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O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort BWV 60 / BC A 161
Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, November 7, 1723
Within a span of only seven months, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote two very different cantatas on Johann Rist’s 1642 hymn O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (O eternity, you word of thunder). The later work (BWV 20), performed in June 1724, serves as the expansive and elaborate inauguration of Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas. It thus exhibits the mixture of literal and freely paraphrased chorale strophes typical of the cycle, as well as a wide variety of settings. However, this work, the earlier of the two, is a dialogue cantata, a genre found only very rarely in Bach’s oeuvre. On the title page of his performance materials, Bach made a special note of the work’s particularity: “Dialogus Zwischen Furcht und Hoffnung. Furcht: O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort. Hoffnung: Herr, ich warte auf dein Heyl” (Dialogue between Fear and Hope. Fear: O eternity, you word of thunder. Hope: Lord, I await your salvation). Indeed, these two text incipits indicate the character of the work and its libretto: it concerns anxiety preceding death and the hope for a blessed end in faith. Ideas of this kind often characterize the late Trinity season.This is true of the present work as well, created for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity in 1723, Bach’s first year at Leipzig. It was first performed on November 7 of that year. Since Easter fell on an unusually early date in 1723, there were two further Sundays after Trinity, offering Bach and his librettists further opportunities to give artistic form to the “end times” character of the season.
As just mentioned, the unidentified librettist places the opening strophe of a hymn by Johannes Rist at the beginning of the cantata text. In hymnals of the period, it appears in the section marked “Von der Ewigkeit und Hölle” (Of eternity and hell) beneath the heading “Das Weh der Ewigkeit” (The woe of eternity):
O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort,
O Schwert, das durch die Seele bohrt,
O Anfang sonder Ende!
O Ewigkeit, Zeit ohne Zeit,
Ich weiß vor lauter Traurigkeit
Nicht, wo ich mich hinwende.
Mein ganz erschrocknes Herze bebt,
Daß mir die Zung am Gaumen klebt.
O eternity, you word of thunder,
O sword that bores through the soul,
O beginning without end!
O eternity, time out of time,
From great sorrow, I know
Not where I should turn.
My quite terrified heart trembles
So that my tongue cleaves to my palate.
In the cantata text, this chorale strophe is juxtaposed to a verse from the penultimate book of Genesis, dealing with the death of Jacob and the decrees to his sons: “Herr, ich warte auf dein Heil” (Lord, I await your salvation). The same exclamation is found near the end of Psalm 119 in a more expansive form than that adopted in Bach’s cantata: “Herr, ich warte auf dein Heil und tue nach deinen Geboten” (166; Lord, I await your salvation and act according to your commandments).
In this opening movement, the chorale strophe and biblical passage are assigned to Fear and Hope, respectively. The true dialogue, however, is reserved for the freely versified movements. In the first recitative, the wailing outcry “O schwerer Gang zum letzten Kampf und Streite” (O hard road to the last battle and strife) is answered, consolingly, by Hope:
Mein Beistand ist schon da,
Mein Heiland steht mir ja,
Mit Trost zur Seite.
My assistance is already here,
My savior indeed stands
With comfort at my side.
Once again, Fear cries:
Die Todesangst, der letzte Schmerz
Ereilt und überfällt mein Herz
Und martert meine Glieder.
The fear of death, the last agony,
Overtakes and attacks my heart
And tortures my limbs.
Hope attempts to reassure Fear:
Ich lege diesen Leib vor Gott zum Opfer nieder,
Ist gleich der Trübsal Feuer heiß,
Genung, es reinigt mich zu Gottes Preis.
I lay down this body before God in sacrifice,
If indeed the fire of affliction is hot
Enough, it purifies me to praise God.
The last part of the colloquy concerns sin and forgiveness, beginning with Fear: “Doch nun wird sich der Sünden große Schuld vor mein Gesichte stellen” (But now will the great guilt of my sins appear before my face). It closes with Hope:
Gott wird deswegen doch kein Todesurteil fällen.
Er gibt ein Ende den Versuchungsplagen,
Daß man sie kann ertragen.
God will, though, make no death sentence on that account.
He puts an end to the torments of temptation
So that one can endure them.
The associated aria condenses this dialogue to a fiery exchange in which Fear and Hope speak from verse to verse in alternation:
Mein letztes Lager will mich schrecken;
Mich wird des Heilands Hand bedecken;
Des Glaubens Schwachheit sinket fast,
Mein Jesus trägt mit mir die Last.
Das offne Grab sieht greulich aus;
Es wird mir doch ein Friedenshaus.
My final place will terrify me;
The savior’s hand will cover me;
Faith’s weakness nearly sinks,
My Jesus carries the burden with me.
The open grave looks dreadful;
But for me it will be a home of peace.
In spite of every word of encouragement, Fear gains the upper hand, and the voice of Hope falls silent in what follows.
“Der Tod bleibt doch der menschlichen Natur verhaßt” (Death remains hateful to human nature), reads the ensuing recitative, concerned with danger, with “Höllenrachen” (vengeance of hell), and with “ewigem Verderben” (eternal damnation). Instead of the powerless Hope, another voice is heard here, entering the action from above, as it were. “Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben von nun an” (Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on) is heard three times, the first two abbreviated. This verse comes from Revelation 14:13 and belongs to the words spoken to John by a voice from heaven. Ultimately, Fear finally conquers itself and concludes with the words:
Wohlan!
Soll ich von nun an selig sein:
So stelle dich, o Hoffnung, wieder ein.
Mein Leib mag ohne Furcht in Schlafe ruhn,
Der Geist kann einen Blick in jene Freude tun.
Well, then!
Should I from now on be blessed,
Then present yourself, O Hope, once more.
My body may rest without fear in sleep,
The spirit can cast a glance upon that joy.
The cantata libretto concludes with a strophe from Franz Joachim Burmeister’s 1662 chorale Es ist genug, so nimm, Herr, meinen Geist (It is enough, so take, Lord, my spirit):
Es ist genung,
Herr, wenn es dir gefällt,
So spanne mich doch aus!
Mein Jesus kömmt,
Nun gute Nacht, o Welt;
Ich fahr ins Himmelshaus.
Ich fahre sicher hin mit Frieden,
Mein großer Jammer bleibt darnieden.
Es ist genung.
It is enough,
Lord, if it pleases you,
Then unharness me!
My Jesus comes,
Now good night, O world;
I journey into heaven’s house.
I travel safely there in peace,
My great sorrow remains down below.
It is enough.
Bach begins his composition with a multidimensional chorale arrangement on Johann Schop’s 1642 melody. Despite the work’s original title, a true dialogue scarcely takes place in this opening movement. For the most part, the positions are irreconcilable and rigidly opposed to one another. On one side is the chorale melody, unflinching and surging forward, given to Fear, as embodied by the alto and a supporting horn, together with repeated tones in the strings and basso continuo and pitiless broken chords threatening disaster. On the other, calming motives in the two oboi d’amore, with their timbre approaching that of the human voice, now with echo-like imitations, as if searching for one another in the dark, now in parallel thirds and sixths, together with the expressive arioso pathos of the tenor with its relentlessly repeated “Herr, ich warte auf dein Heil” (Lord, I await your salvation). As if continuing this opposition, the recitative that follows broadens into arioso at two key points: in the middle of the movement, the word “martert” (tortured) gives the alto, Fear, the opportunity to spin forth a tormented melisma with truly tortured chromaticism in triple meter; and at the end of the movement, the tenor, Hope, shows with gently rocking coloraturas that the “Ertragen” (endurance) in the text need not be as hard as originally anticipated.
The difference seen in the opening movement between the uncompromising rigidity of Fear and the aspiring animation of Hope also characterizes to a large extent the second aria movement, the duet found in the middle of the cantata. In contrast, the two obbligato parts—an oboe d’amore and a solo violin—are even more willing to approach one another. Admittedly, they are not willing to abandon their original profile, characterized by the rhythmically emphasized theme of the woodwind, which at the beginning seems derived from the alto part, as well as the fleeting, ungrounded passages in the strings that seem to depict the nullity of human striving and action. The last recitative, in which the alto, Fear, is opposite the bass as the vox Christi, changes abruptly between the restless recitative declamation of the alto and the unwavering majesty of the arioso bass in the foreground. The concluding four-part movement, with its flickering harmonies, reflects the excessive subjectivity of the chorale melody, composed by Bach’s predecessor at Mühlhausen, Rudolf Ahle. More than two hundred years after Bach’s cantata, this melody had another moment in the sun: Alban Berg wove it into the last movement of his violin concerto in 1935, dedicated to the memory of Manon Gropius: “Dem Andenken eines Engels” (To the memory of an angel).