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Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot BWV 39 / BC A 96
First Sunday after Trinity, June 23, 1726
As was customary for the era, the contents of this cantata are closely connected to the Gospel reading for the Sunday after Trinity, the parable of the rich man and the pauper Lazarus in Luke 16. However, due to a remarkable misunderstanding, for decades the cantata was regarded as “political” music, as a kind of commentary by Bach on events in Leipzig during his time there. It was the Dresden musicologist Rudolf Wustmann who put this idea forward. In a presentation entitled “Bach’s music in worship service" (Bachs Musik im Gottesdienst) to a church choral association convention in Dessau in 1909, Wustmann carefully ventured the suggestion that Bach might have composed the large, beautiful cantata for a “great celebration of Protestant charity” on June 15, 1732. Rudolf Wustmann may have gotten the idea for this hypothesis from a publication by his father, Gustav Wustmann, Leipzig librarian and director of the city archive. In 1889 the elder Wustmann published an essay in an anthology, Quellen zur Geschichte Leipzigs (Sources for the history of Leipzig), in which he reproduced numerous extracts from a handwritten chronicle by a certain Johann Salomon Riemer.1 A part of this text is concerned with a group known as the Salzburg Emigrants, whose fate was closely bound to a late Counter-Reformation edict by Archbishop Leopold Ernst von Firmian of Salzburg that required Lutheran inhabitants to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. As a result of the edict, almost twenty thousand people emigrated in 1731 and 1732, many of them seeking a new homeland in the thinly settled eastern provinces of Prussia. On their journey to the North, several refugee caravans stopped in Leipzig.This placed the city in a particularly unenviable position. In 1697 the Saxon elector, Friedrich August I, had converted to Catholicism in service of his effort to gain the Polish crown. Leipzig, at the time a stronghold of Lutheran orthodoxy, felt itself increasingly called upon to take the sensitivities of the sovereign into consideration in order to preserve a certain measure of independence. Although the Salzburg Emigrants were shown great compassion by city, church, and citizenry, the authorities avoided issuing an official greeting because, as an official report reads, “Leipzig is under rulers who profess the Catholic religion, which our Salzburg Emigrants have abandoned.”2 Nevertheless, it can be neither confirmed nor refuted that the cantata Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot BWV 39 (Break your bread with the hungry) could have been performed on the first Sunday after Trinity in 1732. In any case, Bach cannot have designated the work for this special occasion; instead, the composition and first performance belong to 1726.3 On the other hand, if one supposed that Bach scheduled a reperformance exactly six years later, with or without foreknowledge of the arrival of the exiles, then one would have to assume that he was confident that his choir at that time could master the tricky and challenging opening movement. In June 1732 this would not have been clear at all. For the faculty and students of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School, it was the end of an era marked by unrest and inadequate space situations caused by the extensive renovation of the school building.
If, despite this long-held belief, Bach did not mean his cantata for the Salzburger Emigrants, the text has even less to do with that external circumstance. It appears in a cantata text cycle printed in Meiningen in 1704; one must wonder whether the author is to be sought in that southwestern Thuringian capital.
In many cases, the layout of the cantata libretti in the anonymous annual cycle is similar to that of our cantata: at the beginning, a passage from the Hebrew Bible, followed by recitatives and arias; a New Testament passage is followed by recitatives and arias, with a chorale strophe at the end.4 In this case, two verses from Isaiah 58 provide the evocative introduction:
Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, und die, so im Elend sind, führe ins Haus. So du einen nackend siehst, so kleide ihn, und entzeuch dich nicht von deinem Fleisch. Alsdann wird dein Licht hervorbrechen wie die Morgenröte, und deine Besserung wird schnell wachsen, und deine Gerechtigkeit wird vor dir hergehen, und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn wird dich zu sich nehmen. (7–8)
Break your bread with the hungry, and those who are in misery, take into your house. Should you see a naked person, clothe him, and do not withdraw yourself from those of your own flesh. And then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your recovery will quickly increase, and your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will take you to itself.
Building on these words, the unknown librettist formulates an elaborate admonition to active compassion and empathy in recitatives and arias. In the first recitative, the unknown poet, a lover of the Alexandrine verse form, indulges his predilection for long lines:
Der reiche Gott wirft seinen Überfluß
Auf uns, die wir ohn ihn auch nicht den Odem haben.
Sein ist es, was wir sind; er gibt nur den Genuß,
Doch nicht, daß uns allein nur seine Schätze laben.
Bounteous God casts his abundance
Upon us, who without him do not even have breath.
It is his, what we are; he gives only pleasure,
Yet not that his treasures should bless us alone.
At the close the text reads:
Barmherzigkeit, die auf dem Nächsten ruht,
Kann mehr als alle Gab ihm an das Herze dringen.
Compassion that falls upon one’s neighbor
Can, more than all gifts, penetrate his heart.
The associated aria generalizes these ideas:
Seinem Schöpfer noch auf Erden
Nur im Schatten ähnlich werden,
Ist im Vorschmack selig sein.
Sein Erbarmen nachzuahmen,
Streuet hier des Segens Samen,
Den wir dorten bringen ein.
To become like one’s creator still on Earth,
Though only in shadowy similarity,
Is a foretaste of blessedness.
To emulate his mercy
Sows the seeds of blessing here,
Which we will harvest there.
The New Testament passage comes from Hebrews 13: “Wohlzutun und mitzuteilen vergesset nicht; denn solche Opfer gefallen Gott wohl” (16; To do good and to share, do not forget, for such offerings please God well). The ensuing aria puts these possibilities into perspective:
Höchster, was ich habe,
Ist nur deine Gabe.
Wenn vor deinem Angesicht
Ich schon mit dem deinen
Dankbar wollt erscheinen,
Willst du doch kein Opfer nicht.
Highest, whatever I have,
Is only your gift.
If, before your visage,
I should, with all that is yours,
Wish to appear thankful,
You still want no offering.
The personal mode of address and the promise to exercise compassion continue in the recitative, once again in Alexandrines:
Wie soll ich dir o Herr! denn sattsamlich vergelten,
Was du an Leib und Seel mir hast zugut getan?
How should I, O Lord! sufficiently repay you
For what you have done for me in body and soul?
The long text concludes:
Ich bringe, was ich kann, Herr! laß es dir behagen,
Daß ich, was du versprichst, auch einst davon mög tragen.
I bring what I can, Lord! may it please you
That I may one day gain from it what you promise.
A strophe from David Denicke’s 1648 hymn Kommt, laßt euch den Herren lehren (Come, let the Lord teach you) summarizes the thread of ideas:
Selig sind, die aus Erbarmen
Sich annehmen fremder Not,
Sind mitleidig mit den Armen,
Bitten treulich für sie Gott.
Die behülflich sind mit Rat,
Auch womöglich mit der Tat,
Werden wieder Hülf empfangen
Und Barmherzigkeit erlangen.
Blessed are they who, out of mercy,
Attend to the affliction of others,
Who are compassionate with the poor,
Pray faithfully for them to God.
Those who are helpful with their counsel
And, where possible in action,
Will in turn receive help
And themselves gain mercy.
The richness of text in the opening passage from Isaiah informs the conception of the opening movement in Bach’s composition. The complex movement, 218 measures in length, begins with an instrumental section whose “broken” manner can certainly be understood in relation to the gestures of the breaking and distribution of bread. As the instruments are joined by the choir, the first paragraph of the Isaiah passage is further developed. The gravity and seriousness of “Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot” call for and receive a fugal treatment in the central part of this first section. The rest of the text, beginning with “So du einen nackend siehest,” is instead treated line by line, in the manner of a motet, and is more withdrawn compared to the fugal texture. The same gradation between fugal and chordal textures defines the closing section, beginning at the shift to
8 meter. In contrast to the other text passages, the opening and closing sections are powerfully emphasized by their fugal treatment: “Alsdann wird dein Licht hervorbrechen, wie die Morgenröte,” as well as “und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn wird dich zu sich nehmen.”
The first recitative for bass, simply declaimed, is followed by the alto aria “Seinem Schöpfer noch auf Erden.” It is a truly characteristic movement in Bach’s cantatas, in which the buoyant charm of a dance type, here situated between minuet and passepied, is united with strict counterpoint to lend the text a particular emphasis.
With the New Testament passage, Bach begins the second half of the cantata, customarily performed after the sermon in Leipzig—and, with this division, he deviates from the intentions of the librettist. The text “Wohlzutun und mitzuteilen” is given to the bass, the vox Christi, which, as so often, is accompanied only by the basso continuo. Through a subtle technique of repetition and variation, voice and accompaniment strive to clarify the gravity of the biblical passage. A lighter contrast is afforded by the setting of the aria “Höchster, was ich habe” (Highest, whatever I have) with soprano and obbligato recorders. The last recitative, with its quite personal expression, is embedded in chords in the strings before the four-part concluding chorale on the melody Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele (Rejoice greatly, O my soul) leads to a confident conclusion.
Footnotes
- The anthology, edited by G. Wustmann, was published in two volumes in 1889 and 1895. The essay is not titled.—Trans.↵
- “Leipzig unter einer Herrschaft stehet, die sich zur Katholischen Religion bekennet, welche unsere Salzburgische Emigranten verlassen haben” (Casper 1982).↵
- The texts for BWV 39, movements 4 through 7, appear in the Christoph Birkmannannual cycle discovered in Nuremberg by Christine Blanken. Birkmann studied at the University of Leipzig from December 1, 1724, to early September 1727. His text cycle includes many works performed by Bach during Birkmann’s period of study in Leipzig. It is believed that BWV 39 was performed on June 23, 1726, in Leipzig (Blanken 2015b, 67).—Trans.↵
- Blankenburg (1977); Schulze (2002b).↵