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Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ BWV 67 / BC A 62
Quasimodogeniti, April 16, 1724
This cantata is for the first Sunday after Easter, which is named Quasimodogeniti, derived from the introit “Quasi modo geniti infantes” (1 Peter 2:2), which can be translated as “just as the newly born [desire the sincere milk of the word].” The Gospel reading for this Sunday is found in John 20:On the evening, however, of the same first day of the week, as the disciples were gathered and the doors were locked out of fear of the Jews, Jesus came and entered their midst and spoke to them: Peace be with you! And as he had said that, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples became happy, that they had seen the Lord. Then Jesus, however, spoke to them: Peace be with you! Just as the Father has sent me, so I send you. And as he had said that, he blew upon them and spoke to them: Receive the Holy Spirit! Whichever of you release your sins, unto them are they released; and whichever of you retain them, unto them they are retained. (19–23)
There follows the account of the “doubting Thomas,” culminating in the words of Jesus: “Selig sind, die nicht sehen und doch glauben!” (Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe!).
Without naming the disciple Thomas, the unknown librettist of our cantata places Thomas’s religious doubts and the overcoming of them at the center of the text. Beforehand, however, the librettist focuses on a connection to the events of Easter, placing a passage from chapter 2 of 2 Timothy at the beginning of the cantata libretto: “Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christum, der auferstanden ist von den Toten” (8; Hold in remembrance Jesus Christ, who is resurrected from the dead). In contrast to the quiet assurance that reigns here, the ensuing aria switches abruptly to a vocabulary of terror, war, and danger that characterizes the rest of the cantata text. Whether the text’s overriding concern with enemies, battle, and war is justified by the Gospel reading’s rather incidental mention of “fear of the Jews” (Furcht vor den Juden) remains debatable.
The hostile world is more likely to be meant metaphorically, whereby the true danger resides in faithlessness. This is also the understanding in the parallel passage in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke: “As they were talking about it, he himself, Jesus, stepped into their midst and spoke to them: Peace be with you! They were startled, however, and were afraid, believing they were seeing a ghost. And he spoke to them: Why are you so startled, and why do such thoughts enter your heart? Look at my hands and my feet: I am he himself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have” (36–39). The librettist generalizes the doubt of the disciples in the first aria with the verses:
Mein Jesus ist erstanden,
Allein, was schreckt mich noch?
Mein Glaube kennt des Heilands Sieg,
Doch fühlt mein Herze Streit und Krieg,
Mein Heil, erscheine doch!
My Jesus is risen,
Alone, what still frightens me?
My faith knows the savior’s victory,
Yet my heart feels conflict and war.
My salvation, appear then!
In a peculiar fashion, the three movements that follow are to be understood as a complex. With its initial lines, a recitative turns to Jesus with a plea for protection:
Mein Jesu, heißest du des Todes Gift
Und eine Pestilenz der Hölle:
Ach, daß mich noch Gefahr und Schrecken trifft!
My Jesus, you are called death’s poison
And a pestilence of hell.
Alas, that danger and horror still affect me!
These verses quote a motto from the prophet Hosiah: “Aber ich will sie erlösen aus der Hölle und vom Tode erretten. Tod, ich will dir ein Gift sein; Hölle, ich will dir eine Pestilenz sein” (13:14; But I will redeem them from hell and save them from death. Death, I want to be a poison to you; hell, I want to be a pestilence to you).
Immediately afterward the librettist unexpectedly veers off to a reminiscence:
Du legtest selbst auf unsre Zungen,
Ein Loblied, welches wir gesungen.
You yourself laid upon our tongues
A song of praise, which we sang.
There follows, like a quotation, the first strophe of Nikolaus Hermann’s Easter hymn of 1560:
Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag,
Dran sich niemand gnug freuen mag.
The glorious day has appeared
Upon which no one may rejoice enough.
This memory of the feast of the resurrection is illuminated only briefly. Immediately after the Alleluia of the chorale strophe, the recitative text resumes its unbroken train of thought and concludes, full of assurance:
Ja, ja, wir spüren schon im Glauben,
Daß du, o Friedefürst,
Dein Wort und Werk an uns erfüllen wirst.
Yes, yes, we feel already in our faith
That you will fulfill for us, O Prince of Peace,
Your word and works.
The key word “Friedefürst” (Prince of Peace) foreshadows the concluding chorale, the first strophe of Jakob Ebert’s hymn of 1601:
Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ,
Wahr’ Mensch und wahrer Gott,
Ein starker Nothelfer du bist
Im Leben und im Tod.
You Prince of Peace, Lord Jesus Christ,
True man and truer God,
A strong helper in time of need you are,
In life and in death.
Bach completed his composition of this unusual text during his first year as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig. A printed booklet of the text, preserved by chance, confirms that the performance took place on Quasimodogeniti Sunday 1724 and in fact in St. Thomas Church. By all appearances, the entire cantata consists of original compositions, which is all the more remarkable since its first and sixth movements are both extremely long. One might speculate that in the period before Easter without music, the otherwise extremely busy man had more time to compose and hence put more work than usual into the Quasimodogeniti cantata. This might seem plausible because none of the cantatas for the preceding three days of Easter in 1724 were newly composed. One was a reperformance of a work composed at Weimar;1 the other two were arrangements of secular cantatas from Bach’s time at Köthen.2 Not to be forgotten, however, is that the cantor of St. Thomas School performed his St. John Passion BWV 245 for the first time on Good Friday 1724, nine days before our cantata, an undertaking that must have claimed many days of composition and performance preparation.
Be that as it may, the score of our cantata shows a considerable degree of compositional effort in planning for an overarching architecture that reflects the experience gained in creating the St. John Passion. Thus the opening movement, with its relatively modest text (the biblical passage is only eleven words), is broadened to a rationally structured, straightforward formal complex of 130 measures. Its course is determined by two contrasting themes: the first begins with a long sustained tone on the word “halt” (stop), and its continuation hints at such chorale melodies as Nun danket alle Gott and O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig; the second has long garlands of eighth notes in the instruments and is assigned to the phrase “der auferstanden ist von den Toten.”
The instrumental introduction begins by setting forth both themes, after which the chorus takes up the broad, chorale-like themes against the counterpoint of the instruments’ quick eighth-note motion. The two themes together engage in a fugal exposition, while the instruments except for the basso continuo fall silent. This fugal section is evidently designed for soloistic forces. The reentry of the entire ensemble is defined by the division of labor described earlier: chorale-like theme in the chorus, eighth-note motion in the instruments. In contrast, a second fugal section is clearly subdued dynamically, although the voices are doubled by the instruments throughout. The closing section is once again defined by the same allocation of themes between voices and instruments as described earlier. By “instruments” we mean strings, including basso continuo, as well as a transverse flute, two oboi d’amore, and a brass instrument that specialists have long been scratching their heads about: Bach calls it a “corno da tirarsi,” indicating a horn with a slide mechanism that enables the player to reach pitches outside the natural scale. There remains no clear understanding of the instrument’s appearance. The “chorale-like” theme sounded by this instrument at the movement’s beginning is identical to the theme of a choral movement from a cantata for the town council election performed half a year earlier in Leipzig, Preis, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 (Praise, Jerusalem, the Lord). However, it remains unclear whether Bach intended the allusion.
The second movement of the cantata is an aria for tenor, strings, and a woodwind instrument whose text begins “Mein Jesus ist erstanden, allein, was schreckt mich noch?” (My Jesus is risen, alone, what still frightens me?). Its themes and exposition are characterized by the constant opposition of “Erstehen” (arising) and “Schrecken” (terror), between certainty and doubt. A two-part recitative with the interpolated Easter chorale follows, which is in turn followed by an “Aria,” the cantata’s next-to-last movement. Hidden behind this unostentatious title is an eight-part complex. In regular sequence, two contrasting sections alternate. The first, in quick
4 meter, is characterized by robust triadic figuration for strings and basso continuo. Performed purely instrumentally at first, it is then repeated three times, varied with each return, while taking up the freely versified text that speaks of enemies and Satan, peace, death, and overcoming. The upper three choral voices, soprano, alto, and tenor, participate here, while the bass—the vox Christi—is reserved for the four slow sections, in which the voice’s “Friede sei mit euch” is combined with the floating, celestial sounds of the flute and oboe. When, at the movement’s close, the string instruments also join in, at first hesitatingly, the vision becomes reality, quite in the sense of the Gospel accounts in John and Luke. The concluding chorale, Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ, forms a sustained affirmation. As expected, it appears in simple four-part texture, so simply arranged that one is tempted to wonder whether Bach may have used an older source, as is occasionally the case.
In 1738 Bach incorporated the eight-part complex, the supposed “Aria,” in his Mass in A Major BWV 234. He assigned the contrasting sections to the “Gloria,” so that the instrumental introduction of the cantata movement took up the newly composed choral movement “Gloria in excelsis deo,” the first slow section the “Et in terra pax,” the last slow section with the unison woodwinds and strings the “Gratias agimus tibi.” We can clearly appreciate Bach’s estimation of his first Quasimodogeniti cantata by the way he reused and developed it further.