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Wer da gläubet und getauft wird BWV 37 / BC A 75
Ascension, May 18, 1724
This cantata, Wer da gläubet und getauft wird BWV 37 (Whoever believes and is baptized), is for the Ascension of Christ, one of the high feasts of the church year. It was performed for the first time on May 18, 1724. Its text is based on the reading of the feast day, the close of the Gospel of St. Mark, the end of its sixteenth chapter:
At last, as the eleven sat at table, he revealed himself and scolded their unbelief and their hardness of heart, that they had not believed those that had seen him resurrected. And he said to them: Go forth in all the world and preach the Gospel to all creatures. Whoever believes and is baptized, he will be blessed; whoever does not believe, he will be damned. The signs, however, that will follow those who believe are these: in my name they will cast out devils, speak with new tongues, cast out snakes; and should they drink anything harmful, it will not injure them; upon the sick they will lay their hands, so that it will become better with them. And the Lord, after he had spoken with them, was taken up to heaven and sits at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached in all places; and the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word with signs following. (14–20)
The unknown text poet for our cantata begins his libretto with the dictum from the reading: “Wer da gläubet und getauft wird, der wird selig werden” (Whoever believes and is baptized, he will be blessed). The memorable scheme New Testament Bible passage–aria–chorale–recitative–aria–chorale is found in Bach’s cantatas that originated between Easter and Pentecost in 1724 and 1725 and are the work of one and the same author. As in other works in this group, the opening aria interprets the introductory biblical passage:
Der Glaube ist das Pfand der Liebe,
Die Jesus für die Seinen hegt.
Drum hat er bloß aus Liebestriebe,
Da er ins Lebensbuch mich schriebe,
Mir dieses Kleinod beigelegt.
Faith is the pledge of love,
Which Jesus fosters for those who are his.
Therefore, simply from a loving impulse,
When he inscribed me in the book of life,
He has bestowed upon me this medal.
This aria text, with its unpretentious tone and rather matter-of-fact connection between faith and Jesus’s love, is followed by a poetic intensification in the sense of the bridal mysticism of the Song of Songs, in the fifth strophe from Philipp Nicolai’s 1599 chorale Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern:
Herr Gott Vater, mein starker Held,
Du hast mich ewig vor der Welt
In deinem Sohn geliebet.
Dein Sohn hat mich ihm selbst vertraut,
Er ist mein Schatz, ich seine Braut,
Sehr hoch in ihm erfreuet.
Eia, eia!
Himmlisch Leben
Wird er geben
Mir dort oben;
Ewig soll mein Herz ihn loben.
Lord God Father, my strong hero,
You have always loved me, before the world,
In your son.
Your son has betrothed himself to me,
He is my treasure, I am his bride,
Most highly delighted in him.
Eia, eia!
Heavenly life
He will give
To me there above;
Eternally shall my heart praise him.
The ensuing recitative lets us know that the “himmlisch Leben” (heavenly life) cannot be bought with good works but can only be gained through faith:
Ihr Sterblichen, verlanget ihr,
Mit mir
Das Antlitz Gottes anzuschauen?
So dürft ihr nicht auf gute Werke bauen;
Denn ob sich wohl ein Christ,
Muß in den guten Werken üben,
Weil es der ernste Wille Gottes ist,
So macht der Glaube doch allein,
Daß wir vor Gott gerecht und selig sein.
You mortals, do you wish
With me
To look upon the countenance of God?
Then you should build not upon good works;
For though certainly a Christian
Must practice good works
Because it is the earnest will of God,
Yet faith alone ensures
That we before God are justified and saved.
The last line alludes to a place in the letter of Paul to the Romans; chapter 3 reads: “Therefore, we now conclude that the man will be justified without the works of the law, but only through faith” (28). The associated aria follows the train of thought to its conclusion and thus returns to the beginning of the opening biblical passage:
Der Glaube schafft der Seele Flügel,
Daß sie sich in den Himmel schwingt,
Die Taufe ist das Gnadensiegel,
Das uns den Segen Gottes bringt;
Und daher heißt ein selger Christ,
Wer gläubet und getaufet ist.
Faith creates the wings of the soul
That it may soar up to heaven,
Baptism is the seal of grace
That brings us the blessing of God;
And therefore, he is called a saved Christian
Whoever believes and is baptized.
A strophe from Johann Kolrose’s hymn of about 1536, Ich dank dir, lieber Herre (I thank you, dear Lord), takes this up and formulates the concluding plea for forgiveness of sins.
Bach does not reserve the opening words of the Lord for the bass, the vox Christi, but in view of its universal validity, he assigns it to a four-part chorus. Its legalistic character is reflected in the dense counterpoint of the movement, which is partly restful, with rather two-dimensional harmonic progressions, and partly insistent, with hammering tone repetitions that—intentionally or not—remind one of the chorale melody Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot (These are the sacred Ten Commandments).
The first aria belongs to a fairly (and happily) small number of movements in Bach’s cantatas that have not been handed down to us in their entirety. As in several other cases, when Bach’s estate was distributed after his death, first violin parts were erroneously given to heirs receiving scores instead of duplicates as intended. These parts have been lost, along with the scores. The original performing parts, which still exist, do indeed transmit the cantata completely—for the most part—but since the duplicate violin part survives instead of the first chair part, the obbligato solo in the second movement is missing. Scholars needed considerable time to find an explanation for the loss of an instrumental obbligato part in the second aria. As a result, the surviving fragment had to be filled out in the best way possible for performance. It can hardly be assumed that each pitch matches Bach’s intention. At the same time, there is no getting around the need to fill out the fragmentary aria movement.
The chorale movement in the center of the cantata is set with few parts, as in the other works in the group described at the beginning. Here, above a dance-like, animated continuo, the soprano and alto take turns singing either chorale melody phrase by phrase or an ornamented counterpoint. The vox Christi, missing from the first movement, is heard in the recitative accompanied by strings, where the bass is motivated by the text beginning “Ihr Sterblichen, verlanget ihr, / Mit mir / Das Antlitz Gottes anzuschauen?” Also given to the bass is the exhilarated aria in which upward-striving figures compellingly illustrate the wings of faith and the soul’s journey to heaven described in the text. A simple four-part chorale movement concludes the cantata on the pre-Reformation melody Ich dank dir, lieber Herre.