongs to Bach’s late period and, by all appearances, was first performed in May 1746 or 1747. It is unlikely that the cantata was first performed in either of Leipzig’s main churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, but rather—if we are not completely mistaken—the Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche), in nearby Halle.1 These inferences are prompted by several remarkable aspects of Bach’s holograph manuscript.The Thomaskantor was quite sparing in his use of expensive manuscript paper, and there are over one hundred cases of his using the lower staff systems on a page, left vacant after writing out a complex movement with many voices, to notate a separate piece with fewer parts. Whether these are fair copies or composing scores has no bearing on the situation. In the case of our Pentecost cantata, however, the composer set up a foolproof notational scheme in which he wrote the first recitative on the same page as the middle portion of the first movement, with the instruction “Recitativ so nach dem ersten folget” (Recitative thus follows the first). To drive the point home, there is, at the da capo sign after the end of the middle section just mentioned, the notation “Nach Wiederhohlung des Da Capo folgt sub signo . . . das Tenor Recitativ und die Alt Aria et sic porro” (After repetition of the da capo there follows below the sign . . . the tenor recitative and the alto aria and so forth). It is scarcely imaginable that Johann Sebastian Bach would have used these notes and explanations for a composition of his own with only five movements. More plausibly, the score was to be loaned or given away, and the annotations were meant for the manuscript’s receiver, quite likely Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who added to the score at several places where his father had entered very simple notation.
The evidence for May 1746 as the performance date in Halle is that only a few weeks earlier Wilhelm Friedemann had taken office as organist and music director of the Church of Our Lady, and his father may have wanted to ease his son’s first steps in a new field of activity.2 However, there does exist a cantata by Wilhelm Friedemann for the first day of Pentecost in 1746 whose text begins “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten” Fk. 72 (Whoever loves me will hold my word). One would therefore have to assume that Bach’s son had performed two cantatas on May 29, 1746. However, no new composition by Wilhelm Friedemann is documented for the following year, and this could speak for a performance on May 21, 1747. The memorable meeting between J. S. Bach and the king of Prussia took place only two weeks before the putative performance date.3 Father and son undertook the journey to Potsdam together, and one can easily imagine that Friedemann might have taken the occasion to ask his father for the favor of a cantata dedicated to the quickly approaching high holiday.
The annotations to the score mentioned above also support the conclusion that Wilhelm Friedemann received only the score from Leipzig and had to arrange for the preparation of performance parts himself. Fully copied parts would have required no instructions as to the sequence of movements. It is possible that J. S. Bach may have had parts prepared for his own use, but this question must remain open. In this case, simultaneous performances in Halle and Leipzig would have occurred. A Leipzig performance—if it in fact took place—would have been only in part a first performance. Only the two recitatives were newly composed for Pentecost. All of the other movements go back to a wedding cantata of the same name (BWV 34.1), which Bach seems to have reused several times. The wedding version, only fragmentarily preserved, was evidently first prepared for the nuptials of a clergyman. In any case, its concluding movement is eloquent:
Gib, höchster Gott, auch hier dem Worte Kraft,
Das so viel Heil bei deinem Volke schafft:
Es müße ja auf den zurücke fallen,
Der solches läßt an heilger Stätte schallen. . . .
Sein Dienst, so stets am Heiligtume baut,
Macht, daß der Herr mit Gnaden auf ihn schaut.
Give, Most High God, here too power to the word
That creates so much salvation for your people:
It must indeed redound upon those
Who let it resound in holy places. . . .
His service, ever cultivated in the sanctuaries,
Makes the Lord look upon him with grace.
For a reperformance of the wedding cantata, these specific formulations were replaced by more general expressions, such as:
Ein Danklied soll zu deinem Throne dringen
Und ihm davor ein freudig Opfer bringen.
A song of thanks shall reach your throne
And bring a joyful offering before him.
Of the seven movements in the first version, three were adopted in the Pentecost cantata: the opening and closing choruses of the first part, to be performed before the ceremony, and the aria at the beginning of the second part, to be performed afterward. Where possible, the unidentified librettist of the Pentecost cantata took characteristic and formative language from the original, thus demonstrating considerable understanding of the connection between text and music. Overall, the new libretto concerns the popular metaphor of the human heart as the dwelling of God. It immediately takes up the beginning of the reading from John 14:23: “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten, und mein Vater wird ihn lieben, und wir werden zu ihm kommen und Wohnung bei ihm machen” (Whoever loves me will keep to my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him). The juxtaposition of “Tempeln” (temples) of the soul and “Hütten” (refuges) of the heart, long familiar in the early Bach cantatas, is seen once again in this relatively late cantata text.4 The opening movement of the wedding cantata begins:
O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe,
Entzünde der Herzen geweihten Altar.
O eternal fire, O source of love,
Enkindle our hearts’ consecrated altar.
It became:
O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe,
Entzünde die Herzen und weihe sie ein.
Laß himmlische Flammen durchdringen und wallen,
Wir wünschen, o Höchster, dein Tempel zu sein,
Ach laß dir die Seelen im Glauben gefallen.
O eternal fire, O source of love,
Enkindle our hearts and consecrate them.
Let heavenly flames pervade and seethe,
We wish, O Most High, to be your temple.
Ah, let our souls please you in faith.
The first recitative then clearly states:
Drum sei das Herze dein;
Herr, ziehe gnädig ein.
Therefore, may my heart be yours;
Lord, enter it with grace.
The following aria, “Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Seelen, / Die Gott zur Wohnung ausersehn” (Blessed are you, you chosen souls, / Whom God has selected for his dwelling), had in its original version the bucolic image of Jacob and Rachel from Numbers, the fourth book of Moses, as its theme:
Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Schafe,
Die ein getreuer Jakob liebt.
Sein Lohn wird dort am größten werden,
Den ihm der Herr bereits auf Erden
Durch seiner Rahel Anmut gibt.
Blessed are you, chosen flock,
Whom a faithful Jacob loves.
His reward will be at its greatest,
Which the Lord, already on Earth
Gives to him, through his Rachel, grace.
The last recitative of the Pentecost cantata also stays with the image of the dwelling of God but translates it to the church:
Erwählt Gott die heilgen Hütten,
Die er mit Heil bewohnt,
So muß er auch den Segen auf sie schütten,
So wird der Sitz des Heiligtums belohnt.
Der Herr ruft über sein geweihtes Haus
Das Wort des Segens aus:
Friede über Israel.
If God chooses the holy tabernacles,
Which he inhabits with salvation,
Then he must also pour blessings upon them,
That the seat of the sanctuary be rewarded.
The Lord calls out over his consecrated house
These words of blessing:
Peace upon Israel.
“Peace upon Israel”: this word of blessing from the psalmist is paraphrased differently in the wedding and Pentecost cantatas, but always in accordance with the concern of the work.
Bach’s composition presents a large festive ensemble setting in the broadly executed opening chorus, evoking the image of eternally blazing flames, as well as in the terse, powerful closing movement. As Arnold Schering wrote, its “fiery start and agility of the instruments [free themselves] of the ‘Hurry to those holy steps’ (Eilt zu denen heiligen Stufen) of the original version and meet here, with the feeling of thanksgiving in the highest degree. Earlier, this chorus ended the first part of the wedding cantata, before the sermon. Bach left alone its powerful terseness and homophonic form, which, in the Pentecost cantata, brings the whole to an almost unexpectedly quick conclusion.”5 The alto aria in the middle of the cantata is, in Schering’s words, “a world-famous piece, and one of the most beautiful that Bach ever wrote.”6 It unites, in the attachment to the original wedding text, “pastoral idyll and devoted shepherd love”: “This lovely mutual swaying of the two-part melody structure above the tranquil bass, the tender, swelling bending of the motive itself, the duetting . . . finally finding one another in thirds and sixths—hardly ever has a lovers’ dalliance been more delightfully represented with sonorous enchantment.”7
Footnotes
- Our understanding of this cantata’s date of origin was radically altered by the discovery of a printed text booklet in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg for use by an audience member at St. Nicholas or St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The date on the booklet’s cover, 1727, shows that the work was composed roughly twenty years earlier than previously thought and only shortly after the secular cantata BWV34.1, on which it is based. See Schabalina (2008, 65–68).—Trans.↵
- May 1746 is now understood to be the date of reperformance.—Trans.↵
- Schulze here refers to J. S. Bach’s visit to King Frederick II of Prussia at Potsdamon May 7, 1747, when the king presented Bach with a theme upon which Bach extemporaneously improvised a fugue. Bach later composed a collection of fugues (or ricercars), canons, and a trio sonata on the “royal theme,” which he published in September of that year under the title Das musikalische Opfer BWV 1079.—Trans.↵
- See note 1.—Trans.↵
- Schering (1950, 92).—Trans.↵
- Schering (1950, 92).—Trans.↵
- Schering (1950, 91).—Trans.↵