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• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:17+00:00 Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot BWV 39 / BC A 96 23 First Sunday After Trinity. First performed 06/23/1726 in Leipzig (Cycle III). plain 2024-04-24T16:10:18+00:00 1726-06-23 BWV 39 Leipzig 50.979493, 11.323544 01Trinity01 First Sunday After Trinity BC A 96 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, BWV 39 / BC A 96" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 295 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig III

  First Sunday after Trinity, June 23, 1726

  As was customary for the era, the contents of this cantata are closely connected to the Gospel reading for the Sunday after Trinity, the parable of the rich man and the pauper Lazarus in Luke 16. However, due to a remarkable misunderstanding, for decades the cantata was regarded as “political” music, as a kind of commentary by Bach on events in Leipzig during his time there. It was the Dresden musicologist Rudolf Wustmann who put this idea forward. In a presentation entitled “Bach’s music in worship service" (Bachs Musik im Gottesdienst) to a church choral association convention in Dessau in 1909, Wustmann carefully ventured the suggestion that Bach might have composed the large, beautiful cantata for a “great celebration of Protestant charity” on June 15, 1732. Rudolf Wustmann may have gotten the idea for this hypothesis from a publication by his father, Gustav Wustmann, Leipzig librarian and director of the city archive. In 1889 the elder Wustmann published an essay in an anthology, Quellen zur Geschichte Leipzigs (Sources for the history of Leipzig), in which he reproduced numerous extracts from a handwritten chronicle by a certain Johann Salomon Riemer.¹ A part of this text is concerned with a group known as the Salzburg Emigrants, whose fate was closely bound to a late Counter-Reformation edict by Archbishop Leopold Ernst von Firmian of Salzburg that required Lutheran inhabitants to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. As a result of the edict, almost twenty thousand people emigrated in 1731 and 1732, many of them seeking a new homeland in the thinly settled eastern provinces of Prussia. On their journey to the North, several refugee caravans stopped in Leipzig.
  
  This placed the city in a particularly unenviable position. In 1697 the Saxon elector, Friedrich August I, had converted to Catholicism in service of his effort to gain the Polish crown. Leipzig, at the time a stronghold of Lutheran orthodoxy, felt itself increasingly called upon to take the sensitivities of the sovereign into consideration in order to preserve a certain measure of independence. Although the Salzburg Emigrants were shown great compassion by city, church, and citizenry, the authorities avoided issuing an official greeting because, as an official report reads, “Leipzig is under rulers who profess the Catholic religion, which our Salzburg Emigrants have abandoned.”² Nevertheless, it can be neither confirmed nor refuted that the cantata Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot BWV 39 (Break your bread with the hungry) could have been performed on the first Sunday after Trinity in 1732. In any case, Bach cannot have designated the work for this special occasion; instead, the composition and first performance belong to 1726.³ On the other hand, if one supposed that Bach scheduled a reperformance exactly six years later, with or without foreknowledge of the arrival of the exiles, then one would have to assume that he was confident that his choir at that time could master the tricky and challenging opening movement. In June 1732 this would not have been clear at all. For the faculty and students of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School, it was the end of an era marked by unrest and inadequate space situations caused by the extensive renovation of the school building.
  
  If, despite this long-held belief, Bach did not mean his cantata for the Salzburger Emigrants, the text has even less to do with that external circumstance. It appears in a cantata text cycle printed in Meiningen in 1704; one must wonder whether the author is to be sought in that southwestern Thuringian capital.
  
  In many cases, the layout of the cantata libretti in the anonymous annual cycle is similar to that of our cantata: at the beginning, a passage from the Hebrew Bible, followed by recitatives and arias; a New Testament passage is followed by recitatives and arias, with a chorale strophe at the end.⁴ In this case, two verses from Isaiah 58 provide the evocative introduction:

  Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, und die, so im Elend sind, führe ins Haus. So du einen nackend siehst, so kleide ihn, und entzeuch dich nicht von deinem Fleisch. Alsdann wird dein Licht hervorbrechen wie die Morgenröte, und deine Besserung wird schnell wachsen, und deine Gerechtigkeit wird vor dir hergehen, und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn wird dich zu sich nehmen. (7–8)
  
  Break your bread with the hungry, and those who are in misery, take into your house. Should you see a naked person, clothe him, and do not withdraw yourself from those of your own flesh. And then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your recovery will quickly increase, and your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will take you to itself.

  
  Building on these words, the unknown librettist formulates an elaborate admonition to active compassion and empathy in recitatives and arias. In the first recitative, the unknown poet, a lover of the Alexandrine verse form, indulges his predilection for long lines:

  Der reiche Gott wirft seinen Überfluß
  Auf uns, die wir ohn ihn auch nicht den Odem haben. 
  Sein ist es, was wir sind; er gibt nur den Genuß,
  Doch nicht, daß uns allein nur seine Schätze laben.
  
  Bounteous God casts his abundance
  Upon us, who without him do not even have breath. 
  It is his, what we are; he gives only pleasure,
  Yet not that his treasures should bless us alone.

  
  At the close the text reads:

  Barmherzigkeit, die auf dem Nächsten ruht,
  Kann mehr als alle Gab ihm an das Herze dringen.
  
  Compassion that falls upon one’s neighbor 
  Can, more than all gifts, penetrate his heart.

  
  The associated aria generalizes these ideas:

  Seinem Schöpfer noch auf Erden 
  Nur im Schatten ähnlich werden, 
  Ist im Vorschmack selig sein.
  Sein Erbarmen nachzuahmen, 
  Streuet hier des Segens Samen, 
  Den wir dorten bringen ein.
  
  To become like one’s creator still on Earth, 
  Though only in shadowy similarity,
  Is a foretaste of blessedness. 
  To emulate his mercy
  Sows the seeds of blessing here,
  Which we will harvest there.

  
  The New Testament passage comes from Hebrews 13: “Wohlzutun und mitzuteilen vergesset nicht; denn solche Opfer gefallen Gott wohl” (16; To do good and to share, do not forget, for such offerings please God well). The ensuing aria puts these possibilities into perspective:

  Höchster, was ich habe, 
  Ist nur deine Gabe.
  Wenn vor deinem Angesicht 
  Ich schon mit dem deinen 
  Dankbar wollt erscheinen,
  Willst du doch kein Opfer nicht.
  
  Highest, whatever I have, 
  Is only your gift.
  If, before your visage,
  I should, with all that is yours, 
  Wish to appear thankful,
  You still want no offering.

  
  The personal mode of address and the promise to exercise compassion continue in the recitative, once again in Alexandrines:

  Wie soll ich dir o Herr! denn sattsamlich vergelten, 
  Was du an Leib und Seel mir hast zugut getan?
  
  How should I, O Lord! sufficiently repay you
  For what you have done for me in body and soul?

  
  The long text concludes:

  Ich bringe, was ich kann, Herr! laß es dir behagen,
  Daß ich, was du versprichst, auch einst davon mög tragen.
  
  I bring what I can, Lord! may it please you
  That I may one day gain from it what you promise.

  
  A strophe from David Denicke’s 1648 hymn Kommt, laßt euch den Herren lehren (Come, let the Lord teach you) summarizes the thread of ideas:

  Selig sind, die aus Erbarmen 
  Sich annehmen fremder Not, 
  Sind mitleidig mit den Armen, 
  Bitten treulich für sie Gott.
  Die behülflich sind mit Rat,
  Auch womöglich mit der Tat,
  Werden wieder Hülf empfangen 
  Und Barmherzigkeit erlangen.
  
  Blessed are they who, out of mercy, 
  Attend to the affliction of others, 
  Who are compassionate with the poor, 
  Pray faithfully for them to God.
  Those who are helpful with their counsel 
  And, where possible in action,
  Will in turn receive help 
  And themselves gain mercy.

  
  The richness of text in the opening passage from Isaiah informs the conception of the opening movement in Bach’s composition. The complex movement, 218 measures in length, begins with an instrumental section whose “broken” manner can certainly be understood in relation to the gestures of the breaking and distribution of bread. As the instruments are joined by the choir, the first paragraph of the Isaiah passage is further developed. The gravity and seriousness of “Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot” call for and receive a fugal treatment in the central part of this first section. The rest of the text, beginning with “So du einen nackend siehest,” is instead treated line by line, in the manner of a motet, and is more withdrawn compared to the fugal texture. The same gradation between fugal and chordal textures defines the closing section, beginning at the shift to 3
  8 meter. In contrast to the other text passages, the opening and closing sections are powerfully emphasized by their fugal treatment: “Alsdann wird dein Licht hervorbrechen, wie die Morgenröte,” as well as “und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn wird dich zu sich nehmen.”
  
  The first recitative for bass, simply declaimed, is followed by the alto aria “Seinem Schöpfer noch auf Erden.” It is a truly characteristic movement in Bach’s cantatas, in which the buoyant charm of a dance type, here situated between minuet and passepied, is united with strict counterpoint to lend the text a particular emphasis.
  
  With the New Testament passage, Bach begins the second half of the cantata, customarily performed after the sermon in Leipzig—and, with this division, he deviates from the intentions of the librettist. The text “Wohlzutun und mitzuteilen” is given to the bass, the vox Christi, which, as so often, is accompanied only by the basso continuo. Through a subtle technique of repetition and variation, voice and accompaniment strive to clarify the gravity of the biblical passage. A lighter contrast is afforded by the setting of the aria “Höchster, was ich habe” (Highest, whatever I have) with soprano and obbligato recorders. The last recitative, with its quite personal expression, is embedded in chords in the strings before the four-part concluding chorale on the melody Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele (Rejoice greatly, O my soul) leads to a confident conclusion.

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  Footnotes

  1. The anthology, edited by G. Wustmann, was published in two volumes in 1889 and 1895. The essay is not titled.—Trans.↵
  2. “Leipzig unter einer Herrschaft stehet, die sich zur Katholischen Religion bekennet, welche unsere Salzburgische Emigranten verlassen haben” (Casper 1982).↵
  3. The texts for BWV 39, movements 4 through 7, appear in the Christoph Birkmannannual cycle discovered in Nuremberg by Christine Blanken. Birkmann studied at the University of Leipzig from December 1, 1724, to early September 1727. His text cycle includes many works performed by Bach during Birkmann’s period of study in Leipzig. It is believed that BWV 39 was performed on June 23, 1726, in Leipzig (Blanken 2015b, 67).—Trans.↵
  4. Blankenburg (1977); Schulze (2002b).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:35:19+00:00 Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 / BC A 183b 9 Chorale cantata on hymn by Martin Luther. Reformation Day. Performed 10/31/1739? in Leipzig plain 2024-04-24T16:52:35+00:00 1724-10-31 BWV 80 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 09Reformation Chorale Cantata Reformation Day BC A 183b Johann Sebastian Bach Martin Luther Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80 / BC A 183b" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 550 Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle Leipzig II

  Reformation Day, 1739?

  The cantata Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 (A mighty fortress is our God) is for Reformation Day, celebrating Martin Luther’s renowned posting of theses in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, the spark that ignited the Reformation led by Luther. Johann Sebastian Bach first encountered this feast day tradition, essentially restricted to the territory of Electoral Saxony, in 1723 after moving from Köthen to Leipzig. In 1667, 150 years after the posting at Wittenberg, the elector of Saxony, Johann Georg II, decreed October 31 to be a half holiday thenceforth, independent of the day of the week. It remained that way even in 1697, when the Saxon elector Friedrich August I converted to Catholicism for the sake of his efforts to gain the Polish crown. Leipzig, at the time a stronghold of Lutheran orthodoxy, found it necessary to take the sensibilities of the ruler into consideration in order to preserve its independence. For instance, a prime example occurred in 1732 when Salzburg archbishop Leopold von Firmian drove many established Lutheran residents in his lands to emigrate in an anachronistic counter-Reformation show of force. On their way to Prussia, many refugees stopped in Leipzig, and the city, church, and citizenry showed the travelers every conceivable generosity. No official greeting was forthcoming, however, since “Leipzig,” so the official statement read, “is under a governance that professes the Catholic religion, which our Salzburg Emigrants have abandoned.”¹
  
  In those years in which Reformation Day fell on a Sunday, it is likely that the official diplomatic accommodations just described included downplaying the holiday by retaining the designation while, in the sermon, using the Gospel reading for the particular Sunday in the post-Trinity period. This happened four times during Bach’s tenure in Leipzig. Significantly, this was reversed for St. John’s and St. Michael’s Days, when the holiday was given preference. In the four years just mentioned, church music would have been subject to the stipulations for the sermon text, and Bach would have had no opportunity to perform a cantata for Reformation Day; instead, he would have produced a cantata for the given Sunday. Hence, there would have been no occasion for a Reformation Day cantata in 1723, Bach’s first year at Leipzig. A year later, however, the first version of a cantata on Luther’s hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott would seem to fit the context of Bach’s chorale cantata cycle without difficulty. But it is equally plausible that this cantata originated only later and that another work, since lost, was performed in connection with the chorale cantatas. This hypothesis stems from the fact that the cantata Ein feste Burg is particularly heterogeneous in comparison to the other chorale cantatas. In most cases, in the chorale cantata annual cycle, the work is based on a chorale text whose first and last strophes are adopted without change, while the others are reshaped as needed to become recitatives and arias. The reverse is true for Ein feste Burg. Luther created his paraphrase of Psalm 46 (“Deus noster refugium et virtus”) between 1526 and 1528, a time of severe crises both internal and external. Three of the chorale’s four strophes found their way into the cantata only belatedly. At first there were two or even only one.
  
  The cantata’s first version is a composition for Oculi Sunday that Bach must have performed in early 1715 and whose text is by the secretary of the Weimar High Consistory, Salomon Franck.² The Gospel reading for Oculi, found in Luke 7, gives an account of an exorcism and victory over the devil. Accordingly, Franck’s text is largely concerned with themes of “war against Satan and his horde and against the world and sin.” The libretto’s warlike mien may have prompted Bach to repurpose the Weimar Oculi cantata— unusable during Leipzig’s tempus clausum—to a composition for Reformation Day in Leipzig. He did not have to rely on a librettist to do this; it only required the three missing Luther strophes to be fitted into the appropriate places in Franck’s libretto.
  
  As expected, Luther’s first strophe stands at the beginning of the Leipzig version:

  Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, 
  Ein gute Wehr und Waffen.
  
  A mighty fortress is our God, 
  A good defense and weapon.

  The text continues with what was originally the opening movement, the first aria authored by Franck:

  Alles, was von Gott geboren, 
  Ist zum Siegen auserkoren. 
  Wer bei Christi Blutpanier
  In der Taufe treu geschworen, 
  Siegt im Geiste für und für.
  
  All that is born of God 
  Is elected for victory.
  Whoever, before Christ’s lifeblood banner, 
  Has in baptism sworn loyalty
  Conquers in spirit for ever and ever.

  
  It was surely Bach’s idea—and not that of the Weimar librettist—to attach an untexted, instrumental quotation of the chorale melody Ein feste Burg, thereby producing a multitextual effect through association. In contrast to this feature in the Weimar cantata, an actual second text was added to the Leipzig version, the second chorale strophe:
  
  Mit unsrer Macht ist nichts getan, 
  Wir sind gar bald verloren.
  
  With our power nothing is done, 
  We are indeed soon lost.
  
  In Franck’s text and Bach’s Weimar composition, this concluded the Oculi cantata. In the Leipzig version, it was moved near the beginning, where it was combined with the freely versified aria text, whose end rhymes match it, astonishingly: “geboren,” “erkoren,” “verloren,” “geschworen.” The ensuing recitative-aria pair contrasts love of God and of Jesus against the demand to drive out the devil and the world. Luther’s third strophe, another late addition, follows this:
  
  Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär 
  Und wollten uns verschlingen.
  
  And were the world full of the devil 
  And wanted to devour us.
  
  A final recitative-aria pair culminates in these lines:

  Wie selig sind doch die, die Gott im Munde tragen, 
  Doch sel’ger ist das Herz, das ihn im Glauben trägt. 
  Es bleibet unbesiegt und kann die Feinde schlagen 
  Und wird zuletzt gekrönt, wenn es den Tod erlegt.
  
  How blessed indeed are they who carry God in their mouths, 
  Yet more blessed is the heart that bears him in faith.
  It remains undefeated and can strike the enemies 
  And will at last be crowned, when it conquers death.

  In the 1715 version, this aria began with the words “Wie selig ist der Leib, der, Jesu, dich getragen” (How blessed is the body that, Jesus, carried you), but these phrases had to give way to the cantata’s new purpose. Luther’s fourth strophe provides a powerful conclusion, “Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn” (They shall let the word abide), with its closing lines certain of victory:

  Laß fahren dahin,
  Sie habens kein’ Gewinn,
  Das Reich muß uns doch bleiben.
  
  Let them all pass away, 
  They have no gain.
  The kingdom must certainly remain ours.

  As we have seen, Bach’s composition developed in two or even three stages. The oldest level comprises the solo movements that come from the Weimar cantata for Oculi of 1715. Included here is the original opening movement, the bass aria “Alles, was von Gott geboren,” with the repeated figures and fanfares by the strings that characterize the “Aria with Heroic Affect.” All of its parts are characterized by themes derived from the chorale; we can thus speak of a multilayered chorale fantasia with a heavily ornamented cantus firmus presented line by line, performed in Weimar by the oboe and in Leipzig by the soprano as well. Following the bass recitative, the soprano aria “Komm in mein Herzenshaus” (Come into the house of my heart) attempts to reconcile the most contrasting text elements with lighthearted music and intentional naivete. In contrast, the duet “Wie selig sind doch die” (How blessed indeed are they), in which voices and instruments in pairs go their own ways, shows how Bach, even at the beginning of his intensive production of cantatas, knew how to reconcile the interpretation of diverging cornerstones of text through the demands of a unified thematic flow.
  
  When Bach first reshaped the Weimar solo movements to create a Reformation cantata (BWV 80.2), in 1730 at the latest but perhaps as early as 1724, he placed a simple four-part chorale setting of the strophe “Ein feste Burg” at the beginning. Moreover, he may have added the chorale strophe arrangement “Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär” at the same time, so that by including the texted cantus firmus in the bass aria as well as in the closing chorale, Bach represented all four strophes of Luther’s chorale in the cantata. The chorale arrangement is predicated entirely on the opposition between the battle tumult in the instrumental parts and the unshakable drive of the chorale melody, whose symbolically meant unison effect radiates out over the instruments.
  
  At a later time, presumably after 1735 but perhaps only in Bach’s last year of life, he replaced the simple opening chorale movement with the extensive chorale fantasia on Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (BWV 80.3). Every bit as unusual in its dimensions as in its vocal demands, this exceptional movement shows itself related to such late works as the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her BWV 769 and The Art of Fugue BWV 1080. Moreover, it shows that even the motet-like sequencing principle admits an overall unity if the thematic diversity of the individual lines is compensated for by such an artful homogeneity of structure. Self-evidently, as it were, the fugal treatment of the choral voices and an intensive interpretation of the text that fosters diversity combine with the unifying tone symbolism of the chorale melody, which is presented in strict canon between oboes and instrumental basses. There can be no question that this finely woven structure of relationships in this singular artwork is seriously disrupted if one employs the trumpets and drums added by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach between 1750 and 1764. The fact that this unauthorized and coarse arrangement could persist until the present in musical practice indicates a problematic understanding of Bach and Luther as well.

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  Footnotes

  1. “Leipzig unter einer Herrschaft stehet, die sich zur Catholischen religion bekennet, welche unsre Salzburgischen Emigranten verlassen haben.” Casper (1982).↵
  2. Alles, was von Gott geboren BWV 80.1.—Trans.↵