This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan BWV 98 / BC A 153
Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, November 10, 1726
There are three cantatas entitled Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan (What God does, that is well done); this, the second of the three chronologically, is for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. It originated in November 1726 and, it is worth noting, within a series of solo cantatas. This context may explain the remarkable fact that while the composition begins with a choral movement, it closes with an aria instead of a chorale. Although this might tempt one to suppose that the source transmission is incomplete, Bach’s composition score as well as the original performing parts are all available and intact, and in all sources the word Fine is entered after the concluding aria. This rather pedantic note at the end may be due to chance. However, it could also be seen to indicate, on the one hand, the composer’s desire to blunt a sense of uncertainty, perhaps in connection with a planned reperformance, and, on the other, his hope to avoid annoying questions about a possibly missing choral movement once and for all.Nothing is known about the origins of our cantata’s text.1 It thus cannot be determined whether the lack of a closing chorale was the choice of the composer or of the librettist. The libretto contains no trace of the Gospel reading for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. Found in John 4, it gives the account of Jesus’s healing the son of a nobleman. The libretto begins with the opening strophe from Samuel Rodigast’s 1674 hymn:
Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan,
Es bleibt gerecht sein Wille;
Wie er fängt meine Sachen an,
Will ich ihm halten stille.
Er ist mein Gott,
Der in der Not
Mich wohl weiß zu erhalten;
Drum laß ich ihn nur walten.
What God does, that is done well,
His will remains just;
However he directs my affairs,
I will trust him silently.
He is my God
Who in distress
Knows well how to sustain me;
Therefore, I just let him rule.
As they are here, confidence in faith and trust in God are at the core of the further development of this line of thought. The anxious questions at the beginning of the first recitative gradually make room for increasing confidence:
Ach Gott! Wenn wirst du mich einmal
Von meiner Leidensqual,
Von meiner Angst befreien?
Wie lange soll ich Tag und Nacht
Um Hilfe schreien?
Und ist kein Retter da!
Der Herr ist denen allen nah,
Die seiner Macht
Und seiner Huld vertrauen.
Drum will ich meine Zuversicht
Auf Gott alleine bauen,
Denn er verläßt die Seinen nicht.
Ah God! When will you at last
Free me from my torment of suffering,
From my anguish?
How long shall I, day and night,
Cry for help?
And no deliverer is there!
The Lord is near to all those
Who trust his might
And his favor.
Therefore, I will build my confidence
On God alone,
For he does not abandon those of his own.
The associated aria also articulates the hope for consolation and help:
Hört, ihr Augen, auf zu weinen!
Trag ich doch
Mit Geduld mein schweres Joch.
Gott der Vater lebet noch,
Von den Seinen
Läßt er keinen.
Hört, ihr Augen, auf zu weinen!
Cease, you eyes, to weep!
Indeed, I bear
My heavy yoke with patience.
God the father lives still,
Of those his own
He abandons none.
Cease, you eyes, to weep!
The second recitative deals with God’s mercy; at the end it says:
Er hält sein Wort;
Er saget: Klopfet an,
So wird euch aufgetan!
Drum laßt uns alsofort,
Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten schweben,
Das Herz zu Gott allein erheben!
He keeps his word;
He says: Knock,
And it will be opened to you!
Therefore, let us from now on,
When we hover in greatest distress,
Raise our hearts to God alone!
In this regard, the beginning of Paul Eber’s hymn Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (When we are in highest need) also sounds like a verse from the Sermon on the Mount: “Bittet, so wird euch gegeben; suchet, so werdet ihr finden; klopfet an, so wird euch aufgetan!” (Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it shall be opened to you). The closing aria provides yet another quotation: its first line—however, only this one—is identical with the beginning of a hymn by Christian Keimann, but it appears here in connection with the verse “Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn” (I will not let you go, except you bless me) from Genesis:
Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht,
Bis mich erst sein Angesicht
Wird erhören oder segnen.
Er allein
Soll mein Schutz in allem sein,
Was mir Übels kann begegnen.
I will not let my Jesus go
Until his countenance
Hears or blesses me.
He alone
Shall be my shelter in everything,
Whatever evil can befall me.
Bach begins his composition of this rather problematic libretto with an extended chorale arrangement that clearly draws upon his experience in creating the chorale cantata annual cycle of 1724–25. The present cantata is distinguished from its sibling work of the same name by the significantly reduced demands of its opening movement, both vocally and in the weight of the instrumental component. The voices, mostly alternating with instruments, must be satisfied with a harmonic choral texture presented in sections, becoming more polyphonic only toward the end. Despite these diminished standards, the oboes are added to the three upper voices for support. Thus only the string instruments contribute an independent instrumental texture, or, put more precisely, the prominent concertante first violin with purely harmonic support from the second violin and viola.
The first aria for soprano with obbligato oboe shows itself to be in conflict between hope and despair. A confidently striding theme borne by the dance-like motion of the minuet repeatedly flows into burdened half-tone steps that call to mind the “schwere Joch” (heavy yoke) in the text and only allows some relaxed figuration in the middle, for “Gott der Vater lebet noch” (God the Father lives still). By contrast, the concluding aria for bass is energetic and self-confident, as the two violins provide the bass voice with a powerfully contoured obbligato part. The resumption of the B-flat tonality as well as the wide intervals and expansive passages of the obbligato part build a bridge back to the opening movement, thereby underscoring the aria’s function as the cantata’s conclusion. The same purpose is served when the voice combines the quotation of Keimann’s hymn with a varied form of the chorale melody. Whether Bach meant thereby to compensate for the omission of a closing chorale of course cannot be determined.
Footnotes
- In 2015 Christine Blanken identified Christoph Birkmann as the librettist for these six works. Birkmann, a musically active student of theology at the University of Leipzig from December 1724 to September 1727 who regularly attended Bach’s performances, published an annual cycle of cantata texts in 1728 that contains thirty-one works known to have been performed in Leipzig during Birkmann’s time there, among which are twenty-three known cantatas by Bach. See Blanken (2015b).—Trans.↵