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Bisher habt ihr nichts gebeten in meinem Namen BWV 87 / BC A 74
Rogate Sunday, May 6, 1725
Bach composed this cantata in his second year as cantor of St. Thomas School, and he performed it in early May 1725, probably in St. Thomas Church. The Gospel reading for Rogate Sunday is found in John 16, as are the readings for the two preceding Sundays, Jubilate and Cantate; it contains a longer section of the farewell addresses of Jesus:Truly, truly, I say to you: Should you ask the father for something in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy shall be complete. Such things I have spoken to you in proverbs. But the time is coming when I shall not speak with you in proverbs but will freely tell you of my Father. On that day, you shall ask in my name. And I will not say to you that I will pray to the Father for you; for he himself, the father, loves you, because you love me and believe that I am come from God. (23–27)
The text of our cantata, based on this reading, is the third in a series of nine cantata libretti prepared by the Leipzig poet Mariane von Ziegler for Bach in early 1725. As in most of these instances, a New Testament passage stands at the beginning from the Sunday Gospel reading: “Bis her habt ihr nichts gebeten in meinem Namen” (Until now you have asked nothing in my name). Von Ziegler’s first freely versified text proceeding from this comes in a recitative that instructs as to the necessity of prayer after sinful transgression of the law. Her wordy, rather unskillful text reads:
O Wort! das Geist und Herz erschreckt,
Ach, Menschen-Kinder! Merkt, was wohl dahinter steckt;
Ihr habet das Gesetz vorsätzlich übertreten,
Und diesfalls möcht ihr Tag und Nacht,
Wann das Gewissen aufgewacht,
In Buß und Andacht beten.
O Word! That terrifies spirit and soul,
Ah, mortal children! Note, what lies behind it;
You have deliberately transgressed the law,
And therefore you should, day and night,
When the conscience is awake,
Pray in penitence and devotion.
The text composed by Bach is more concentrated, if still unbalanced in its syllable count:
O Wort, das Geist und Seel erschreckt,
Ihr Menschen! Merkt den Zuruf, was dahintersteckt,
Ihr habt Gesetz und Evangelium vorsätzlich übertreten,
Und diesfalls möcht ihr ungesäumt in Buß und Andacht beten.
O Word! That spirit and soul terrifies,
You people! Note what lies beneath.
You have law and Gospel deliberately transgressed,
And therefore you should immediately in penance and devotion pray.
Whether Bach himself was responsible for this streamlining cannot be determined at this time.1
The prayer called for is given by the associated aria, whose text Bach adopted without change from von Ziegler’s libretto. The decisive element may have been the skillful way in which the poet adapted the Gospel reading for her verses, the “Reden durch Sprichwörter” (Speech through proverbs):
Vergib, o Vater, unsre Schuld,
Und habe noch mit uns Geduld,
Wenn wir in Andacht beten
Und sagen, Herr, auf dein Geheiß:
Ach rede nicht mehr sprichwortsweis,
Hilf uns vielmehr vertreten.
Forgive, O Father, our sin
And still have patience with us
When we in devotion pray
And say, Lord, at your command:
Ah, speak no more in proverbs.
Help us instead to be faithful.
In Mariane von Ziegler’s text, there follows a second, consoling biblical passage, the conclusion of John 16. The text composed by Bach interpolates another recitative here. It remains unclear whether this change was made only at Bach’s behest and was simply meant to clarify the transition to the Bible passage that follows or whether there is a second revision of an originally longer text by Frau von Ziegler. For one can scarcely ascribe linguistic skill to the following lines:
Wenn unsre Schuld bis an den Himmel steigt,
Du siehst und kennest ja mein Herz,
Das nichts vor dir verschweigt,
Drum suche ich mich zu trösten.
When our guilt up to heaven climbs,
You surely see and know my heart,
Which is silent about nothing before you.
Therefore, seek to comfort me!
The word of God from the Johannine tradition answers the prayer for consolation: “In der Welt habe ihr Angst; aber seid getrost. Ich habe die Welt überwunden” (16:33; In the world you will have tribulation; but be comforted. I have overcome the world).
Sorrow and consolation, troubles and help, pain and its surmounting come together once again in the next aria, in which the text composed by Bach has more differences from von Ziegler’s libretto:
Ich will leiden, ich will schweigen,
Jesus wird mit Hilf erzeigen,
Denn er tröst’ mich nach dem Schmerz.
Weicht, ihr Sorgen, Trauer, Klagen,
Denn warum sollt ich verzagen,
Fasse dich, betrübtes Herz.
I would suffer, I would be silent,
Jesus will show his help to me,
For he comforts me after the pain.
Away, you cares, sorrow, laments,
For why should I despair.
Compose yourself, distressed heart.
A strophe from Heinrich Müller’s 1659 hymn Selig ist die Seele (Blessed is the soul) concludes the sequence of thought. Line lengths and rhyme sequences follow the model of the chorale “Jesu meine Freude” (Jesus my soul):
Muß ich sein betrübet,
So mich Jesus liebet,
Ist mir aller Schmerz
Über Honig süße,
Tausend Zuckerküße
Drücket er ans Herz.
Wenn die Pein
Sich stellet ein,
Seine Liebe macht zur Freuden
Auch das bittre Leiden.
Must I be downcast,
For if Jesus loves me,
All pain is to me
Sweeter than honey.
A thousand sugar kisses
He presses on my heart.
When the pain
Sets in
His love turns to joy,
Even bitter suffering.
As expected, Bach gives the word of the Lord at the beginning of the libretto to the bass, the vox Christi. The density and gravity of the musical setting match the gathered seriousness of the statement: the voice and four instrumental parts produce a flow somewhere between arioso and aria that occasionally adopts fugal aspects and, at the close, thickens to five full parts.
The first movement pair, consisting of recitative and aria, is given to the alto voice. In contrast to the dramatic gesture of the brief recitative, the G minor aria seems bathed in a soft light. Pleading, upward-striving figures in the basso continuo and burdensome but self-controlled sighs in the instrumental obbligato parts—two deep oboes—depict the spiritual distress of “Vergib, o Vater, unsre Schuld.” The rather inward aria is followed by outward culmination, with an insistent, string-accompanied recitative, “Wenn unsre Schuld bis an den Himmel steigt,” from which the second biblical passage that follows so effectively distinguishes itself. Once again, this passage is given to the bass, the vox Christi, and is accompanied only by the continuo, its only remaining support—a symbolic expression of the avoidance of everything earthly: “Seid getrost. Ich habe die Welt überwunden.” A stubbornly repeated accompaniment figure characterizes the beginning and end of this movement, once again nestled between an arioso and aria, together with agonizing chromaticism appropriate to the statement “In der Welt habt ihr Angst” (In the world you will have tribulation).
In an entirely different way, conflicting feelings—comfort and pain—are reflected in the wide-ranging, affective melodic material of voice and strings in the tenor aria “Ich will leiden, ich will schweigen.” The broad
8 meter and siciliano dance type work together with static bass tones, the harmonic density of the accompaniment, and the brightness of the key of B-flat major to create a tranquility that particularly suits the text, “Denn er tröst’ mich nach dem Schmerz.” The closing chorale, on the melody “Jesu meine Freude,” ends with the lines “Seine Liebe macht zur Freuden / Auch das bittre Leiden” as several chromatic passages resolve, appropriately, into a bright D major harmony.
Footnotes
- Mark Peters (2005) has cogently summarized the long-running debate and argued for von Ziegler’s authorship of the changes.—Trans.↵