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Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam BWV 7 / BC A 177
St. John’s Day, June 24, 1724
This cantata, Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam BWV 7 (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), was first performed on June 24, 1724, in Leipzig. It belongs to Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas, and it originated a few days after the beginning of the cycle. Like its sibling works, it is based on a single chorale, in this case, Martin Luther’s poem of 1541, which, in its oldest source, bears the title Ein geistlich lied von unser heiligen Tauffe (A sacred hymn about our holy baptism). The cantata libretto follows the chorale fairly closely. In the manner typical of the chorale cantata annual cycle, the first and last strophes are adopted literally, while the other strophes are more or less freely paraphrased as recitatives and arias. The unidentified librettist followed Luther’s model strophe for strophe, so that from a chorale with seven strophes a cantata text emerged with just as many movements. The first strophe remained without change:Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam
Nach seines Vaters Willen,
Von Sankt Johann’s die Taufe nahm,
Sein Werk und Amt zu erfüllen;
Da wollt er stiften uns ein Bad,
Zu waschen uns von Sünden;
Ersäufen auch den bittern Tod
Durch sein selbst Blut und Wunden;
Es galt ein neues Leben.
Christ our Lord came to the Jordan
According to his father’s will,
Took the baptism from St. John
To fulfill his work and duty;
There he wanted to establish for us a bath
To wash us of our sins;
To drown also the bitter death
Through his own blood and wounds;
This meant a new life.
The movements that follow are devoted to the baptism ceremony itself, to listening to the word of God and his son, and to the relationship between language and faith in baptism. The unknown librettist not only was aware of the possibilities of poetic license but also took the opportunity to draw the contours of Luther’s doctrine of baptism more sharply than Luther himself did in his baptism chorale. His second strophe was little changed:
So hört und merket alle wohl,
Was Gott heißt selbst die Taufe,
Und was ein Christe glauben soll,
Zu meiden Ketzerhaufen;
Gott spricht und will, was Wasser sei
Doch nicht allein schlecht Wasser,
Sein heilig’s Wort ist auch dabei
Mit reichem Geist ohn’ Maßen,
Der ist allhier der Täufer.
So everyone hear and mark well
What God himself calls baptism
And what a Christian should believe
To avoid heaps of heresies;
God says and intends there to be water,
But not simply water alone.
His holy word is also there
With rich spirit without measure,
He is here the baptist.
The aria text developed from this is brief and succinct:
Merkt und hört, ihr Menschenkinder,
Was Gott selbst die Taufe heißt.
Es muß zwar hier Wasser sein,
Doch schlecht Wasser nicht allein.
Gottes Wort und Gottes Geist
Tauft und reiniget die Sünder.
Mark and hear, you children of humankind,
What God himself calls baptism.
There must indeed be water here,
But not simply water alone.
God’s word and God’s spirit
Baptizes and cleanses the sinner.
The differences in the third movement, a recitative, are more significant. Luther’s chorale strophe reads as follows:
Solch’s hat er uns beweiset klar
Mit Bildern und mit Worten,
Des Vaters Stimm man offenbar
Daselbst am Jordan hörte.
Er sprach: das ist mein lieber Sohn,
An dem ich hab Gefallen,
Den will ich euch befohlen han,
Daß ihr ihn höret alle
Und folget seinen Lehren.
Of this he has clearly convinced us
With images and with words,
One clearly heard the father’s voice
At that very place on the Jordan.
He said: This is my dear son,
With whom I am well pleased.
I will order that to you,
That you all listen to him
And follow his teaching.
The cantata librettist expanded this train of thought with several closely associated phrases regarding the incarnation of Christ:
Dies hat Gott klar
Mit Worten und mit Bildern dargetan,
Am Jordan ließ der Vater offenbar
Die Stimme bei der Taufe Christi hören;
Er sprach: Dies ist mein lieber Sohn,
An diesem hab ich Wohlgefallen,
Er ist vom hohen Himmelsthron
Der Welt zugut
In niedriger Gestalt gekommen
Und hat das Fleisch und Blut
Der Menschenkinder angenommen;
Den nehmet nun als euren Heiland an
Und höret seine teuren Lehren!
This God has clearly
Demonstrated with words and images,
On the Jordan the father clearly let
His voice at the baptism of Christ be heard;
He said: This is my dear son,
In whom I am well pleased,
He has come from the high throne of heaven
For the benefit of the world
In lowly form
And has taken on the flesh and blood
Of children of humankind;
Now accept him as your savior
And listen to his precious teaching!
In both versions, the allusion to the baptism of Jesus by John is clear, as found in the third chapters of Matthew and Luke. Matthew 3:17 reads: “Und siehe, eine Stimme vom Himmel herab sprach: ‘Dies ist mein lieber Sohn, an welchem ich Wohlgefallen habe’” (And behold, a voice down from heaven spoke: “This is my dear son, with whom I am well pleased”). In the fourth movement, an aria based on Luther’s fourth strophe, the father’s voice, the baptism and the incarnation of the son, and the appearance of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove are recalled:
Wir ohne Zweifel glauben,
Es habe die Dreifaltigkeit
Uns selbst die Taufe zubereit’.
We believe without doubt,
That it was the Trinity itself
That prepared the baptism for us.
Luther’s fifth strophe and the fifth cantata movement, a recitative, take up the conclusion of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’s speech to his disciples: “Gehet hin in alle Welt und prediget das Evangelium aller Kreatur. Wer da glaubet und getauft wird, der wird selig werden; wer aber nicht glaubet, der wird verdammt werden” (16:15–16; Go forth in all the world and preach the Gospel to all creatures. Whoever believes and is baptized, he will be saved; whoever, though, does not believe, he will be damned). Luther’s rather didactic continuation in his sixth strophe, “Wer nicht glaubt dieser großen Gnad, / Der bleibt in seinen Sünden” (Whoever does not believe in this great mercy, / He remains in his sins), is paraphrased in the cantata version in a manner analogous to that of the second movement:
Menschen, glaubt doch dieser Gnade,
Daß ihr nicht in Sünden sterbt,
Noch im Höllenpfuhl verderbt!
People, believe this grace,
So that you do not die in sins
Nor rot in the lake of brimstone!
By way of summary, baptism and faith, original sin, sins, and redemption reappear in Luther’s concluding seventh strophe:
Das Aug allein das Wasser sieht,
Wie Menschen Wasser gießen,
Der Glaub allein die Kraft versteht
Des Blutes Jesu Christi,
Und ist für ihm ein rote Flut
Von Christi Blut gefärbet,
Die allen Schaden heilet gut
Von Adam her geerbt,
Auch von uns selbst begangen.
The eye sees the water only
As people pour water.
Faith alone understands the power
Of the blood of Jesus Christ,
And for faith it is a red flood
Colored by Christ’s blood,
Which fully heals all wrongs
Inherited from Adam
And also those committed by ourselves.
Because of its close relationship to Luther’s model, the cantata text wastes no thought on the Gospel for St. John’s Day, in which the main concern is the birth of St. John the Baptist but not the baptism of Jesus.
Bach’s composition of this text is dominated by its opening movement, which follows the model commonly found in the chorale cantata annual cycle: one of the four voices sings the chorale melody phrase by phrase in large note values while the other voices are subordinated with chordal, imitative, or motet-like figuration, as well as a motivically unified orchestral texture that serves as a unifying element. The distinctive aspects of the cantata are, on the one hand, that the chorale melody is not reserved for the soprano as usual but is given to the tenor and, on the other, the specific structure of the instrumental texture. This combines an emotional motive characterized by wide-ranging leaps and sharp rhythms, for the most part played by the entire ensemble, with concertante episodes in which two violins in unison take the lead. Triadic motives in the other string instruments, punctuated by rests, and the characteristically independent passages in the two oboes enrich the web of voices in such a way that a one-dimensional interpretation is out of the question. The figurative image of the baptism ceremony on the Jordan and the Trinity, the subject of both Luther’s chorale and the cantata text, may have been the main reasons for the variety and interweaving of motives in this first movement.
In the second movement—the cantata’s first aria—the bass voice can be understood as either the vox Christi, the voice of Christ, or the voice of John the Baptist. Here the voice is accompanied only by the basso continuo, and this self-imposed restriction allows a frequent repetition of the opening motive, which—although it is only an instrumental quotation—emphatically emphasizes the “Merkt und hört, ihr Menschenkinder” in the text. A motive that constantly moves in between, always in a downward direction, may be meant to depict the pouring of water, even if the aria text warns that it cannot be done with water alone.
Two concertante violins and continuo define the profile of the second aria with a wide-ranging trio texture in the energetic rhythm of the gigue; despite the importance of the text, the instruments yield to the voice for not much more than half of the movement. The reverse is true for the last aria. With its unusual, rondo-like course, the voice takes the lead in the very first measure and only yields to the instruments bit by bit, allowing them to play interludes and a closing ritornello. This aria form, stemming from contemporary opera, seems rather out of place in a church cantata; it may represent an experiment by the cantor of St. Thomas that he did not soon repeat. The closing four-part chorale on the melody Es woll uns Gott genädig sein (May God be gracious to us) leads us back to more familiar terrain. Although first documented in a 1524 source by Johann Walter, it goes back to much earlier materials.