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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 61 / BC A1 34 First Sunday of Advent. First performed 12/02/1714 at Weimar. Text by Erdmann Neumeister. plain 2024-04-24T15:02:34+00:00 1714-12-02 BWV 61 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 11Advent First Sunday of Advent BC A 1 Johann Sebastian Bach Erdmann Neumeister Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61 / BC A 1" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 11 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  First Sunday of Advent

  There are two Bach cantatas that begin with the first strophe of Martin Luther’s chorale Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (Now come, savior of the Gentiles), and both are for the first Sunday of Advent. This one, the older of the two, originated in Weimar in 1714. The other was composed a decade later in Leipzig. The work composed in 1714 is based on a text by Erdmann Neumeister. Born near Weissenfels (Thuringia) in 1671 and active at first in various positions near this royal seat, in 1714 Neumeister was working as senior court chaplain and superintendent in Sorau, Silesia. In that year he published a new annual cycle of cantata texts in Frankfurt am Main under the title Geistliche Poesien mit untermischten biblischen Sprüchen und Choralen auf alle Sonn- und Festtagen (Sacred poems with interspersed biblical sayings and chorales for all Sundays and feast days), intended to be set by Georg Philipp Telemann, the director of music at Frankfurt. In March 1714 Telemann stood as godfather at the baptism of Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Six decades later, Carl Philipp Emanuel reported regarding his father that “in his younger years he was often together with Telemann—who also lifted me out of the baptismal font.”¹ It seems likely that this close relationship, featuring godparenthood, enabled an exchange of news and recent developments that included Neumeister’s new annual cycle of texts.
  
  Annual text cycles normally were arranged according to the church year, beginning, as this one does, with the first Sunday of Advent. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, found in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew and nearly identically in Mark and Luke, describes the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and, thus, the arrival of the savior:

  When they now came near to Jerusalem, at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village that lies before you, and immediately you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me! And if anyone says something to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them, and immediately he will release them to you.” All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, thy king comes to you, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.’” The disciples went forth, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass and the colt, and put their clothes on them, and they set him thereon. But many people spread their garments in the way, others cut down branches from the trees, and scattered them in the way. But the people however, those that went before followed, cried and said, Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (1–9)

  As the title of his annual cycle indicates, Erdmann Neumeister’s cantata poetry belongs to the genre of mixed text form; that is, it contains free poetry—recitatives and arias—alongside chorale strophes and biblical passages. This form of mixed text was long regarded as Neumeister’s most important contribution to the development of the Protestant Church cantata, until it turned out that Neumeister neither invented this hybrid text nor particularly preferred it. His domain was free cantata poetry without chorale strophes or biblical passages, with which he surprised his contemporaries in 1702.² He completed the transition to mixed text subsequently and perhaps even reluctantly; according to a predecessor in Thuringia in 1704 whose identity remains unknown to scholarship, the roots of the practice reach far back into the seventeenth century.
  
  At the beginning of his libretto, Neumeister placed the first strophe of Luther’s German translation of the ancient church hymn Veni redemptor gentium, published in 1524:

  Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, 
  Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt, 
  Des sich wundert alle Welt, 
  Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.
  
  Now come, savior of the Gentiles, 
  Known as the child of the Virgin, 
  Of this, all the world marvels, 
  God ordained him such a birth.

  A chorale fragment concludes the libretto, the Abgesang (second part) of the last strophe of Philipp Nicolai’s 1599 hymn Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (How brightly gleams the morning star). Nicolai’s strophe begins with the words “Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh” (How am I though so sincerely glad); the Abgesang reads:

  Amen! Amen!
  Komm du schöne Freudenkrone, bleib nicht lange! 
  Deiner wart ich mit Verlangen.
  
  Amen! Amen!
  Come, you beautiful crown of joy, tarry not long!
  I await you with longing.

  “Kommen” (come) is the most important keyword of the entire cantata libretto; it is missing only from the one movement that cites a passage from the Gospel. The free portions of the text are characterized by this keyword, as in movement 2, a recitative:

  Der Heiland ist gekommen,
  Hat unser armes Fleisch und Blut
  An sich genommen
  Und nimmet uns zu
  Blutsverwandten an.
  
  The savior is come,
  Has taken our poor flesh and blood
  Upon himself
  And accepts us as blood relatives.

  
  And at the conclusion:

  Was tust du nicht
  Noch täglich an den Deinen? 
  Du kömmst und läßt dein Licht 
  Mit vollem Segen scheinen.
  
  What do you not do
  Still daily for your people? 
  You come and let your light 
  Shine with full blessing.

  The accompanying aria prays for this blessing at the outset of the newly begun church year:

  Komm, Jesu, komm zu deiner Kirche 
  Und gib ein selig neues Jahr!
  Befördre deines Namens Ehre 
  Erhalte die gesunde Lehre 
  Und segne Kanzel und Altar.
  
  Come, Jesus, come to your church 
  And grant a blessed new year!
  Promote your name’s honor, 
  Uphold the sound teaching, 
  And bless pulpit and altar.

  Words of Jesus give the answer to this prayer from the third chapter of the Revelation of St. John: “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an. So jemand meine Stimme hören wird und die Tür auftun, zu dem werde ich eingehen und das Abendmahl mit ihm halten und er mit mir” (3:20; See, I stand before the door and knock. Should anyone hear my voice and open the door, to him I will go in and have the evening meal with him and he with me). The meaning of “Tür auftun” and “eingehen”—to open the door and go in—is expressed by the penultimate movement of the cantata, an aria whose text paraphrases the classic metaphor of the human heart as the dwelling of God:

  Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze, 
  Jesus kommt und ziehet ein.
  Bin ich gleich nur Staub und Erde, 
  Will er mich doch nicht verschmähn, 
  Seine Lust an mir zu sehen,
  Daß ich seine Wohnung werde. 
  O wie selig werd ich sein!
  
  Open yourself, my whole heart, 
  Jesus comes and enters.
  Though I am but dust and earth,
  He will, nevertheless, not disdain me, 
  His pleasure in me to see,
  That I become his dwelling. 
  O how blessed will I be!

  As mentioned, Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition based on this text originated in late 1714 for the service in the Weimar castle chapel. A reperformance is documented in Leipzig in 1723, Bach’s first year of service there. It is remarkable that on this occasion Bach outlined the rather complicated sequence of the church service in the score, including the organist’s duties—which he himself did not have to perform:

  1  Preluding.
  2  Motet.
  3  Preluding on the Kyrie, which is performed throughout in concerted manner [musiciret].
  4  Intoning before the altar.
  5  Reading of the Epistle.
  6  Singing of the Litany.
  7  Preluding on [and singing of ] the Chorale.
  8  Reading of the Gospel [crossed out: and intoning of the creed].
  9  Preluding on [and performance of ] the principal music [cantata].
  10  Singing of the Creed [Luther’s Credo hymn].    
  11  The Sermon.    
  12  After the Sermon, as usual, singing of several verses from a hymn.
  13  Words of Institution [of the Sacrament].
  14  Preluding on [and performance of ] the Music [probably the second half of the cantata]. And after the same, alternate preluding and the singing of chorales until the end of the Communion, et sic porro [and so on].³

  
  Accordingly, the “principal music” (after number 9) or the “Music” (during number 14)—that is, the cantata—would have been performed with the first part before the sermon, between the reading of the Gospel and the singing of the creed, Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott, and the second part after the Words of Institution and before or during Communion or the Offertory. But whether the cantata Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in fact was performed in two parts, the first part ending after the third movement, cannot be determined. It is also conceivable that the entire cantata was performed as principal music and that for the presentation of music during Communion or the Lord’s Supper the work of another composer was drawn upon.
  
  The Weimar Advent cantata Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland displays the thirty-year-old court organist at the height of his powers. The first movement meets a self-imposed challenge, as it integrates an arrangement of an ancient church hymn with the modern instrumental form of the French overture. This is in three parts; its first and last sections have dotted rhythms and sweeping scales that go back to the fanfares at the French opera in the seventeenth century that announced the arrival of the king. It is thus clear that Bach’s compositional experiment was meant to symbolize, formally, the entrance of Jesus in Jerusalem and the arrival of the savior at the same time. That no radiant major is allowed to sound, and instead a melancholy, shadowy minor, is conditioned by the modal nature of the ancient hymn tune. A change of tempo and meter in the middle section enables the buoyant fugal development of the text line “des sich wundert alle Welt.” Buoyant as well is the tenor aria, following a brief recitative extended by an arioso at its conclusion. Here, the upper strings—two violins and two violas—unite to form a pastose obbligato voice of sonorous timbre. The Gospel recitative, “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an” (See, I stand before the door and knock), is taken by the bass, the vox Christi (voice of Christ). The pizzicato interspersed with rests more reflects tense anticipation and preliminary uncertainty than simply tone painting of “knocking at the door.” Sincere naivete and the use of the most modest instrumental forces define the soprano aria, “Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze,” whose increasingly joyous excitement flows directly into the closing chorale. The two violins form an obbligato part that gives it festive splendor, transiting the entire compass of the two instruments and climbing to the highest possible peak at the closing fermata, certainly conducted and performed in person by the composer and concertmaster, Johann Sebastian Bach.

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  Footnotes

  1. “In seinen jungen Jahren war er oft mit Telemannen zusammen, welcher auchmich aus der Taufe gehoben hat” (BD III: 289 [no. 803]).—Trans.↵
  2. Hobohm (2000); Rucker (2000); and Krausse (1986).↵
  3. NBR, 113 (no. 113).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt BWV 18 / BC A 44a/b 21 Sexagesimae. First performed at Weimar 02/24/1715 at latest. Text by Erdmann Neumeister. plain 2024-04-29T16:15:08+00:00 1715-02-24 BWV 18 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 17Sexagesimae Sexagesimae BC A 44ab Johann Sebastian Bach Erdmann Neumeister Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt, BWV 18 / BC A 44ab" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 141 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Sexagesimae Sunday

  Bach wrote his cantata Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt BWV 18 (Just as rain and snow fall from heaven) for the eighth Sunday before Easter, Sexagesima Sunday. The Gospel reading assigned to Sexagesima is the Parable of the Sower. It is found in Luke 8 and, in a different form, in Matthew and Mark. 
  
  According to Mark, Jesus told the parable before a crowd gathered on a beach while he himself stood on a ship lying at the shore. The parable then continues in Luke:

  A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit a hundredfold. (5–8)

  Later, it is explained:

  This however is the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear; then comes the devil, and takes away the word out of their hearts, that they should not believe and become saved. The ones on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while, but in time of temptation they fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. (8–15)

  The cantata’s text first appeared in a collection published in 1711 in Gotha under the title Geistliches Singen und Spielen, Das ist: Ein Jahrgang von Texten, welche dem Dreyeinigen Gott zu Ehren bey öffentlicher Kirchen-Versammlung in Eisenach musikalisch aufgeführt von Georg Philipp Telemann (Sacred singing and playing, that is: An annual cycle of texts, to honor the triune God in public church congregations in Eisenach, performed by Georg Philipp Telemann). The author of the collection was Erdmann Neumeister, then active in a spiritual role at the court of the count of Promnitz in Sorau, Silesia. Shortly thereafter, Neumeister went to Hamburg, where he worked for decades as lead pastor at St. Jacobi and died in 1756 at the age of eighty-five. In 1720 he attempted in vain to have Johann Sebastian Bach installed as organist at Neumeister’s Hamburg church. He failed in this effort, as the congregation leadership made the appointment contingent upon a payment into the church coffers, an arrangement not unusual for the period. As a result, Neumeister slipped an angry aside into his Christmas sermon, which had to do with the music of the angels at the birth of Christ: “He firmly believed that even if one of the angels of Bethlehem came from heaven, who played divinely, and wanted to be organist at St. Jacobi, who however had no money—he would have to fly away again.”¹
  
  In his day, Neumeister enjoyed a fine reputation as a poet of cantata texts. As early as 1714, Telemann called him “the most famous and only good poet in spiritual affairs.”² While Telemann set a great many of Neumeister’s over five hundred texts, Bach set hardly half a dozen. Posterity long regarded Neumeister as the inventor of what is known as the mixed text form for church music works, a mixture of free poetry, chorale strophes, and biblical passages. More recent research has unassailably demonstrated that this characterization does not apply: the mixed text form—which characterizes the majority of Bach’s cantatas as well as the cantata Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt—is found in Thuringia at least as early as 1704. Erdmann Neumeister followed this line only later, indeed in 1711, with the publication of the text cycle in Eisenach for Telemann.
  
  Neumeister’s true achievement in the development of the church cantata lies in another area. In 1702, then active in the circle around the court of Weissenfels, the thirty-one-year-old dared to import the recitative and da capo aria from the arsenal of opera.³ He later entitled these poems of his Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchenmusik (Sacred cantatas instead of church music), whereby with “church music” he meant “what was usual for until now” (bisher üblichen Kirchenmusik). Neumeister himself compared the form of the text in his Geistliche Cantaten to “a piece from an opera, combining the recitative style with arias.” In the same breath, he maintained, regarding this bold innovation, that he had written the texts for his private devotion, “according to the regular official duties of the Sunday.” He only published them, he wrote, “at the behest of several artists and musical friends.” Neither chorale strophes nor biblical texts are to be found in these true cantata texts; occasionally they are paraphrased in free madrigalistic poetry.
  
  The mixed text form that does include biblical passages and chorale strophes as well as free poetry is found a few years after 1702, alongside these madrigalistic cantata texts, and the two forms continued thereafter in peaceful coexistence.

  Bach’s Sexagesima cantata is based on a libretto of the mixed form type. It starts with an extended quote from Isaiah 55, an exact counterpart to the Gospel reading described above:

  Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt und nicht wieder dahin kommet, sondern feuchtet die Erde und macht sie fruchtbar und wachsend, daß sie gibt Samen zu säen und Brot zu essen: Also soll das Wort, so aus meinem Munde gehet, auch sein: es soll nicht wieder zu mir leer kommen sondern tun, das mir gefället, und soll ihm gelingen, dazu ich’s sende. (10–11)
  
  Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there but moisten the earth and make it fruitful and growing that it gives seeds to sow and bread to eat: Thus shall the word, which goes out of my mouth, also be: it shall not return to me empty but do what pleases me, and shall achieve the purpose for which I send it. 

  Erdmann Neumeister’s text takes up these thoughts in a recitative and immediately establishes the connection to the Gospel reading of the Sunday:

  Mein Gott, hier wird mein Herze sein:
  Ich öffne dir’s in meines Jesu Namen;
  So streue deinen Samen
  Als in ein gutes Land hinein.
  Laß solches Frucht, und hundertfällig bringen.
  
  My God, here my heart will be:
  I open it to you in my Jesus’s name.
  So scatter your seeds into it
  As into good soil.
  Let it bring fruit, and a hundredfold.

  After an invocation taken from Psalm 118:25 (“O Herr, Herr, hilf: o Herr, laß wohlgelingen” [O Lord, Lord, help: O Lord, let us prosper]), there follows a passage from what is known as the Litany in Martin Luther’s translation: “Du wollest deinen Geist und Kraft zum Worte geben. / Erhör uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (May you grant your spirit and power together with your word. / Hear us, dear Lord God!). Neumeister’s poem returns to the Gospel reading and takes up its warning of “des Teufels Trug” (the devil’s deception) threatening the word, and once again there follows a passage from the Litany: “Den Satan unter unsre Füße treten. / Erhör uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (Trample Satan beneath our feet. / Hear us, dear Lord God!). In the same manner, the extremely extensive recitative continues: Neumeister’s text paraphrases the deterioration of faith out of fear of persecution and “zeitliche Weh” (temporal pain) and quotes from the Litany the appeal for protection from “des Turks und des Papsts grausamen Mord und Lasterungen, Wuten und Toben” (the Turks’ and the pope’s gruesome murderousness and blasphemies, raging and ranting). Finally, the seductions of the world are attacked and abolished with the decisive quotation from the Litany that concludes the recitative. The renunciation of the treasures of this world is also the subject of the aria that follows: “Fort mit allen, fort, nur fort! / Mein Seelenschatz ist Gottes Wort” (Away with them all, away, just away! / My soul’s treasure is God’s word). The libretto concludes with a chorale strophe taken from Lazarus Spengler’s 1524 hymn Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt: 

  Ich bitt, o Herr aus Herzensgrund
  Du wollst nicht von mir nehmen
  Dein heilges Wort aus meinem Mund. 
  
  I plead, O Lord, from the bottom of my heart,
  May you not take from me
  Your holy word out of my mouth. 

  Bach’s composition of Neumeister’s text originated in Weimar, perhaps in early 1714 or possibly a year earlier. In any case, the work is one of his early cantatas. Even for this early period, the setting is peculiar and old-fashioned; it excludes woodwind and brass instruments and even the violins. Instead, four violas serve as the highest string instruments.When he added his Weimar cantatas to his repertoire In Leipzig, Bach reperformed the work in 1724 with the addition of two recorders. These double the two upper viola parts an octave above, and the cantata is usually performed today in this brighter version. 
  
  In contrast to his contemporary Telemann, who may have set the Neumeister text to music in 1711 or 1712, Bach avoided tone painting in his composition of the Isaiah verse “Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee.” Instead, the bass carries the text, alternating between simple declamation and gently shaped arioso, in keeping with its role as vox Christi. The cantata begins with a sinfonia that emulates the form of the modern Italian concerto, combined, however, with the principle of ostinato variation, a principle native to organ music, thus finding a rigor and unity appropriate to the gravity of the scriptural passage that follows.
  
  In contrast to the concentrated and inward composition of the Isaiah text, the ensuing recitative, Neumeister’s free poetry with insertions from the Litany, is laid out in a freer, more colorful pictorial fashion. The Litany excerpts, with their characteristic sequence of solo soprano and responding chorus, are juxtaposed with recitatives alternating between bass and tenor, in which the instruments become an independent partner and are only rarely restricted to mere harmonic support. Unusual intervallic leaps or modulations are assigned to textual components such as “des Teufels Trug” (the devil’s deception) and “irregehen” (go astray); a virtuoso coloratura underscores the single word “Verfolgung” (persecution). The ensuing soprano aria also strives for vividness: the glittering passages for the four violas playing in unison, brightened by the high register of the recorders, symbolize the seductive brilliance of the treasures of this world, which are to be renounced. The distinctive instrumental effect of such an “Aria con Violette all’ Unisono” (Aria with violas in unison) had topicality: in 1713, possibly the year Bach composed our cantata, the Hamburg music theorist Johann Mattheson judged that similar arias found in opera “sound truly unique and elegant because of the depth of the accompaniment.”⁴ With the simple setting of the pre-Reformation melody Durch Adams Fall, the cantata finds its way back to the inwardness of its beginning. 

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  Footnotes

  1. “Er glaube ganz gewiß, wenn auch einer von den Bethlemitischen Engeln vom Himmel käme, der göttlich spielte, und wollte Organist zu St. Jakobi warden, hätte aber kein Geld, so mögte er nur wieder davon fliegen.”—Trans.↵
  2. “den berühmtesten und einzigen guten Poeten in geistlichen Sachen.”—Trans. ↵
  3. Hobohm (2000).↵
  4. “Wegen der Tieffe des Accompangnements recht frembd und artig klingen” (Mattheson 1713).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:18+00:00 Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust BWV 170 / BC A 106 11 Cantata for alto solo. Sixth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 07/28/1726 in Leipzig (Cycle III). Text by GC Lehms. plain 2024-04-24T17:41:05+00:00 1726-07-28 BWV 170 Leipzig 50.979493, 11.323544 05Trinity06 Cantata for alto solo Sixth Sunday After Trinity BC A 106 Johann Sebastian Bach GC Lehms Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, BWV 170 / BC A 106" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 328 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig III

  Sixth Sunday after Trinity, July 28, 1726

  Without question, this cantata is among the most challenging compositions of its kind. Who it was who had to master the difficult solo alto part at the first performance under Bach’s direction is not documented. It may have been Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, who is known to have occasionally served as an alto. A student in Leipzig, Gerlach was at the St. Thomas School earlier under Bach’s predecessor as cantor, Johann Kuhnau. 
  
  The cantata was heard for the first time on July 28, 1726. Another cantata must also have been performed on the same day: Ich will mein Geist in euch geben JLB-7 (I will put my spirit within you), by Bach’s Meiningen cousin Johann Ludwig Bach. It is likely that one cantata was performed before the sermon during the main worship service, the other afterward. It is not known which work received the preferred position before the sermon. It may have been the cantata by Bach’s Meiningen cousin, because it alone makes direct reference in its text to the Gospel reading of the Sunday. While Bach’s source text is indeed designated as “Andacht auf den sechsten Sonntag nach Trinitatis” (Devotion for the sixth Sunday after Trinity), a relation to the Gospel reading is more difficult to make out than for the cantata by Johann Ludwig Bach. Therefore, the cantata Vergügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust BWV 170 (Contented rest, beloved pleasure of the soul) would have been performed on this initial occasion only after the sermon, during Communion. 
      
  This work is one of the few flawless examples in Bach’s oeuvre of the cantata as it is exemplified by Erdmann Neumeister in his collection Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchen-Music (Sacred cantatas instead of a church music), prepared in 1702 and reprinted in 1704. That is, traditional church music with its mixture of biblical text, chorale strophes, and a few freely versified portions was to be replaced—according to Neumeister’s initiative—by subjective expressions of piety exclusively in free poetry.¹ This effort achieved only partial success, although it was widely imitated. Who wrote the exclusively free poetry for this Bach cantata long remained a mystery to Bach research. On several occasions it was even suggested that Bach himself might have authored the text. In the 1950s it was proven not only that Bach had set this text to music in Leipzig but also that—fifteen years before Bach—Christoph Graupner had done so in Darmstadt, where he was court music director; he had also been among Bach’s competitors in 1723 for the Leipzig cantorate.² With this, attention was focused on the Darmstadt court librarian Georg Christian Lehms as author of the text. But it was only as recently as 1970 that final confirmation came with the discovery of a copy of Lehms’s text collection Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer (Church offering pleasing to God), published at Darmstadt in 1711. It turned out that when he was at Weimar, before 1717, Bach had used two texts for composition from this volume and at Leipzig eight further texts in 1725 and 1726.³
  
  For the era, it was not at all unusual to draw upon a relatively old collection of texts. It was an inaccurate premise of older scholarship that a close temporal relationship necessarily existed between the appearance of a printed collection and an associated composition—a premise that led to a number of disastrous errors. In the case of the Lehms texts, it is clear that they, with their powerfully elemental Baroque manner of expression, stood diametrically opposed to the galant sensibilities of the age. Whether Bach prized them for exactly this reason and deliberately adopted a backward-looking attitude is impossible to say. 
  
  The Andacht (devotional) text authored by Lehms comprises five movements: three arias and two recitatives. The language is characterized by the frequent use of compound nouns, a feature that betrays a proclivity to powerful Baroque expression. On the one hand, this may have to do with the collection’s relatively early origin; on the other hand, it could point to the author’s background and spiritual home. Although he finished his career in Darmstadt, Lehms came from Liegnitz in Lower Silesia. It was the Silesian schools of poetry, in particular, the Second Silesian School of the late seventeenth century, that the early eighteenth century regarded as the stronghold of harsh, crude, overladen, overblown expression. Bach himself had to endure such a comparison when in May 1737 Johann Adolph Scheibe in Hamburg launched an attack against Bach’s compositional style, calling his works turgid and confused and comparing them to the works of the Silesian playwright Daniel Casper von Lohenstein.
  
  With “Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust” (Contented rest, beloved pleasure of the soul), Lehms begins his hymn of praise to “wahren Seelenfrieden” (true peace of the soul)—the “Stille und Ruhe des Herzens” (heart’s quiet and ease). He continues:

  Dich kann man nicht bei Höllensünden,
  Wohl aber Himmelseintracht finden;
  Du stärkst allein die schwache Brust.
  Drum sollen lauter Tugendgaben
  In meinem Herzen Wohnung haben.
  
  You cannot be found amid the sins of hell
  But rather in heavenly concord;
  You alone strengthen the weak breast.
  Therefore should true gifts of virtue
  Have their dwelling in my heart.

      
  But this gentle entreaty is only a prelude. Like a preacher thundering from the pulpit against the gathered throng of sinners, Lehms holds forth in his first recitative:

  Die Welt, das Sündenhaus,
  Bricht nur in Höllenlieder aus
  Und sucht in Haß und Neid,
  Des Satans Bild an sich zu tragen.
  Ihr Mund ist voller Ottergift,
  Der oft die Unschuld tödlich trifft,
  Und will allein von Racha! sagen.
  
  The world, that house of sin,
  Breaks forth only in songs of hell
  And seeks, through hate and envy,
  To bear Satan’s image.
  Its mouth is full of the poison of asps,
  Which often strikes innocence mortally
  And would only speak of Raca!

  
  With this, the poet builds a bridge to the Gospel reading for the sixth Sunday after Trinity, found in Matthew 5, not far from the Sermon on the Mount. It focuses on the message of justification with the words of Jesus: “For I say to you: Unless your righteousness is better than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard what is said to the ancients: ‘You shall not kill; whoever kills, he shall be guilty before the law.’ I, however, say to you: Whoever is angry with his brother, he is guilty before the law; whoever, though, says to his brother: Racha! He is guilty before the council; however, he who says: You fool! He is guilty before the fires of hell” (20–22). In long, powerfully expressive verses, the second aria laments the misguided ways of the human heart:

  Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen,
  Die dir, mein Gott, so sehr zuwider sein;
  Ich zittre recht und fühle tausend Schmerzen,
  Wenn sie sich nur an Rach’ und Haß erfreun.
  
  How the wayward hearts afflict me
  That against you, my God, are so sorely set.
  I truly tremble and feel a thousand pains
  When they delight only in vengeance and hate.

  
  “Gerechter Gott” (righteous God), cries the poet, “Was magst du doch gedenken” (What might you think), and concludes with the lines “Ach, ohne Zweifel hast du so gedacht: / Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen!” (Ah, without doubt have you thought: / How the wayward hearts afflict me!). Thus the return to the aria’s beginning is accomplished by a simple artifice, and the train of thought is closed. The last recitative continues the lament “Wer sollte sich demnach / Wohl hier zu leben wünschen” (Who should therefore / Wish to live here) but returns to “Gottes Vorschrift” (God’s injunction), namely, to love even the enemy as a friend. The final chorale closes the circle to the “Vergnügte Ruh” of the beginning:

  Mir ekelt mehr zu leben,
  Drum nimm mich, Jesu, hin.
  Mir graut vor allen Sünden,
  Laß mich dies Wohnhaus finden,
  Wo selbst ich ruhig bin.
  
  I am sickened to live longer;
  Therefore, take me, Jesus, away.
  I shudder before all my sins.
  Let me find this dwelling place
  Wherein I can find peace.

   
  In spite of its rather overwrought language, the text is quite well suited for composition. It provided Bach the opportunity to draw on all registers of his art and to put an unusual wealth of invention on display. For the first aria, the song of praise to contented repose, the 12
  8 meter, at peace within itself and complete, and the soft gleam of the key of D major provide ideal foundations. Here, the richness of tone of the strings and the warm timbre of the oboe d’amore unfold just as does the self-possessed singing voice. With the beginning of the first recitative, this ideal world is left forever. Indeed, the image of the world itself is put in question, for in the second aria, “Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen,” the world itself is—musically speaking—turned on its head. The otherwise obligatory bass foundation is omitted, violins and violas join to form a foundation in a high register, and singing voice and organ give themselves over to a harmonic and melodic adventure tantamount to the path through a maze. Only rarely did Bach employ this bassetto effect—the omission of the basso continuo—but on each occasion with particular intent. In this case, the “irregular” procedure characterizes the extraordinary, incomprehensible, not understandable rationally, or only in irregular fashion—in other words, the “wrong paths” of the “wayward” hearts. A parallel example of something not rationally explicable and hence set the same way in music would be the soprano aria from the St. Matthew Passion “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben” BWV 244, 49.
  
  With its thematic invention and dance-like verve, the third aria of the cantata could pass as a song of praise of the joys of earthly existence were there not, at the very beginning, an augmented step from D to G-sharp—a tritone, the diabolus in musica. It represents the revulsion against the pharisaical existence, the necessity of reversing course.
  
  In 1750 Bach’s oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, performed the first aria of our cantata in Halle as part of a pasticcio (BR-WFB F 20), in which still another cantata movement⁴ by Johann Sebastian and a recitative of unknown origin were included. The second and third arias were not included; they were probably too challenging technically or, with their musical symbolism, would not have been understood.

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  Footnotes

  1. Hobohm (2000); Rucker (2000); Krausse (1986).↵
  2. Schulze (1959).↵
  3. Noack (1970).↵
  4. The first movement of Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben BWV 147.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:56+00:00 Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten BWV 59 / BC A 82 10 Dialog Cantata . Pentecost. First performed 05/28/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by Erdmann Neumeister. plain 2024-04-24T16:24:24+00:00 1724-05-28 BWV 59 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 29Pentecost Dialog Cantata Pentecost BC A 82 Johann Sebastian Bach Erdmann Neumeister Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten, BWV 59 / BC A 82" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 253 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Pentecost, May 28, 1724

  This is the earlier of two cantatas of the same name for the first day of Pentecost. The two cantatas are closely connected with one another: they both begin with the same biblical passage, and their instrumental setting is the same. 
  
  As usual, the text takes up the Gospel reading for the holiday. This is found in the fourteenth chapter of John and contains a portion of the farewell addresses by Jesus, in particular, the promise of the Holy Spirit:

  Jesus answered and spoke to him: whoever loves me will keep to my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. But whoever does not love me, he will not keep to my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, rather the Father’s, who has sent me. Such things I have been saying to you, as long as I have been with you. But the comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and remind you of everything that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you, as the world gives. Let your heart not be afraid, and let it not be fearful. You have heard that I have said to you: I go away and come again to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice that I have said “I go to the Father,” for the Father is greater than I. And now I have said to you, before it happens, when it will happen, you will believe. I will not talk with you much more, because the prince of this world is coming, and he has no power over me. But that the world might recognize that I love the Father and I also do as the Father has bidden me: stand up, and let us go hence. (23–31)

  
  The text of our cantata comes from the chief pastor of Hamburg, Erdmann Neumeister; it was published in 1714 in Frankfurt am Main in an annual cycle of cantata texts under the title Geistliche Poesien mit untermischten biblischen Sprüchen und Choralen auf alle Sonn- und Festtagen (Spiritual poems with interspersed biblical sayings and chorales for all Sundays and feast days), intended for the use of Frankfurt music director Georg Philipp Telemann. The title of this collection refers to the gemischte Kantatenform (mixed cantata form), in which biblical passages, chorale stories, and free poetry are components of equal importance. For decades, scholars regarded Neumeister as the inventor of this particular scheme and the mixed text form as the result of his efforts at reform. More recently, it has turned out that Neumeister’s achievement lay solely in the establishment of geistliche Poesien (free poetry) in the form of recitative and aria, borrowed from opera—and that his contribution to mixed cantata form should be seen as a nod to contemporary taste.¹
  
  Neumeister starts his libretto with the beginning of the Gospel reading for the holiday: “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten; und mein Vater wird ihn lieben, und wir werden zu ihm kommen und Wohnung bei ihm machen” (Whoever loves me will keep to my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him). The ensuing recitative takes up the keyword “Wohnung” (dwelling) and places it in the context of the classical metaphor of the human heart as the dwelling of God:

  O, was sind das vor Ehren,
  Worzu uns Jesus setzt?
  Der uns so würdig schätzt,
  Daß er verheißt,
  Samt Vater und dem heilgen Geist
  In unsre Herzen einzukehren.
  
  O, what are those honors
  To which Jesus leads us?
  He who treasures us so highly
  That he promises,
  Together with Father and Holy Spirit, 
  To dwell in our hearts.

  
  In what follows, the nullity of human activity is demonstrated, after which the initial idea returns:

  Wie nun? Der Allerhöchste spricht,
  Er will in unsern Seelen
  Die Wohnung sich erwählen.
  Ach, was tut Gottes Liebe nicht?
  Ach, daß doch, wie er wollte,
  Ihn auch ein jeder lieben sollte.
  
  What then? The Most High promises
  He will in our souls
  Choose his dwelling place.
  Ah, what does God’s love not do?
  Ah, that only, as he wished,
  Everyone should love him too.

  
  The first strophe of Luther’s German version of the hymn Veni Sancte Spiritus is formulated as a prayer:

  Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott,
  Erfüll mit deiner Gnaden Gut
  Deiner Gläubiger Herz, Mut und Sinn,
  Dein brünstig Lieb entzünd in ihn’n.
  
  Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God,
  Fill, with the goodness of your grace,
  The heart, courage, and mind of your believers,
  Enkindle your ardent love in them.

  
  An unusually eloquent aria text is devoted to the opposition of the earthly and the heavenly, although this too proves to be derived from the metaphorical interpretation of the human heart:

  Die Welt mit allen Königreichen,
  Die Welt mit aller Herrlichkeit
  Kann dieser Herrlichkeit nicht gleichen,
  Womit uns unser Gott erfreut:
  Daß er in unsern Herzen thronet
  Und wie in einem Himmel wohnet.
  Ach Gott, wie selig sind wir doch,
  Wie selig werden wir erst noch, 
  Wenn wir nach dieser Zeit der Erden
  Bei dir im Himmel wohnen werden.
  
  The world with all its kingdoms,
  The world with all its glory
  Cannot equal this glory
  With which our God delights us:
  That he is enthroned in our hearts
  And dwells as if in heaven.
  Ah God, how blessed are we indeed,
  How blessed will we be only
  When, after this time on Earth
  We shall dwell with you in heaven. 

  
  The third strophe of Luther’s hymn Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort concludes the libretto:

  Gott Heilger Geist, du Tröster wert,
  Gib dein’m Volk, einerlei Sinn auf Erd,
  Steh bei uns in der letzten Not,
  G’leit uns ins Leben aus dem Tod!
  
  Come, Holy Spirit, you worthy comforter,
  Give to all your people unity of purpose on Earth,
  Stand by us in our last suffering,
  Lead us into life out of death!

  Bach composed this text no later than 1724 and perhaps as early as May 1723; thus, he may have completed it before taking office as cantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig. It may be that the apparent designation “Für alle Fälle” (For all situations) has something to do with the fact that the work does not fulfill every expectation attending the high rank of the Pentecost holiday. In particular, this is seen in the relatively modest setting for two trumpets and drums, strings, and continuo. Over and above this, the opening movement oddly avoids the usual four-part chorus. Instead, it is a duet for soprano and bass that closely matches Bach’s compositional procedure in Köthen before early 1723, where ensemble movements with two voices predominated. In spite of this self-imposed limitation, Bach achieves a remarkable wealth of polyphonic combination and thus projects the text in ever new illumination. A terse motto theme is stated and repeated, with the singers exchanging the lead until the fifth iteration, which opens into a synchronous presentation of the words of the Lord by both singers.
  
  A recitative accompanied by strings that ends in an arioso is followed by a chorale movement Komm, heiliger Geist, in a six-part harmonization that is expanded by the independent leading of the second violin and viola. The concluding aria for bass with obbligato solo violin is relatively terse: pre- and postludes are only eight measures long, and the text in between is presented almost without repetition, as fast as possible, as it were. The closing chorale stipulated in Neumeister’s text is missing in Bach’s score and in the performance parts. At the same time, there are several indications that the cantata was not meant to end with a bass aria and that the chorale was to be involved somehow. Today’s performances remedy the situation by simply exchanging the movements—a stopgap measure to address this apparently simple but quite enigmatic Pentecost cantata.

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  Footnotes

  1. Hobohm (2000); Rucker (2000); Krausse (1986).↵