This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget BWV 64 / BC A 15
Third Day of Christmas
This cantata, Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget BWV 64 (See what manner of love the father has shown us), which originated in 1723, is in several respects a sister work to the cantata Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes BWV 40 (For this purpose the son of God is appeared), for the second day of Christmas. First of all, this similarity has to do with the choice of initial Bible text. For our cantata, this is the first verse from 1 John 3; in the case of the sister work, it is verse 8 from the same chapter. Remarkably, the composer entered the origins of both biblical passages on the title wrappers for both sets of original performing materials, perhaps because he became aware only afterward of the remarkable proximity and regarded it as worth recording or perhaps because Bach selected the two texts with the correspondence in mind. A second commonality is the fact that both cantatas include three chorale strophes, as opposed to one or at most two in most other cases. One is tempted to wonder if the two texts were deliberately brought close together—in which case, the question must remain open as to which one served as model for the other.If this question cannot be definitively answered at the moment, several possibilities present themselves that allow us to better understand the specifics of the text and thereby illuminate the genesis of our cantata. Of no little significance is the fact that the author of the text Sehet, welch eine Liebe was successfully identified in 1981.1 His libretto is found in the collection printed in Gotha, GOtt-geheiligtes / Singen / und / Spielen / des / Friedensteinischen / Zions, / Nach allen und jeden / Sonn- und Fest-Tags-Evangelien, / vor und nach der Predigt / angestellet / Vom Advent 1720 bis dahin 1721 (God-sanctified singing and playing in Friedenstein Zion on Gospels for each and every Sunday before and after the sermon, from Advent 1720 to Advent 1721). Although unnamed in the cycle’s title, the author is mentioned in the foreword as Magister Knauer of Schleiz. This must be Johann Oswald Knauer, the son of a clergyman. Knauer was born in 1690 in Gera and began his studies in 1709 in Jena, transferred to the University of Leipzig in 1711, and then transferred to the University of Halle in 1715. Nothing has yet been learned about his activity in Schleiz. However, it is particularly revealing that Knauer's younger sister married the Gotha court composer Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. And the text cycle was primarily meant for Stölzel, who set nearly all of it to music in 1720 and 1721. That the newly minted composer in his new position in Gotha would use a cantata text cycle written for him for this purpose by his brother-in-law seems plausible at the very least. The cycle also served a similar function at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, where the newly appointed court composer, Johann Friedrich Fasch, drew upon Knauer’s texts as much as possible in 1722–23.
The third member of the group is Johann Sebastian Bach. In his first year at Leipzig, he also set texts by Knauer, although only in three instances, as far as we know today. Thus the cantata poem Sehet, welch eine Liebe was set to music by three famous composers: Stölzel, Fasch, and Bach. Stölzel’s and Bach’s works survive today; for Fasch there is at least textual evidence. From these materials it is clear that Fasch and Stölzel composed the text in its entirety, while Bach produced an altered and abbreviated version.
Knauer’s original text begins with a motto, the frequently recurring “Sehet, welch eine Liebe,” and continues with two recitative-aria pairs; the first part of the cantata closes with a chorale strophe. The second part is identical in structure, beginning with a biblical passage (this time from Romans), continuing with two recitative-aria pairs, and closing with a strophe from another chorale. In contrast to this twelve-movement scheme, the version composed by Bach begins with the biblical passage used in Knauer but then leaps to the freely versified material in the second half and continues to the end. Thus, Bach used only six movements from Knauer’s libretto, and the poet’s intention in the “double annual cycle” of two cantatas for each Sunday or a single, large, bipartite composition is reduced to a one-part cantata. However, its scope is increased, as a chorale strophe is inserted before and after the first free text, a recitative.
All in all, Knauer’s text as composed by Bach exhibits very little connection to the Gospel reading for the third day of Christmas. To a much greater extent it concerns the ancient yet ever new theme of renunciation of the world’s temptations, the redemption of sin, and the certainty of heaven. In this regard, the biblical passage at the beginning functions as a guiding principle: “Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget, daß wir Gottes Kinder heißen” (See what manner of love the Father has shown us, that we are called God’s children). Without further ado, the keyword “Liebe” is the subject of a chorale strophe, taken from Martin Luther’s Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (May you be praised, Jesus Christ) of 1524:
Das hat er alles uns getan,
Sein groß Lieb zu zeigen an.
Des freu sich alle Christenheit
Und dank ihn des in Ewigkeit.
Kyrieeleis!
All this he has done for us
To show his great love.
For this let all Christendom rejoice
And thank him for it in eternity.
Kyrieeleis!
After this reminiscence of Christmas, unforeseen in Knauer’s text, a renunciation of the world follows directly, first in a recitative:
Geh, Welt, behalte nur das deine,
Ich will und mag nichts von dir haben,
Der Himmel ist nun meine,
An diesem soll sich meine Seele laben.
Go, world, keep only what is yours,
I seek and want to have nothing from you.
Heaven is now mine,
On this my soul shall refresh itself.
The somewhat clumsy verse is only in part due to Knauer; it is also in part the result of an unknown arranger’s intervention. Whether Bach himself intervened here cannot be determined. In any case, the close of the recitative is also changed with the addition of “Drum sag ich mit getrostem Mut” (Therefore, I say with confident spirit) to introduce another chorale strophe. This connects to the first strophe of Balthasar Kindermann’s hymn: “Was frag ich nach der Welt / Und allen ihren Schätzen” (What do I ask of the world / And all of its treasures). Only then does the aria finally appear, which in Knauer immediately follows the recitative:
Was die Welt
In sich hält,
Muß als ein Rauch vergehen.
Aber was mir Jesus gibt
Und was meine Seele liebt,
Bleibet fest und ewig stehen.
What the world
Holds in itself
Must, like smoke, pass away.
But what Jesus gives to me
And what my soul loves
Stays strong and stands forever.
The comparison with the transitoriness of smoke was introduced by the arranger; Knauer’s text reads:
Was die Welt
In sich hält,
Muß mit ihr zugleich vergehen.
What the world
Holds in itself
Must pass away together with it.
Changes were also made to the beginning of the recitative that follows. In Knauer it reads:
Mein Erbteil ist gewiß,
Kein Teufel kann mir solches rauben,
Und ich besitz es schon im Glauben.
My inheritance is certain,
No devil can rob me of it,
And I possess it already through faith.
In the text used by Bach this became:
Der Himmel bleibet mir gewiß,
Und den besitz ich schon im Glauben.
Der Tod, die Welt und Sünde,
Ja selbst das ganze Höllenheer
Kann mir als einem Gotteskinde
Denselben nun und nimmermehr
Aus meiner Seele rauben.
Heaven remains certain for me,
And I possess it already in faith.
Death, the world, and sin,
Yes, even the whole host of hell
Cannot rob it from me, as a child of God,
Now or ever
From my soul.
The unknown poet stays true to the keyword “Welt” until the end. The last aria begins “Von der Welt verlang ich nichts, / Wenn ich nur den Himmel erbe” (From the world I desire nothing / If I only inherit heaven), and the closing chorale is the fully appropriate strophe from Johann Franck’s hymn Jesu, meine Freude: “Gute Nacht, o Wesen, das die Welt erlesen, mir gefällst du nicht” (Good night, O state, that the world has chosen, you please me not).
As expected, Bach’s composition of this libretto—a substantial reworking of Johann Oswald Knauer’s text—places the most weight on the opening movement. The cantata performed the day before, Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes BWV 40, begins with a three-part festive concerted movement with a fugal section in the center. In this case, however, Bach sets the text from 1 John as a rather old-fashioned strict motet fugue. The support of the voices by the traditional Stadtpfeiffer ensemble of cornettino and three trombones enhances the archaic character of the movement, just as its distinctive theme with its emphatically declarative “Sehet” at the beginning produces great liveliness and comprehensibility. The first, unpretentious chorale movement on the melody Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ is followed by the alto recitative “Geh, Welt, behalte nur das deine,” a more extensively elaborate movement than usual, which, with its scales incessantly rising into emptiness, symbolizes worldly effort that comes to nothing. The recitative leads directly into the second chorale movement, “Was frag ich nach der Welt,” in which the sweeping three upper voices, serene and deliberate, confront an excessively busy bass voice that moves almost schematically from a rhythmic perspective—a rare and rather curious contrast, but one entirely motivated by the text. For the rejection of the world’s invalidity—“Was die Welt / in sich hält, / muß als wie ein Rauch vergehen”—Bach chooses the gavotte, a worldly, even frivolous dance type. A testament to worldliness is, however, not the intent. Much more, the meaningless, garrulous, empty phrases and the hackneyed melodic and harmonic commonplaces point to what is actually meant and formulated in the text. The final aria for alto and oboe d’amore, however, appears without any ambiguity whatsoever. It dedicates its unfeigned melody and self-assured pastoral air to the confessional “Von der Welt verlang ich nichts.” The closing chorale leads from the friendly region of G major back to the home key of E minor.