This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten BWV 93 / BC A 104
Fifth Sunday after Trinity, July 9, 1724
This cantata, which belongs to Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas, was first performed on July 9, 1724. There were presumably other performances, although we have no documentation of them except for one that probably took place in 1732. We would like to know more about a reperformance that may have taken place in 1756, after Bach’s death. Although the musical estate of the greatest cantor of St. Thomas School left Leipzig for the most part when it was distributed to his family, the chorale cantata cycle remains an important and famous exception. At one time comprising fifty or more compositions, its composing scores passed to the oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, while the performing parts went to Bach’s widow, Anna Magdalena. Since she was unable to make use of them, she presented them to St. Thomas School in 1750 in exchange for several favors from city officials. Forty-four complete compositions remain in the possession of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School, thereby representing a unique, unbroken tradition over the nearly three centuries from the time of their composition. Several of the part collections show signs of use after Bach’s death, among them the cantata Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten BWV 93 (Whoever only lets dear God rule), which Bach’s student and second successor, Johann Friedrich Doles, must have performed in 1756 when he took office or shortly afterward.This cantata is for the fifth Sunday after Trinity; its text is based on “einem Kernlied dieses Sonntags” (the principal hymn for that Sunday), Georg Neumark’s seven-strophe chorale published in 1657 with the motto “Wie Gott es fügt, bin ich vergnügt” (As God decrees, I am pleased). In the manner typical for Bach’s chorale cantatas, several strophes of the chorale text were adopted without change, and others were adjusted through word replacements, contractions, and interpolation of free poetry to satisfy the musical requirements of recitative and aria forms.
The opening strophe remained unchanged:
The second strophe, on the other hand, was reshaped in the manner typical of Bach’s chorale cantatas. Neumark’s version reads:Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten
Und hoffet auf ihn allezeit,
Den wird er wunderlich erhalten
In allem Kreuz und Traurigkeit.
Wer Gott, dem Allerhöchsten, traut,
Der hat auf keinen Sand gebaut.
Whoever only lets the dear God rule
And hopes in him at all times,
He will wondrously preserve him
In all cross-bearing and tribulation.
Whoever God, the all-highest, trusts,
He has surely not built upon sand.
The unknown poet working for Bach produced the following mixture of lines taken directly from the chorale and free recitative poetry:Was helfen uns die schweren Sorgen?
Was hilft uns unser Weh und Ach?
Was hilft es, daß wir alle Morgen
Beseufzen unser Ungemach?
Wir machen unser Kreuz und Leid
Nur größer durch die Traurigkeit.
What good to us are heavy sorrows?
What good to us our woe and alas?
What good to us that we, every morning,
Sigh over our misfortune?
We make our cross-bearing and suffering
Only greater through sadness.
Was helfen uns die schweren Sorgen?
Sie drücken nur das Herz
Mit Zentnerpein, mit tausend Angst und Schmerz,
Was hilft uns unser Weh und Ach?
Es bringt nur bittres Ungemach.
Was hilft es, daß wir alle Morgen
Mit Seufzen von dem Schlaf aufstehn
Und mit beträntem Angesicht des Nachts zu Bette gehn?
Wir machen unser Kreuz und Leid
Durch bange Traurigkeit nur größer.
Drum tut ein Christ viel besser,
Er trägt sein Kreuz mit christlicher Gelassenheit.
What good to us are heavy sorrows?
They only oppress the heart
With a hundredweight of pain, with a thousand fears and agonies.
What good to us our woe and alas?
It brings only bitter hardship.
What good to us that we, every morning,
Arise from our sleep with sighs
And go with tearful countenance at night to bed?
We make our cross-bearing and suffering
Through anxious sadness only greater.
Therefore, a Christian does much better.
He carries his cross with Christian serenity.
In contrast to this thoroughgoing revision, the fourth and seventh strophes of Neumark’s chorale—in the middle and at the end of the cantata libretto—were left unchanged: strophe 4, “Er kennt die rechten Freuden-stunden” (He knows the right hours of joy), and strophe 7, “Sing, bet und geh auf Gottes Wegen” (Sing, pray, and go upon God’s ways). The aria texts found at the third and sixth positions in the cantata libretto—“Man halte nur ein wenig stille” (One must keep only briefly quiet) and “Ich will auf den Herren schauen” (I want to look upon the Lord)—contain only a few parts of Neumark’s poetry. On the other hand, the fifth movement has been reshaped in the same manner as the second movement—a combination of chorale and recitative. Here it reads at the beginning:
Denk nicht in deiner Drangsalshitze,
Wenn Blitz und Donner kracht,
Und dir ein schwüles Wetter bange macht,
Daß du von Gott verlassen seist.
Think not, in the heat of your ordeal,
When thunder and lightning strike
And threatening weather makes you anxious,
That you have been forsaken by God.
“Blitz und Donner” and “schwüles Wetter” were added by the unknown poet; later in the recitative he shows his knowledge of the Bible particularly clearly:
The allusion to the “reichen Mann” points to the eleventh chapter of the book of Sirach, which Georg Neumark used as the source for his chorale text. Here it reads:Du darfst nicht meinen,
Daß dieser Gott im Schoße sitze,
Der täglich wie der reiche Mann,
In Lust und Freuden leben kann.
Der sich mit stetem Glücke speist,
Bei lauter guten Tagen,
Muß oft zuletzt,
Nachdem er sich an eitler Lust ergötzt,
“Der Tod in Töpfen” sagen
Die Folgezeit verändert viel!
Hat Petrus gleich die ganze Nacht
Mit leerer Arbeit zugebracht
Und nichts gefangen:
Auf Jesu Wort kann er noch einen Zug erlangen.
You must not think
That this one sits in God’s lap,
Who, daily, like a rich man,
Can live in happiness and joy.
Who feeds on constant good happiness,
With good days all around,
Must often at last,
After he has taken delight in vain pleasure,
Say, “There is death in the pots.”
The coming time will alter much!
If Peter indeed the whole night
With fruitless toil spent
And caught nothing:
At Jesus’s Word he can still make a catch.
Mancher kargt und spart und wird dadurch reich und denkt, er habe etwas vor sich gebracht, und spricht: “Nun will ich gutes Leben haben, essen und trinken von meinen Gütern;” und er weiß nicht, daß sein Stündlein so nahe ist, und muß alles ändern lassen und sterben. (18–19)
Many a person stints and saves and thereby becomes rich and believes he has accomplished something and says: “Now I will lead a good life, and eat and drink from my goodness”; and he does not know how close his hour is and that he must allow everything to change and die.
The somewhat obscure biblical allusion to “Tod in Töpfen” (death in pots) refers to the fourth chapter of 2 Kings and the depiction of how the prophet Elisha, in the time of inflation, apparently cooked inedible vegetables for his people: “And as they poured it out for the men to eat, and they ate the vegetables, they cried out and spoke: O Man of God, the death in the pot! For they could not eat it” (2 Kings 4:40).1 The reference to Peter at the end and his “leere Arbeit” (fruitless toil) every night refers to the Gospel reading for the fifth Sunday after Trinity, the description in Luke 5:4–5 of Peter’s miraculous catch of fish, with the words of Jesus, “Launch into the deep water and cast your nets out, that you make a catch,” and the answer of Simon Peter, “Master, we have worked through the entire night and caught nothing, but upon your Word I will cast out my net.”2
Bach’s composition of this rich and wide-ranging text is characterized, on the one hand, by adherence to Neumark’s chorale melody of 1657 and, on the other, by the free and diverse treatment of its substance, in other words, the adoption and further development of the traditions of chorale variation. Thus the extensive opening movement offers a classic example of Bach’s chorale arrangements for chorus: a concerted, motivically unified orchestral part that is largely independent of the chorale’s melodic substance, framing the presentation of the chorale melody in long note values in one of the voices and the motet-like counterpoint in the three other voices. The contrast between polyphonic and chordal textures in the vocal parts helps create extra liveliness, just as does the prominence of the two oboes against the strings.
The two recitative-aria movement pairs are alike in their layout. The two recitatives swing back and forth between loose declamation of the freely versified portions of the text and a more regulated style of the passages containing the chorale text and melody.
The arias are even more distant from the substance of the chorale. In the tenor aria, the third movement in the cantata, “Man halte nur ein wenig stille,” the melody modulates from C minor to E-flat major and amplifies the “keeping still” with short motives interspersed with rests. The next to last movement, an aria for soprano, symbolizes the trust in God sketched out in the text through a brightly animated figuration of voice and obbligato oboe. The greatest concentration in the performance of the chorale is undoubtedly achieved in the final movement with its harmonically rich four-part setting. The fourth strophe, “Er kennt die rechten Freudenstunden” (He knows the best times for joy), in the middle of the cantata, presented the highest compositional challenge. Here, an imitative duet between soprano and alto is joined by basso continuo to form a trio; the violins and viola form an instrumental voice in the tenor range with the chorale melody. The result is an elaborate arrangement of the chorale in the form of a quartet. In the mid-1740s this was included in a collection of six similar compositions printed in Zella, Thuringia, by the publisher Johann Georg Schübler. Known later as the Schübler Chorales (BWV 645–50), these organ works were circulated widely. That Bach chose to include a movement from the cantata Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten unmistakably testifies to the composer’s high esteem for this cantata in particular.
Footnotes
- “Und da sie es auschütteten für die Männer, zu essen, und sie von dem Gemüseaßen, schrieen sie und sprachen: O Mann Gottes, der Tod im Topf ! denn sie konnten’snicht essen” (2 Kings 4:40).—Trans.↵
- “Fahre auf die Höhe und werfet eure Netze aus, daß ihr einen Zug tut”; “Meister,wir haben die ganze Nacht gearbeitet und nichts gefangen; aber auf dein Wort willich das Netz auswerfen” (Luke 5:4–5).—Trans.↵