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Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? BWV 8 / BC A 37
Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 24, 1724
Among Bach’s chorale cantatas, the work for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? BWV 8 (Dearest God, when will I die?) is unique in that it has come down to us in versions in two different keys. The first version, in E major (BWV 8.1), originated in September 1724 and belongs to the regular sequence in Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas. In all likelihood, the second version, in D major (BWV 8.2), comes from 1747 and is the result of a late revision. Bach’s composition score does not survive; instead, there are—extraordinarily—two complete sets of performing parts from his estate. After the composer’s death, the parts for the late version in D major were incorporated in the annual cycle of chorale cantatas and inherited by Anna Magdalena Bach. Later that same year, the widow donated her manuscript corpus to the St. Thomas School, along with the D major version of our cantata. The original E major version was regarded as surplus, and its parts were sold separately. It was acquired by the Leipzig publishing house Breitkopf, and after a large clearance sale in 1836, it was delivered to the Belgian music scholar François-Joseph Fétis, finally ending up in the Royal Library of Brussels. Consequently, it remained out of sight for Bach scholarship for a considerable time. Even so, the very first volume of the monumental Bach Gesamtausgabe, begun in 1851, presented our cantata in the E major version, based on copies of the score from a later period—while unaware of the original performing parts in the same key. On the other hand, the materials for the late version in D major, copied out by Bach himself as well as by his student and son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnickol in Leipzig—at the publisher’s front door, so to speak—remained unexamined. It was first published near the end of the twentieth century.The text for the cantata was produced using the procedure characteristic of the chorale cantata annual cycle: it is based on a church hymn whose first and last strophes remain unchanged and whose internal strophes are more or less freely reshaped to become recitatives and arias. The author of the hymn Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? is the Breslau theologian Caspar Neumann. It originated around 1690; hence the chorale is one of the latest that Bach used in his chorale cantatas. The first strophe appears in its original wording:
Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?
Meine Zeit läuft immer hin,
Und des alten Adams Erben,
Unter denen ich auch bin,
Haben dies zum Vaterteil,
Daß sie eine kleine Weil
Arm und elend sein auf Erden
Und denn selber Erde werden.
Dearest God, when will I die?
My time keeps running on,
And old Adam’s heirs,
Among whom I also am,
Have this as heritage,
That they but for a short time
Are poor and suffering upon the earth
And then become earth themselves.
The other strophes, as well as the cantata text that is drawn from them, are concerned with death and dying. This fits the tradition of the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity and its Gospel reading, the account in Luke 7 of the boy at Nain. Only three inner strophes of Caspar Neumann’s chorale were available to our cantata’s unknown librettist for creating recitatives and arias.
To produce a libretto with six movements, with two each of chorale strophes, recitatives, and arias, as Bach’s instructions may have stipulated, the librettist had to undertake various restructurings. One of these can be seen in the first freely versified cantata movement, an aria. For this the poet used the beginning of the third chorale strophe, in particular the question “Aber Gott, was werd ich denken, / Wenn es wir ans Sterben gehn?” (But God, what shall I think, / When we must go to die?), as well as the close of the second strophe:
Geht immer da und dort
Einer nach dem andern fort,
Und schon mancher liegt im Grabe,
Den ich wohl gekennet habe.
Goes forever here and there,
One after the other away,
And already lie many in the grave
Whom I have known well.
The garish effects that the librettist applies here are striking, in contrast to his source text:
Was willst du dich, mein Geist, entsetzen,
Wenn meine letzte Stunde schlägt?
Mein Leib neigt täglich sich zur Erden,
Und da muß seine Ruhstatt werden,
Wohin man so viel tausend trägt.
Why would you, my spirit, be horrified
When my last hour strikes?
My body daily inclines toward earth,
And there its resting place must be,
Whence so many thousands are carried.
For the recitative that follows, the librettist uses the remaining verses from Neumann’s third strophe:
Wo wird man den Leib hinsenken,
Wie wirds um die Seele stehn?
Ach was Kummer fällt mir ein;
Wessen wird mein Vorrat sein;
Und wo werden meine Lieben
Nacheinander hin verstieben?
Where will they bury my body,
How will it stand with my soul?
Ah, what worry enters my mind;
Who will my stores receive;
And where will my loved ones,
One after another, be dispersed?
And now the verbose recitative:
Zwar fühlt mein schwaches Herz
Furcht, Sorge, Schmerz:
Wo wird mein Leib die Ruhe finden?
Wer wird die Seele doch
Vom aufgelegten Sündenjoch
Befreien und entbinden?
Das Meine wird zerstreut,
Und wohin werden meine Lieben
In ihrer Traurigkeit
Zertrennt, vertrieben?
Indeed, my weak heart feels
Fear, care, pain:
Where will my body find rest?
Who will set my soul
From its harnessed yoke of sin
Free and unbound?
What is mine will be dispersed,
And whither will my loved ones,
In their sorrow
Separated, be driven?
Neumann’s hymn provides the answers to these ominous questions in its fourth strophe, particularly its first four verses:
Doch, was darf es dieser Sorgen,
Soll ich nicht zu Jesu gehn?
Lieber heute noch als morgen,
Denn mein Fleisch wird auferstehn.
Yet, what are these worries,
Should I not go to Jesus?
Better today than tomorrow,
For my flesh will be resurrected.
With effusive dactylic verses—and in that respect leaving its model behind once again—the librettist’s aria reads:
Doch weichet, ihr tollen, vergeblichen Sorgen,
Mich rufet mein Jesus: wer sollte nicht gehn?
Nichts, was mir gefällt,
Besitzet die Welt.
Erscheine mir, seliger, fröhlicher Morgen, Verkläret und herrlich vor Jesu zu stehn.
But away, you terrible, futile worries,
My Jesus calls me: Who should not go?
Nothing that pleases me
Belongs to the world.
Appear to me, blessed, joyful morning,
Transfigured and glorious, to stand before Jesus.
The last part of the fourth hymn strophe is also devoted to the rejection of the world’s goods, as is the relatively wide-ranging recitative derived from it. Caspar Neumann’s final strophe provides the cantata’s concluding movement in its original wording:
Herrscher über Tod und Leben,
Mach einmal mein Ende gut,
Lehre mich den Geist aufgeben
Mit recht wohlgefaßtem Mut.
Hilf daß ich ein ehrlich Grab
Neben frommen Christen hab
Und auch endlich in der Erde
Nimmermehr zuschanden werde!
Ruler over death and life,
Make one day my end good.
Teach me to give up the spirit
With well-composed courage.
Help that I have an honorable grave
Beside devout Christians.
And also finally in the earth
Nevermore be dishonored!
The melody Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele (Rejoice greatly, O my soul) was usually associated with Neumann’s hymn. Bach, on the other hand, chose a tune written by the organist Daniel Vetter in 1695 or earlier. Born in Breslau and active in Leipzig after 1679, Vetter published the melody in his collection Musicalische Kirch- und Haus-Ergötzlichkeit (Musical delight for church and home) of 1713. Modified slightly, the melody appears in the opening movement of the cantata, phrase by phrase as cantus firmus in the soprano, with counterpoint in the other voices, and embedded in an independent, motivically unified instrumental texture. This instrumental texture unfolds on two or even three levels: above a spare, static bass, muted high strings in continuous descending staccato triads—or, in the late version of the cantata, pizzicato. Joining them is the flute in its high register with insistent repeated pitches that only occasionally break into broken triads. Both instrumental registers elicit associations with funeral bells. This rather gloomy scenario is counteracted, on the one hand, by the movement’s pastorale type, with its
8 meter symbolizing completeness and repose, and, on the other hand, by two oboi d’amore. Imitating one another one moment and overlapping the next, they offer comforting encouragement from both sides and through their unerring and continuous presence provide a steady escort for the final journey.
The tenor aria makes clear that death has not lost its horror, with expressive intervallic leaps in the voice and obbligato oboe as well as the implacable final tolling of the hour that sounds in the basso continuo. In the first recitative, accompanied by strings, uncanny modulations mark the searching question about the fate of those left behind in this world. The bass aria stands in sharp contrast: it is joyous and flamboyant with its gigue rhythm and independent concertante flute part. This tone holds sway in the oddly cheerful closing chorale as well, in which the arioso melody by Daniel Vetter can unfold freely, in any case, more freely than in the opening movement of the cantata, burdened by tone symbolism.