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Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz sei BWV 46 / BC A 117
Tenth Sunday after Trinity, August 1, 1723
This cantata, Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz sei BWV 46 (Behold and see if there be any sorrow), originated in the summer of 1723; it is for the tenth Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel lesson for this Sunday appears in Luke 19 and gives the account of how Jesus foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple:
And as he came near, he beheld the city and wept over it and said: If you only knew at this time what serves the cause of your peace! But it is now hidden from your eyes. For the time will come over you that your enemies will build a corral around you and your children, besiege you and threaten you from all sides, and will raze you and leave no stone standing on another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.
And he went into the Temple and began to drive out those who sold and bought and said to them, It is written: “My house is a house of prayer”; but you have made it a den of murderers. And he taught daily in the Temple. But the high priests and the scribes and the most prominent among the people considered how they might destroy him and could not find what they might do, for all of the people hung upon him and listened to him. (41–48)
The unknown librettist takes up the first part of this lesson in our cantata. To begin, he chooses a verse from Lamentations concerning the sorrow of Jerusalem at its devastation: “Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz sei wie mein Schmerz, der mich troffen hat. Denn der Herr hat mich voll Jammers gemacht am Tage seines grimmigen Zorns” (1:12; Behold and see if any sorrow is like my sorrow, which has affected me. For the Lord has made me full of misery on the day of his fierce anger). The first recitative comments upon this opening with an apportioning of blame:
So klage du, zerstörte Gottesstadt,
Du armer Stein- und Aschenhaufen!
Laß ganze Bäche Tränen laufen,
Weil dich betroffen hat
Ein unersetzlicher Verlust
Der allerhöchsten Huld,
So du entbehren mußt
Durch deine Schuld.
Lament, then, you destroyed city of God,
You poor heap of stones and ashes!
Let whole streams of tears flow,
For you have been struck by
An irreplaceable loss
Of the very highest favor.
Thus you must be bereft
Through your own guilt.
After a comparison to the destruction of Gomorrah, the recitative concludes by reaffirming:
Du achtest Jesu Tränen nicht,
So achte nun des Eifers Wasserwogen,
Die du selbst über dich gezogen,
Da Gott, nach viel Geduld,
Den Stab zum Urteil bricht.
You do not heed Jesus’s tears,
So heed now the tidal waves of passion
That you have drawn upon yourself,
Since God, after much patience,
Breaks his staff in judgment.
With that, the transition to the following aria is prepared, which concerns the catastrophe that could have been foreseen:
Dein Wetter zog sich auf von weiten,
Doch dessen Strahl bricht endlich ein
Und muß dir unerträglich sein,
Da überhäufte Sünden
Der Rache Blitz entzünden
Und dir den Untergang bereiten.
Your storm arose from far away,
But at last its flash breaks out
And must be unbearable to you,
For heaped sins ignite
The lightning strike of vengeance
And prepare your downfall.
The ensuing recitative is ready with a quick generalization and moral:
Doch bildet euch, o Sünder, ja nicht ein,
Es sei Jerusalem allein
Vor andern Sünden voll gewesen!
Man kann bereits von euch dies Urteil lesen:
Weil ihr euch nicht bessert
Und täglich die Sünden vergrößert,
So müsset ihr alle so schrecklich umkommen.
But do not imagine, O sinners,
That Jerusalem alone
Above all others was full of sin!
One can already read this judgment of you:
Because you do not repent
And daily increase your sins,
Thus you may all have to perish horribly.
After this undisguised threat the final aria offers words of comforting encouragement, as well as the prospect of protection and rescue:
Doch Jesus will auch bei der Strafe
Der Frommen Schild und Beistand sein,
Er sammelt sie als seine Schafe,
Als seine Küchlein liebreich ein;
Wenn Wetter der Rache die sünder belohnen,
Hilft er, daß Fromme sicher wohnen.
Yet Jesus will, even in punishment,
Be shield and support for the devout.
He gathers them, like his sheep,
Lovingly, like his little chicks.
When storms of vengeance reward the sinners,
He helps the devout to live in safety.
The libretto closes with a strophe from Johann Matthäus Meyfarth’s 1633 chorale O großer Gott von Macht (O great God of might).
Bach’s composition of this source text, rich in imagery and contrast, is a weighty and demanding contribution to his first annual cycle of cantatas at Leipzig. As expected, the privileged position goes to the wide-ranging opening chorus, whose first half (without the sixteen-measure instrumental introduction) appeared ten years later as the Qui tolis in the B Minor Missa BWV 232.1, nucleus of the later Mass in B Minor BWV 232. Concerted and motet-like textures combine with canon and fugue to create an indissoluble unity. This is particularly true of the first part of the chorus, in which a structural texture of two recorders, a rather neutral passagework in the three upper strings, and the vocal component alternate in canonic and free episodes, at once independent and yet artistically connected with each other. Together with the required intensity of expression and the wealth of chromaticism, this leads to challenges of performance-practice that probably posed several problems for Bach in 1723. In any case, it is striking that in the first section the voices are supported by wind instruments: the soprano by a corno da tirarsi, a slide trumpet, and alto and tenor each by an oboe da caccia. It remains unclear whether Bach was aiming at a more balanced sound or whether he simply wanted to provide his choral singers greater security. In the middle of the movement, the allocation of tasks becomes easier to understand, as a quickening of tempo coincides with the beginning of a fugue on “Denn der Herr hat mich voll Jammers gemacht am Tage seines grimmigen Zorns.” At first in four parts, the fugue later expands to five parts with the entry of the recorders.
Strings and recorders also accompany the first recitative, with its lament over the “destroyed city of God.” A stubbornly recurring figure in the woodwinds may be drawn from the image of “Jesu Tränen” (Jesus’s tears)—or perhaps the comparison, drawn immediately afterward, of the tears with “des Eifers Wasserwogen” (the tidal waves of passion).
Around 1930, Arnold Schering published an impressive description of the aria that follows:
Once again, Jerusalem’s destruction is taken up, but this time with a clear allusion to the contemporary den of iniquity. For Bach, that was the impetus for one of the mightiest storm arias created by the Baroque era. Anyone familiar with its symbolism will find it all here, the motives of terror and savagery with which composers once worked: the dotted eighths; the tremolos; the downward-driving and upward-flaring figures; and the trumpet, symbolic timbre of the fearful and inescapable. Right away, the first ascent B–D–F–A (reminiscent of the Kreuzstab cantata) is rousing in its effect, and as far back as 1864 the sustained high F was compared to the gruesome color of blood red. The voice is skillfully embedded in this depiction of storm; it serves in part as melodic backbone, in part as a lively element of tone painting. In the middle section, where the concept of the “unbearable” is to be emphasized and the accompaniment falls back to a muffled pianissimo, the instrumental bass creeps chromatically upward, only to sink again a few measures later, equally eerily. The sheet lightning subsides for a while, reflected only in the three lightning strokes of the bass, which plays out the grim conclusion, with the descending F–D-flat–B on “und dir den Untergang” (and for you the downfall).1
A simply declaimed alto recitative is followed by the aria “Doch Jesus will auch bei der Strafe” (Yet Jesus will, even in punishment), a movement with another unusual feature. This time it is the absence of the basso continuo; instead, two oboi da caccia serve as a midrange foundation for two recorders and the alto voice. This bassetto effect, as it is called, generally has a symbolic meaning and here can be understood in relation to the innocence of the “Frommen” (devout) described in the text. However, a more compelling suggestion is that the avoidance of the otherwise obligatory bass—often the musical representation of the “verkehrte Welt” (perverted world)—is here aimed at Jesus’s act of redemption, which is not rationally explicable. The closing chorale of our cantata also contains deviations from the familiar. Rather than restricting itself to a simple four-part texture, it allows the instruments a certain independence. In particular, the recorders provide interludes between the lines of the chorale, thereby recalling their important obbligato function in the first half of the opening movement.
Footnotes
- Schering’s text first appeared as an introduction to a pocket score published by Eulenburg Verlag.↵