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• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:20+00:00 Komm, du süße Todesstunde BWV 161 / BC A 135 15 Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 09/27/1716 at Weimar. Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T15:52:28+00:00 1716-09-27 BWV 161 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 05Trinity16 Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 135 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Komm, du süße Todesstunde, BWV 161 / BC A 135" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 421 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 27, 1716

  Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde BWV 161 (Come, you sweet hour of death) at the age of about thirty for the worship service in the castle chapel at the court of Weimar. The Weimar ducal consistory secretary, Salomon Franck, provided the libretto, published in his collection Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer, which appeared in print in 1715 in Weimar. The composition is for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, in Luke 7, gives the account of Jesus’s raising of the widow’s son at Nain. Salomon Franck’s libretto is based on this Gospel reading only to the extent that the text is suffused with longing for death and the certainty of resurrection. The story itself is not recounted.
  
  In the view of the music historian Arnold Schering, 

  with its strengthening of faith in Jesus, Pietism had fostered a human race that anticipated death with joy and regarded the repose in the little burial chamber as but a brief nap from which Jesus would awaken the Soul to unearthly glory.... What is terrifying and horrible about this process of passing away is indeed not ignored but mitigated and covered by images and feelings that lead directly to consolation and hope. Freely and with poetic power . . . the librettist develops that which will make the moment of death seem happy and attractive to faithful souls. All is dissolved in longing and ardent yearning.¹

  
  Schering’s description applies to the text of our cantata in general and is helpful for understanding most of the verses. Even so, the opening movement, an aria, calls for close consideration. Salomon Franck’s text reads:

  Komm, du süße Todesstunde, 
  Da mein Geist
  Honig speist
  Aus des Löwen Munde. 
  Mache meinen Abschied süße, 
  Säume nicht,
  Letztes Licht,
  Daß ich meinen Heiland küße.
  
  Come, you sweet hour of death, 
  When my spirit
  Dines on honey
  Out of the lion’s mouth. 
  Make my departure sweet, 
  Do not linger,
  Last light,
  That I might kiss my savior.

  Here Franck has drawn a reference to Samson’s battle with the lion, found in Judges 14. With his bare hands, Samson had killed a young lion. After several days, he found honey in the cadaver. At his wedding celebration, he gave the guests a riddle to solve. A late seventeenth-century sermon provides an exegesis of this passage: “When Samson found honey in the lion, he devised this riddle in the Book of Judges Chapter 14 verse 14: ‘Sweetness poured out of the horrible.’ What is more horrible than death when it crushes bones like a lion? . . . Nevertheless, a Christian finds honey in lions and consolation in death.” Apart from this rather remote allusion in the unidentified sermon, Erdmann Neumeister’s influence can be discerned in Franck’s aria text. In Neumeister’s first annual text cycle, prepared in Weissenfels in 1702, the libretto for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (immediately before the Sunday in question) contains the following formulation:

  Komm doch, komm doch, süße Stunde!
  Da mein Geist
  Sich der Eitelkeit entreißt.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  Mich verlangt von Herzens-Grunde.
  Komm doch, komm doch, süße Stunde!
  
  But come, but come, sweet hour! 
  When my spirit
  Wrests itself from vanity.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  I long for you from the bottom of my heart. 
  But come, but come, sweet hour!

  
  The second movement of Franck’s cantata libretto, a recitative, characterizes the transitoriness of existence with opposing concepts:

  Welt, deine Lust ist Last,
  Dein Zucker ist mir als ein Gift verhaßt, 
  Dein Freudenlicht
  Ist mein Komete,
  Und wo man deine Rosen bricht, 
  Sind Dornen ohne Zahl
  Zu meiner Seele Qual.
  
  World, your pleasure is a burden, 
  Your sugar is hateful to me as poison, 
  Your joyful light
  Is my comet.²
  And where one picks your roses, 
  There are thorns without number 
  To the torment of my soul.

  
  Truly poetic expressions stand out effectively from the preceding:

  Der blasse Tod ist meine Morgenröte, 
  Mit solcher geht mir auf die Sonne 
  Der Herrlichkeit und Himmelswonne.
  
  Pale death is my sunrise, 
  With it arises for me the sun
  Of glory and heavenly delight.

  
  The recitative closes with a paraphrase of Philippians 1:23. The biblical passage reads, “Ich habe Lust abzuscheiden, und bei Christo zu sein” (I desire to depart and be with Christ); in Franck’s words:

  Ich habe Lust bei Christo bald zu weiden,
  Ich habe Lust, von dieser Welt zu scheiden 
  
  I desire soon to graze with Christ, 
  I desire to part from this world.

  
  The beginning of the third movement, another aria, continues in this vein almost without change:

  Mein Verlangen
  Ist, den Heiland zu empfangen 
  Und bei Christo bald zu sein.
  
  My longing
  Is to embrace the savior 
  And soon to be with Christ.

  
  The fourth movement, a recitative, proceeds purposefully with this chain of ideas with these expressions:

  Der Schluß ist schon gemacht, 
  Welt, gute Nacht!
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  So brich herein, du froher Todestag,
  So schlage doch, du letzter Stundenschlag.
  
  The decision is already made, 
  World, good night!
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  So break forth, you joyous day of death, 
  So strike, you stroke of the final hour.

  The last aria, whose text begins “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille” (If it is my God’s will), culminates in the exclamation:

  Jesu, komm und nimm mich fort! 
  Dieses sei mein letztes Wort!
  
  Jesus, come and take me away! 
  This shall be my last word!

  
  The fourth strophe from Christoph Knoll’s 1611 hymn Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Sincerely do I long) finishes the cantata text and concludes the chain of ideas with the pertinent “Was schädt mir denn der Tod?” (How then does death harm me?).
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach may have intended to set this text for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity in 1715; the performance would have been due in early October. But a tragic event at court thwarted his plan: at barely nineteen years of age, the extraordinarily musically gifted Prince Johann Ernst died after a long illness at Frankfurt am Main. Shortly afterward, an official period of mourning was decreed in the principality during which even polyphonic music at the court church was silenced for some time.³ Hence the first performance would have taken place the following year, at the end of September 1716, and the work probably was composed at that time. It shows the Weimar concertmaster and court organist at the height of his creative powers. In invention and design, the opening movement presents itself masterfully: urgent and seductive in equal measure, a pair of recorders, playing mostly in parallel thirds and sixths, intensifies the alto’s “Komm, du süße Todesstunde.” Counterpoint is provided by the organ, which performs the melody “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” phrase by phrase in long note values. Since the melody inevitably elicits a textual association, a dual textuality results for the listener comprising Franck’s aria poetry and Christoph Knoll’s chorale strophe. At the same time, the apparently freely composed aria proves to be a wide-ranging chorale arrangement worthy of the art of a court organist.
  
  The ensuing tenor recitative flows into an arioso section, which expressively underscores the “Ich habe lust, von dieser Welt zu scheiden” through stubbornly repeated bass figures. The tenor aria “Mein Verlangen ist, den Heiland zu umfangen” (My desire is to embrace the savior), accompanied by the strings, is also characterized by intensive text declamation, combined with a measured, dancelike stride. The alto recitative, accompanied by all the instruments, “Der Schluß ist schon gemacht,” enters the realm of tone painting. Sinking figuration and sustained tones symbolize sleep, just as ascending passages evoke “awakening”; the pealing sounds of the plucked string instruments and the flutes suggest the “striking of the last hour.” The last freely versified movement, “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille,” was designated an aria by Franck but composed as a chorus or at least a four-part ensemble of soloists by Bach. Its thematic material harks back to the opening movement; judging by its nearly ecstatic longing it is rather filled by an inner joy, expressed by the dancelike, animated meter as well as the playful passagework of the two woodwind instruments. In the concluding chorale setting, the flute and oboe form an obbligato part in high register, rich in syncopations, that expands the texture to five parts and lends it the character of a figurative chorale prelude. The bridge back to the opening movement is created not only by the identity of the chorale melody but also by its compositional procedure, which is similar to several movements from the Orgelbüchlein BWV 599–644, to which it is close chronologically.
  
  By all appearances, the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde was heard not simply in Weimar in 1716 but also in Bach’s Leipzig period.⁴ In addition to several changes in setting, the Leipzig version is different from the Weimar one in particular because the chorale melody in the opening movement is given to a voice, so that the multitextuality is not simply an associative effect but an actual occurrence. In his last years, the cantor of St. Thomas undertook a final change: he augmented the designation for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity with an assignment to the Feast of the Purification of Mary and thereby converted the longing for death in the cantata text associated with the story of the boy at Nain to the account of the ancient Simeon found in the Gospel of Luke.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Schering (1942, 129–30). The questions of what Pietism is and Bach’s relation
     to it are complex and controversial. A recent overview of these can be found in Leaver
     (2021, 219–47).—Trans.↵
  2. A symbol of calamity.—Trans.↵
  3. Glöckner (1985).↵
  4. Franck’s text for BWV 161 also appears in the annual text cycle Gott-geheiligte Sabbaths-Zehnden, published in Nuremberg in 1728 by Christoph Birkmann, who studied at the University of Leipzig from December 1, 1724, to early September 1727 and during that time frequently heard church music performed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Birkmann’s cycle contains thirty-one cantatas by Bach known to have been performed at Leipzig during Birkmann’s period of study there. Since Franck’s text for BWV 161 is also included in the cycle, it is now believed to have been performed in Leipzig on September 16, 1725. See Blanken (2015b, 70).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn BWV 132 / BC A 6 10 Fourth Sunday of Advent. First performed 12/22/1715 at Weimar. Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T17:38:09+00:00 1715-12-22 BWV 132 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 11Advent3 Fourth Sunday of Advent BC A 6 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomon Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132 / BC A 6" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 21 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Fourth Sunday of Advent

  Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn BWV 132 (Prepare the ways, prepare the path) in late 1715 and performed it several days before Christmas in the castle church in Weimar. After his promotion to concertmaster of the Royal Chapel in March 1714 he was obligated to compose and perform, every month, a new “piece,” that is, a church piece—in other words, a cantata. However, the resulting four-week rotation was interrupted in the summer of 1715 by the death at only eighteen of Prince Johann Ernst, with whom Bach obviously enjoyed a close friendship. A period of mourning in the principality was immediately established; it brought even church music to a halt for a quarter year. It was not until early November that an arrangement was made to at least allow music making in the churches again: “By the most gracious Royal Order, your Christian Loves are informed that on the upcoming 21st Sunday after Trinity, God willing, the organs and instrumental music may once again be used in local churches in this principality; in weddings and other gatherings, however, as well as public thoroughfares, all entertainment and instrumental music must remain suspended until further most gracious decree and the complete halt of the mourning period still in effect, which everyone must observe.”¹
  
  Although months remained before the mourning period was entirely lifted, official church music could proceed as normally. Bach’s cantata for the fourth Sunday of Advent was his second composition after the resumption of church music. The Weimar concertmaster and court organist drew the text from the annual “appropriate” (zuständig) cycle for the current year, which had appeared in print only several months before: “Evangelical Devotional Offering, to the Most Serene Prince and Lord, LORD Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of Saxony, Jülich, Cleve, and Berg, also Engern and Westphalia etc., etc, for our most gracious reigning Landed Lords, a Nobly Pious Arrangement in sacred CANTATAS which on the regular Sunday and Feast Days in the Princely Entire-Saxon Court Chapel in the Wilhelmsburg in the Year 1715, illumined to be set to music by Salomon Franck, Entire Royal Saxon Ducal Consistory Secretary in Weimar.”² The word “Entire,” which turns up twice in this long-winded title, points toward the peculiar situation of the Weimar court, namely, that the court was to be governed jointly between two brothers and their heirs, according to the terms of an estate settlement executed in the seventeenth century. As a consequence, during Bach’s tenure in Weimar there were two separate court administrations as well as a joint one. For the most part, Bach’s responsibilities had to do with the joint court administration; his librettist was also among the joint servants of the court.
  
  Salomon Franck’s libretto “On the fourth Sunday of Advent” follows the Gospel reading for this Sunday. Found in the first chapter of John, it contains the witness of the Lamb of God:

  And this is the witness of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you? And he confessed, and did not lie; but confessed, I am not Christ. And they asked him, What then? Are you Elias? And he said, I am not. Are you that prophet? And he answered, No! Then said they unto him, Who are you? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What do you say about yourself? He said: I am the voice of the preacher in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. And they who had been sent, they were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said to him, Why do you baptize then, if you are not Christ, nor Elias, nor that prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there stands one among you, whom you do not know. It is he, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose sandal thongs I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. (19–28)

  
  The cantata text begins with an aria that paraphrases the words of the prophet Isaiah mentioned in the Gospel passage. “Richtet den Weg des Herrn” (Prepare ye the way of the Lord) goes back to Isaiah’s formulation: “Es ist eine Stimme des Predigers in der Wüste: Bereitet dem Herrn den Weg, macht auf dem Gefilde eine ebene Bahn unserm Gott!” (40:3; It is the voice of the preacher in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God). In the text by Salomon Franck, this becomes:

  Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn!
  Und machet die Stege 
  Im Glauben und Leben
  Dem Höchsten ganz eben,
  Messias kommt an!
  
  Prepare the ways, prepare the path!
  And make the bridges
  In faith and life
  For the Most High quite smooth,
  The Messiah arrives!

  
  Isaiah’s continuation is also entered in the cantata text: “Alle Täler sollen erhöht werden, und alle Berge und Hügel sollen erniedrigt werden” (40:4; Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low). The end of the first recitative reads:

  Indes, mein Herz, bereite
  Noch heute
  Dem Herrn die Glaubensbahn
  Und räume weg die Hügel und die Höhen,
  Die ihm entgegenstehen.
  Wälz ab die schweren Sündensteine,
  Nimm deinen Heiland an,
  Daß er mit dir im Glauben sich vereine.
  
  Meanwhile, my heart, prepare
  Yet today
  The path of belief for the Lord
  And clear away the hills and the heights
  That stand in his way.
  Roll away the heavy stones of sin,
  Receive your savior,
  That he may be united with you in faith.

  
  The turn from Gospel and words of the prophet to the individual believer, begun in the first aria and recitative, is continued in the second aria, where the question directed to John the Baptist, “Wer bist du?” (Who are you?), is elevated to a fundamental question of belief:

  Wer bist du? Frage dein Gewissen,
  Da wirst du sonder Heuchelei,
  Ob du, o Mensch, falsch oder treu,
  Dein rechtes Urteil hören müßen.
  Wer bist du? Frage das Gesetze,
  Das wird dir sagen, wer du bist,
  Ein Kind des Zorns in Satans Netze,
  Ein falsch und heuchlerischer Christ.
  
  Who are you? Ask your conscience,
  Then you, without hypocrisy, must hear
  Whether you, O Man, are false or true,
  Your just judgment.
  Who are you? Ask the commandment,
  Which will tell you who you are,
  A child of rage in Satan’s net,
  A false and hypocritical Christian.

  
  This philippic is followed by an eloquent confession of regret in the second recitative:

  Als, Jesu, mich dein Geist- und Wasserbad
  Gereinigt von meiner Missetat,
  Hab ich dir zwar stets feste Treu versprochen;
  Ach, aber ach! der Taufbund ist gebrochen,
  Die Untreu reuet mich!
  Ach Gott erbarme dich,
  Ach hilf, daß ich mit unverwandter Treue
  Den Gnadenbund im Glauben stets erneue.
  
  When, Jesus, your spirit and baptismal bath
  Cleansed me of my misdeeds
  I have indeed always pledged firm fealty to you;
  Ah, but ah! the baptismal covenant is broken,
  The disloyalty I regret!
  O God, have mercy,
  Ah, help, that I, with unswerving loyalty,
  May constantly renew in faith the covenant of grace.

  
  Admonishingly, the accompanying aria points toward the forgiveness of sins through the sacrificial death of Jesus and thereby goes back to a passage in the Revelation of St. John that answers the question “Who are these, with white clothing on, and whence have they come?” with “These are the ones, who have come from great tribulation, and have washed their clothing and have made their clothing bright through the blood of the Lamb” (7:13). Franck’s text reads as follows:

  Christi Glieder, ach bedenket, 
  Was der Heiland euch geschenket
  Durch der Taufe reines Bad!
  Bei der Blut- und Wasserquelle
  Werden eure Kleider helle,
  Die befleckt von Missetat.
  Christus gab zum neuen Kleide 
  Roten Purpur, weißen Seide,
  Diese sind der Christen Staat.
  
  Members of Christ, ah, consider
  What the savior has given you
  Through the pure bath of baptism!
  With this spring of blood and water
  Your clothing becomes bright,
  Which were soiled by misdeed.
  Christ gave new clothing,
  Scarlet purple, white silk,
  These are the Christian’s raiment.

  
  As closing chorus, Franck’s libretto calls for a strophe from Elisabeth Kreuziger’s hymn Herr Christ, der einig Gottes Sohn (Lord Christ, the only son of God), which begins: 

  Ertöt uns durch dein Güte, 
  Erweck uns durch dein Gnad.
  
  Mortify us through your goodness,
  Awaken us through your grace.

  
  The chorale is not found in Bach’s score; it contains only the free poetry, three arias, and two recitatives. The composer sets the beginning, “Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn,” with its joyous anticipation, to the dance-like verve and overflowing joy of a gigue in which the soprano voice and obbligato oboe seem to outbid one another with unending coloraturas. The swerve into related minor keys in the middle section brings a reflective moment, but this episode is quickly forgotten with the return of the dominating beginning. The second movement, a recitative for tenor, changes on two occasions to the more rhythmically structured writing of the arioso in service of a more intense projection of the text, in which there is no lack of tone-painting effects, such as the “Wälzen” (rolling) of the “Sündensteine” (sin stones). The tormenting question "Wer bist du?" is given to the bass, accompanied only by a continuo that covers nothing, glosses over nothing, and is filled with pitilessly unyielding, stubbornly returning motives. In the second recitative, the rueful confession of sin in the alto voice is granted a modicum of shelter by an accompanying texture of string instruments. The introverted closing aria allows the same voice to engage in solitary dialogue with the ostentatious display of the virtuoso violin. The violin solo may have been played by the supremely gifted concertmaster in Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach. Whether a concluding chorale allowed a return to the main key remains unknown. Bach’s score contains nothing of the sort, nor can anything suitable be found anywhere else that could easily be appended to the very expressive Weimar composition. For Bach, the matter seems to have ended with his composition’s only performance in December 1715. In Leipzig, the fourth Sunday in Advent belonged to the tempus clausum without music, and the cantor of St. Thomas School obviously did not attempt to revise his cantata, unusable in Leipzig, for any other purpose.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “Auf Gnädigsten Fürstlichen Befehl wird Euer Christlichen Liebe vermeldet, daß auf nechstbevorstehenden 21. Sonntag nach Trinitatis, geliebts GOtt, die Orgeln und Instrumental-Musik in denen Kirchen hiesigen Fürstentums wieder gebrauchet, auf Hochzeiten und andern Zusammenkünften aber, wie auch auf öffentlichen Gassen, mit allen Freuden- und Saitenspiel noch ferner, bis auf anderweitige gnädigste Verordnung und gänztliche Aufhebung der noch währenden Landes-Trauer innen gehalten werden soll, wornach ein jeder sich zu achten wissen” (Glöckner 1985, 159–61).—Trans.↵
  2. "Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer, Auf des Durch. Fürsten und Herrn, HERRN Wilhelm Ernstens, Herzogens zu Sachsen, Jülich, Cleve und Berg, auch Engern und Westphalen etc. etc, Unsers gnädigsten regierenden Landes-Fürstens und Herrns Christ-Fürstliche Anordnung in geistlichen CANTATEN welche auf die ordentliche Sonn- und Fest-Tage in der Fürstlich Sächsischen gesamten Hof-Capelle zur Wilhelmsburg Anno 1715 zu musicieren angezundet von Salomon Francken, Fürstlich-Sachßischen gesamten Ober-Consistorial-Secretario in Weimar.”—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:20+00:00 Ach! Ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe BWV 162 / BC A 148 9 Twentieth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 10/25/1716 at Weimar. Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T18:10:17+00:00 1716-10-25 BWV 162 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 08Trinity20 Twentieth Sunday After Trinity BC A 148 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ach! Ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe, BWV 162 / BC A 148" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 458 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, October 25, 1716

  
  This cantata, Ach! Ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe BWV 162 (Ah! I see, now, as I go to the wedding), is from Bach’s Weimar period and originated in connection with his obligation, beginning in early 1714, to compose and perform a new cantata for the Weimar court chapel every month. If this task at first required him to be constantly on the lookout for appropriate texts, this difficulty was resolved in late 1714 when Salomon Franck, secretary to the Weimar High Consistory and designated librettist of church texts, placed an entire annual cycle of cantata libretti at Bach’s disposal. Published in mid-1715 under the title Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer (Protestant devotional offering), this collection provided Johann Sebastian Bach with a trustworthy and reliable foundation for his composition of cantatas for a long time. However, he was unexpectedly forced to cease production only a few months later. On August 1, 1715, Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, only nineteen years of age, died in Frankfurt am Main after a long illness. As a result, a period of national mourning was decreed, and even church music fell silent for several weeks.¹ Contrary to earlier assumptions, our cantata was therefore not first performed on November 3, 1715, but in the following year on October 25, 1716. Neither the heading, nor the content of Franck’s libretto, nor Bach’s performance materials leaves any doubt that the work is intended for the twentieth Sunday after Trinity.
  
  The libretto takes up the Sunday Gospel reading, found in Matthew 22, which relates the parable of the royal wedding. It begins with the statement “the kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a wedding feast for his son” (2) and continues with refusals and excuses by the invited guests, physical attacks upon the emissaries of the king, and his retaliation. 
  
  Salomon Franck’s cantata libretto first takes up the beginning of the Gospel text and focuses on the decision whether to accept or refuse the divine invitation. In its characterization of the question of conscience, the aria at the beginning employs a device typical of Franck, an accumulation, rich in contrast, of simple and compound nouns:

  Ach! Ich sehe,
  Itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe,
  Wohl und Wehe,
  Seelengift und Lebensbrot,
  Himmel, Hölle, Leben, Tod,
  Himmelsglanz und Höllenflammen
  Sind beisammen.
  Jesu, hilf, daß ich bestehe!
  
  Ah! I see
  Now, as I go to the wedding,
  Weal and woe,
  Poison of the soul and bread of life,
  Heaven, hell, life, death,
  Brilliance of heaven and flames of hell
  Are together.
  Jesus, help, that I endure them!

  
  The verbose recitative that follows asks whether too much honor is being paid to people:

  O großes Hochzeitfest,
  Darzu der Himmelskönig,
  Die Menschen rufen läßt!
  Ist denn die arme Braut, 
  Die menschliche Natur, nicht viel zu schlecht und wenig,
  Daß sich mit ihr der Sohn des Höchsten traut?
  O großes Hochzeitfest,
  Wie ist das Fleisch zu solcher Ehre kommen,
  Daß Gottes Sohn
  Es hat auf ewig angenommen?
  
  O great wedding feast,
  To which the king of heaven
  Lets humankind be called!
  Is the poor bride, then,
  Human nature, not much too low and insignificant,
  For the Son of the Most High to marry her?
  O great wedding feast,
  How has human flesh come to such honor
  That God’s Son 
  Has eternally taken it upon himself?

  
  At the end of this movement, the parable of the wedding meal is decrypted:

  Wie herrlich ist doch alles zubereitet!
  Wie selig ist, den hier der Glaube leitet,
  Und wie verflucht ist doch, der dieses Mahl verachtet!
  
  How gloriously is everything prepared!
  How blessed is the one faith leads here,
  And how cursed is the one who scorns this meal!

  
  Salomon Franck puts his biblical erudition on display with his formulation in the middle of the movement: “Der Himmel ist sein Thron, / Die Erde dient zum Schemel seinen Füßen” (Heaven is his throne, / Earth serves as his footstool), thereby alluding to the beginning of Isaiah 66: “So says the Lord: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: What manner of house is it that you would build for me, or what is the place where I shall rest?” (1). The associated aria paraphrases motives from the main hymn of the twentieth Sunday after Trinity, Johann Franck’s Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn thyself, O dear soul) of 1632. Its fourth strophe begins: “Ach wie hungert mein Gemüte, / Menschenfreund, nach deiner Güte” (Ah, how my mind hungers, / Friend of humankind, for your goodness); the seventh strophe uses the salutation “Jesu, wahres Brot des Lebens” (Jesus, true bread of life). The conclusion of Franck’s aria text clearly alludes to this:

  Jesu, Brunnquell aller Gnaden,
  Labe mich elenden Gast,
  Weil du mich berufen hast!
  Ich bin matt, schwach und beladen,
  Ach! erquicke meine Seele, 
  Ach! wie hungert mich nach dir!
  Lebensbrot, das ich erwähle, 
  Komm, vereine dich mit mir!
  
  Jesus, wellspring of all graces,
  Refresh me, your wretched guest,
  For you have called me!
  I am faint, weak, and burdened.
  Ah! Refresh my soul,
  Ah! How I hunger after you!
  Bread of life, which I choose, 
  Come, unite with me!

  
  While the first three cantata movements address the overall content of the Sunday Gospel reading, the fourth, again a recitative, picks out a detail from its close: the fate of the guest who, without the essential clothing, wanted to take part in the meal:

  Mein Jesu, laß mich nicht
  Zur Hochzeit unbekleidet kommen,
  Daß mich nicht treffe dein Gericht;
  Mit Schrecken hab ich ja vernommen, 
  Wie du den kühnen Hochzeitgast,
  Der ohne Kleid erschienen,
  Verworfen und verdammet hast!
  
  My Jesus, let me not
  Come to the wedding improperly attired
  So that I do not face your judgment;
  With horror I have learned
  How that rash wedding guest
  Who appeared without suitable attire
  Was cast out and condemned by you!

  
  This culminates in the plea:

  Ach schenke mir des Glaubens Hochzeitkleid;
  Laß dein Verdienst zu meinem Schmucke dienen,
  Gib mir zum Hochzeitkleide
  Den Rock des Heils, der Unschuld weiße Seide.
  
  Ah, give me the wedding dress of faith;
  Let your merit serve as my adornment,
  Grant me as wedding garment
  The robe of salvation, the innocence of white silk.

  
  The white silk of innocence and the purple blood of Christ—a combination often used by Franck—are the proper adornment: “So werd ich würdiglich das Mahl des Lammes schmecken” (Then shall I worthily taste the supper of the lamb). The last freely versified cantata movement, again in the form of an aria, is filled with the certainty of faith:

  In meinem Gott bin ich erfreut!
  Die Liebesmacht hat ihn bewogen,
  Daß er mir in der Gnadenzeit
  Aus lauter Huld hat angezogen
  Die Kleider der Gerechtigkeit.
  Ich weiß, er wird nach diesem Leben
  Der Ehre weißes Kleid
  Mir auch im Himmel geben.
  
  In my God I am delighted!
  Love’s power has stirred him
  So that in this time of grace
  Out of pure benevolence he has dressed
  Me in the garments of righteousness.
  I know that after this life
  The white robe of honor
  He will give even me in heaven.

  
  This anticipates the close of the libretto, the seventh strophe of the 1652 chorale Alle Menschen müßen sterben (All people must die):

  Ach ich habe schon erblicket
  Diese große Herrlichkeit.
  Itzund werd ich schön geschmücket
  Mit dem weißen Himmelskleid;
  Mit der güldnen Ehrenkrone
  Steh ich da für Gottes Throne,
  Schaue solche Freude an,
  Die kein Ende nehmen kann.
  
  Ah, I have already glimpsed
  This great glory.
  Now I shall be beautifully adorned
  With the white robe of heaven;
  With the golden crown of honor
  I shall stand before God’s throne,
  Shall see such joy
  As can have no end.

  
  As so often, Bach’s composition of this libretto places the greatest emphasis on the first movement. Here, voices and instruments unite in a sophisticated polyphonic fabric in which the foreboding head motive of the bass is ever present. Its text begins “Ach, ich sehe” (Ah, I see); its characteristic intervals are a downward leap of the fifth and upward leap of the sixth. In the second aria, voice and basso continuo unite in a stately pastorale movement in 12
  8 meter. However, little more can be said about this aria; it belongs to the group of movements in Bach’s oeuvre, happily few in number, for which one or more obbligato instrumental parts have gone missing. How many instruments were involved and which instruments might have carried the parts: these things have not yet been reliably determined. The third aria of our cantata, the duet “In meinem Gott bin ich erfreut!” has no instrumental part other than the basso continuo; in this case, however, the setting can be seen to match the goals of the composer. What he was after here was a cheerful round dance in which the voice would predominate. The sparingly harmonized closing chorale uses a melody that appears only very rarely, from Alle Menschen müßen sterben, which may have circulated mostly in Thuringia. This “provincial variant,” however, did not hinder the cantata’s repeated performance in Leipzig in October 1723.

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  Footnotes

  1. Glöckner (1985).↵