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Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ BWV 91 / BC A 9
Christmas Day, December 24, 1724
The cantata Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ BWV 91 (Praised be thou, Jesus Christ) is built on the chorale of the same name, the main hymn for the first day of Christmas written by Martin Luther and published in 1524 under the title Lobgesang von der Geburt unsers Herrn Jesu Christ (Hymn of praise for the birth of our lord Jesus Christ). An integral member of the chorale cantata annual cycle, the work was heard for the first time on December 25, 1724—exactly two hundred years after the publication of the chorale on which it is based. As is largely the case in Bach’s cantata cycle on church chorales, only the opening and closing strophes of the original text remain untouched, while the inner strophes were more or less freely reshaped by an unknown arranger to form recitative and aria texts.Thus we find Luther’s unaltered text at the beginning of the cantata libretto:
Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ,
Daß du Mensch geboren bist
Von einer Jungfrau, das ist wahr,
Des freuet sich der Engel schar
Kyrie eleis!
May you be praised, Jesus Christ,
That you were born human
By a virgin, this is true,
At which the host of angels rejoices
Kyrie eleis!
The cantata’s second movement adopts Luther’s second strophe, also in its original wording, but uses it as a conceptual framework, interleaving it with freely invented verse. Luther’s chorale reads:
Des ewigen Vaters einigs Kind
Itzt man in der Krippe findt.
In unser armes Fleisch und Blut
Verkleidet sich das ewige Gut.
The eternal father’s only child
One finds now in the crib.
In our poor flesh and blood
Clothes itself in the eternal good.
But in the expanded recitative version it becomes:
Der Glanz der höchsten Herrlichkeit,
Das Ebenbild von Gottes Wesen,
Hat in bestimmter Zeit
Sich einen Wohnplatz auserlesen.
Des ewgen Vaters einigs Kind,
Das ewgen Licht von Licht geboren,
Itzt man in der Krippe findt.
O Menschen schauet an,
Was hier der Liebe Kraft getan!
In unser armes Fleisch und Blut
(Und war denn dieses nicht verdammt, verflucht, verloren?)
Verkleidet sich das ewge Gut.
So wird es ja zum Segen auserkoren.
The radiance of highest glory,
The image of God’s being
Has at a certain time
Selected for himself a dwelling place.
The eternal father’s only child
The eternal light, born of light,
One finds now in the crib.
O people, look upon
What the power of love has done here!
In our poor flesh and blood
(And was not this damned, cursed, lost?)
Clothes itself in the eternal Good,
Thus is it indeed selected for blessing.
In contrast to this process of expanding and commenting upon the chorale text, the associated aria tightens it as it combines the two next chorale strophes, whose contents are consonant with one another:
Den aller Welt Kreis nie beschloss,
Der liegt in Marien Schoss;
Er ist ein Kindlein worden klein,
Der alle Ding erhält allein.
Das ewig Licht geht da herein,
Gibt der Welt ein neuer Schein.
Es leucht’ wohl mitten in der Nacht
Und uns des Lichtes Kinder macht.
Whom the whole world did not enclose
Lies in Mary’s lap;
He is a baby become small,
Who all things contains alone.
The eternal light enters here,
Gives the world a new radiance.
It gleams even in the middle of the night
And makes us children of the light.
As opposed to Luther’s powerful language, the formulations derived from it in the cantata seem rather weak:
Gott, dem der Erdenkreis zu klein,
Den weder Welt noch Himmel fassen,
Will in der engen Krippe sein.
Erscheinet uns dies ewge Licht,
So wird hinfüro Gott uns nicht
Als dieses Lichtes Kinder hassen.
God, for whom the globe is too small,
Whom neither earth nor heaven contains,
Wishes to be in the tiny manger.
This eternal light appears to us,
So henceforth God will not hate us
As we are children of this light.
The librettist works with more freedom in his second recitative than in this aria. Luther’s simple strophe, describing Christ as a guest in this world, becomes a compelling appeal:
O Christenheit!
Wohlan, so mache dich bereit,
Bei dir den Schöpfer zu empfangen.
Der grosse Gottessohn
Kömmt als ein Gast zu dir gegangen.
Ach laß dein Herz durch diese Liebe rühren;
Er kömmt zu dir um dich zu seinem Thron
Durch dieser Jammerthal zu führen.
O Christendom!
Well, then, make yourself ready
To receive the creator yourself.
The great son of God
Comes as a guest to you,
Oh, let your heart be moved by this love;
He comes to you to lead you to his throne
Through this vale of tears.
The ensuing aria aims at rhetorical brilliance, without regard for the intentional simplicity of Luther’s verse:
Er ist auf Erden kommen arm,
Daß er sich unser erbarm
Und in dem Himmel mache reich
Und seinen lieben Engeln gleich.
He is come to earth a beggar
That he might have mercy upon us
And in the heavens make us rich
And alike to his dear angels.
With a sweeping gesture, the aria gained from this reads:
Die Armut, so Gott auf sich nimmt,
Hat uns ein ewig Heil bestimmt,
Den Überfluß an Himmelsschätzen.
Sein menschlich Wesen machet euch
Den Engelsherrlichkeiten gleich,
Euch zu den Engelschor zu setzen.
The poverty that God assumed
Has ordained for us an eternal salvation,
The surplus of heavenly treasure.
His human form makes you
Like to the angel’s glory,
To place you among the heavenly choir.
After such aphorisms the unpretentious conclusion with its original Luther text sounds a bit peculiar:
Das hat er alles uns getan,
Sein groß Lieb zu zeigen an;
Es freu sich alle Christenheit
Und dank ihn des in Ewigkeit.
Kyrie eleis!
He has done all this for us,
To show his great love
For which all Christendom may rejoice
And thank him for it in eternity.
Kyrie eleis!
A key element in Bach’s setting of this rather uneven text is the large-scale opening chorus with its festive instrumental ensemble of two horns with percussion, three oboes, strings, and basso continuo. As in most of the chorale cantatas, the chorale melody is presented phrase by phrase in large note values by the soprano, in counterpoint with the other voices, and embedded in an independent, thematically unified, orchestral component. What is impressive about the opening movement of our cantata is the lively, breathless, concertante texture among the groups of instruments, beginning with seven staggered entries of a scalar motif that is quite unaffected by the chorale tune going back to pre-Reformation materials, with all the harmonic challenges associated with the church modes. In any case, in order to make his task easier, Bach allows himself several minor deviations from the original melody, a license that is consequently put to use in the closing chorale, as well as in the chorale phrases in the first recitative.
Common to both aria movements is the rhythmic profile of their obbligato instrumental part. In the duet movement, in the next-to-last position in the cantata, the obbligato accompaniment performed by first and second violins has a unifying function in conjunction with the interpretively and textually rich—and hence heterogeneous—flow. What is striking in the obbligato wind parts in the first aria, on the other hand, are the sudden upward leaps of the melody and the uncomfortably high range demanded of the first oboe, aspects that are clearly indebted to the text’s beginning:
Gott, dem der Erdenkreis zu klein,
Den weder Welt noch Himmel fassen.
God, for whom the earth is too small,
Whom neither earth nor heaven contains.