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• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:19+00:00 Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz BWV 138 / BC A 132 9 Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 09/05/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:45:00+00:00 1723-09-05 BWV 138 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity15 Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 132 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz, BWV 138 / BC A 132" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 410 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 5, 1723

  At first glance, it might seem to be a mistake in chronology that Bach composed the cantata Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz BWV 138 (Why are you aggrieved, my heart) in September 1723, only a quarter year after entering office as cantor of St. Thomas. Considering the fact that in this cantata several strophes from the same chorale appear in various movements, it could easily be thought to be part of the chorale cantata annual cycle, begun in 1724. However likely this might seem, it is not true. Instead, the cantata belongs to a sequence of works in which Bach, right at the beginning of his tenure in Leipzig, methodically began to explore the possibilities of chorale texts and melodies, incorporating them in various experimental forms.¹ Our cantata makes use of only the first three of its hymn’s fourteen strophes in such a way, which would have been highly atypical for the choral cantata annual cycle. Otherwise, the cantata libretto hews closely to the Gospel reading for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.
  
  This Gospel reading is found in Matthew 6, not far from portions of the Sermon on the Mount, and contains urgent warnings against anxieties born of little faith:

  No one can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will keep to the one and hold the other in contempt. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you: Do not worry about your life, what you will eat and drink, also not about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food? And the body more than clothing? See the birds beneath the heavens: they do not sow; they do not reap; they do not gather into barns; and still their heavenly father nourishes them. Are you not much more than they? Who is there among you who could add one cubit to his height because he worries about it? And why do you worry about clothing? Look upon the lilies of the field, how they grow: they do not work, also they do not spin. I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as one of them. So then if God clothes the grass upon the field that stands today and tomorrow will be cast into the oven, should he not do much more for you, O you of little faith? Therefore you should not worry and say: What will we eat, what will we drink, with what will we clothe ourselves? The Gentiles all strive for such things. For your heavenly father knows that you have need for all of that. If you strive first for the kingdom of God and for his righteousness, then all these things will come to you. Therefore do not worry about the next day; for the coming day will care for its own. It is enough that each day has its own evils. (24–34)

  
  The core ideas of this Gospel account are incorporated in the 1560 church hymn occasionally attributed to Hans Sachs, Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz which consequently became established as the main hymn for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. In hymnaries of the eighteenth century, it occasionally appears beneath the heading “In der Theurung” (In time of famine) or, in greater detail, “Trostreiche Gedanken über die Vorsorge Gottes, auch wider die Haus- und Bauch-Sorge” (Comforting thoughts on the providence of God, also against cares of home and hunger).
  
  The unidentified librettist of our cantata places the first strophe of the chorale at the beginning of his text:

  Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz?
  Bekümmerst dich und trägest Schmerz
  Nur um das zeitliche Gut?
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
  Vertrau du deinem Herren Gott, 
  Der alle Ding erschaffen hat.
  
  Why are you aggrieved, my heart?
  Do you trouble yourself and suffer pain
  About a mere temporal matter?
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  You must trust in your Lord God,
  Who has created all things.

  After the second question, these words of encouragement “from above,” as it were, are interrupted by a lament in the form of recitative: free, madrigalian recitative verses that permit a good measure of lack of faith to gather against the admonitions of the Gospel reading:

  Ach, ich bin arm,
  Mich drücken schwere Sorgen.
  Von Abend bis zum Morgen
  Währt meine liebe Not.
  Daß Gott erbarm!
  Wer wird mich noch erlösen
  Vom Leibe dieser bösen 
  Und argen Welt?
  Wie elend ists um mich bestellt,
  Ach wär ich doch nur tot!
  
  Ah, I am wretched.
  Heavy cares oppress me.
  From evening until morning
  My accustomed need abides.
  May God have mercy!
  Who will yet deliver me
  From the belly of this evil 
  And wicked world?
  How miserable is everything around me.
  Ah, were I but already dead!

  
  Clearly recognizable in this passage is a verse from Romans 7: “Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen vom Leibe dieses Todes?” (24; I, wretched person, who will deliver me from the body of this death?). Four weeks after our cantata originated, it served as text for the opening chorus of a Bach cantata for the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen BWV 48).
  
  Following this chorale with interpolated recitative lines is the cantata’s second movement, the chorale’s second strophe, once again combined with lines of recitative, where the chorale functions again as advice “from above”:

  Er kann und will dich lassen nicht, 
  Er weiß gar wohl, was dir gebricht,
  Himmel und Erd ist sein.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  Dein Vater und dein Herre Gott,
  Der dir beisteht in aller Not.
  
  He cannot and will not abandon you,
  He knows indeed well what you lack,
  Heaven and Earth are his.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  Your father and your Lord God,
  Who stands beside you in all need.

  
  In contrast to the first movement, the second begins with a recitative that further intensifies the lament begun earlier, culminating in the frightened question “Wie kann ich nun mein Amt mit Ruh verwalten, / Wenn Seufzer meine Speise und Tränen das Getränke sein?” (How can I now carry out my duty in peace / When sighs are my meal and tears are my drink?). This makes reference to a verse from Psalm 42: “Meine Tränen sind meine Speise Tag und Nacht, weil man täglich zu mir sagt: wo ist nun dein Gott?” (3; My tears are my food day and night, because every day people say to me: Where is your God now?).
  
  The next section of the recitative—still in the second movement²—makes a clear reference to the Sunday Gospel reading:

  Ach wie?
  Gott sorget freilich vor das Vieh,
  Er gibt den Vögeln seine Speise,
  Er sättigt die jungen Raben,
  Nur ich, ich weiß nicht, auf was Weise
  Ich armes Kind
  Mein bißchen Brot soll haben;
  Wo ist jemand, der sich zu meiner Rettung findt?
  
  Ah, how?
  God certainly provides for the cattle,
  He gives the birds his food,
  He satiates the young ravens.
  Only I, I know not, in what way,
  I, poor child,
  Shall have my little bit of bread.
  Where is someone who can be found for my rescue?

  
  In spite of this extensive lament, reassuring counsel finally wins the day: “Dein Vater und dein Herre Gott, / Der dir beisteht in aller Not” (Your father and your Lord God, / Who stands beside you in all need). And thus in the movements that follow, patience and faith dissolve the worry and lament that have dominated thus far. The third movement, a recitative, reads in part:

  Ach süßer Trost! Wenn Gott mich nicht verlassen
  Und nicht versäumen will,
  So kann ich in der Still 
  Und in Geduld mich fassen.
  
  Ah, sweet comfort! If God will not leave me
  And will not forsake me,
  Then I can, in stillness
  And in patience, compose myself.

  
  The ensuing aria proclaims with utter conviction: “Auf Gott steht meine Zuversicht, / Mein Glaube läßt ihn walten” (Upon God rests my confidence, / My faith lets him rule). A brief ensuing recitative strengthens the ultimate separation from all previous care, after which the third strophe of the chorale closes the libretto:

  Weil du mein Gott und Vater bist,
  Dein Kind wirst du verlassen nicht,
  Du väterliches Herz!
  Ich bin ein armer Erdenkloß,
  Auf Erden weiß ich keinen Trost.
  
  Since you are my God and father,
  You will not abandon your child,
  You fatherly heart!
  I am a poor lump of earth;
  On Earth I know no comfort.

  
  As we said earlier, Bach’s composition of this libretto shows itself to be an experiment on the way to the diverse and elaborate forms that distinguish his annual cycle of chorale cantatas of 1724–25. Compared to them, much here seems concisely structured, concentrated, and restricted to the essential. Thus a few purely instrumental measures are placed at the beginning, before the voices enter: eloquent gestures in the strings; a quotation of the chorale melody in the first oboe d’amore; a descending series of half tones in the second woodwind as a symbol of affliction. In the further course of the movement, participation of the independent instrumental component remains relatively slight; also, a contrapuntal or motet-like preparation of each chorale line does not occur. Instead, these are introduced by the tenor in a kind of prologue. Shortly before the close, the more extensive recitative, given to the alto, is interpolated. Sustained harmonies in the strings noticeably restrain musical activity, but intermittent bursts of animation in the woodwinds provide new impulses.
  
  In the second movement, verbose recitative sections predominate at first over the simply set chorale strophe. Unexpectedly, however, the chorale gains significance, as its closing lines are figurally extended with elaborate counterpoint: “Dein Vater und dein Herre Gott, / Der dir beisteht in aller Not.”
  
  The bass aria “Auf Gott steht meine Zuversicht,” framed by two recitatives, is striking for the predominance of its instrumental component and its dance-like gesture as well as uncomplicated melody. Whether Bach meant to illustrate the text with a naive, unreflective gesture or whether the aria is simply based on an instrumental model such as a minuet from a suite, we cannot say. In any case, the composer treasured this remarkable aria movement highly, as can be seen in the fact that, in the 1730s, he incorporated its revised form as the Gratias Agimus Tibi in his Mass in G Major BWV 236.
  
  The closing chorale combines a relaxed, motet-like vocal component with animated passages for the woodwinds and especially the strings. While the integrity of the chorale movements at the cantata’s beginning was fragmented by the interpolated recitatives, it is easily achieved here, although certainly at the cost of a certain restlessness that runs counter to the function of a closing chorale. Whether this movement was truly meant to be the closing chorale is a question that must remain open. Bach’s score breaks off before the final measure. Whether more has been lost—recitatives, arias, chorale settings—or whether the cantata was originally designed in two parts can no longer be established today.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Krummacher (1995, 49 ff.).↵
  2. The movement structure observed by Schulze is that of the NBA, I/22 (Wendt 1987). In Alfred Dürr’s (2005) discussion, the movement structure is that of the old Bach Gesellschaft Edition (as well as the 1990 BWV2), a total of seven altogether: the second movement is a tenor recitative (mm. 1–11 of the NBA second movement), and the third is the chorale with interleaved lines of recitative (m. 12 to the end of the NBA second movement). In Schulze’s discussion, the second movement includes Dürr’s movements 2 and 3, so that in Schulze the movement count is six.—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:17+00:00 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein BWV 2 / BC A 98 9 Chorale cantata on hymn by Martin Luther. Second Sunday After Trinity. First performed 06/18/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle II). plain 2024-04-30T14:21:00+00:00 1724-06-18 BWV 2 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 01Trinity02 Chorale Cantata Second Sunday After Trinity BC A 98 Johann Sebastian Bach Martin Luther Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein, BWV 2 / BC A 98" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 302 James A. Brokaw II Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle Leipzig II

  Second Sunday after Trinity, June 18, 1724

  This cantata, composed in 1724, is based on the chorale of the same name, the main hymn for the second Sunday after Trinity. The content of the chorale is closely associated with the Sunday Gospel reading, the parable of the great evening meal from the dinner table teachings of Jesus in Luke 14. The path is not long from this account to the source of the chorale, Psalm 12. The Gospel reading recounts the dismay over the absence of the invited guests at dinner and their threadbare excuses; the chorale is drawn from Psalm 12:1–8 and its complaint of the decline of the pious and the superior strength of the wicked, but also its trust in divine assistance:

  Help Lord! The Holy are in decline, and the believers are few among the children of humankind. Each speaks useless things with the others; they are hypocrites and teach out of divided hearts. May the Lord eradicate all hypocrisy and the tongues that speak pridefully, that say: With our tongues we shall prevail, we shall speak: Who is our Lord? Because the needy are destroyed and the poor sigh, I will arise, speaks the Lord, I want to create a help for him who longs thereafter. The speech of the Lord is purer than refined silver in an earthen crucible, purified seven times. You, Lord, shall keep them and protect us from this generation for ever! For everywhere there are the godless, where such worthless men rule among the people.

  
  The hymn, documented as early as 1524, on Psalm 12, Salvum me fac, Domine, belongs to a series of “etliche Psalm, zu geistlichen Liedern / deutsch gemacht / Durch Dr. Martinum Luther” (several psalms made into sacred songs in German by Dr. Martin Luther) as they appear in hymnaries of the period. Luther’s six-strophe translation hews closely to the psalmist’s train of thought while expanding, explaining, and clarifying the source text. Luther formed the first strophe from “Hilf Herr! Die Heiligen haben abgenommen und der Gläubigen ist wenig unter den Menschenkindern” (Help, Lord! The saints have diminished, and the faithful are few among the children of humankind). The chorale version reads:

  Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein 
  Und laß dichs doch erbarmen!
  Wie wenig sind der Heilgen dein, 
  Verlassen sind wir Armen;
  Dein Wort man nicht läßt haben wahr, 
  Der Glaub ist auch verloschen gar
  Bei allen Menschenkindern.
  
  Ah God, look down from heaven 
  And indeed have mercy!
  How few are your saints,
  We wretches are abandoned; 
  Your word is not believed, 
  Faith is also quite extinguished
  Among all children of humankind.

  
  The version set to music by Bach, adapted from the chorale by an unknown poet, is much more distant from the psalmist’s original. As seen so frequently in Bach’s chorale cantatas, only a few strophes are adopted word for word from the chorale text; all the others are more or less freely adapted. The version of Psalm 12:2, “Einer redet mit dem andern unnütze Dinge; sie heucheln und lehren aus uneinig Herzen” (Each speaks useless things with the others; they are hypocrites and teach out of divided hearts), takes the following form in Luther’s conception:

  Sie lehren eitel falsche List, 
  Was Eigenwitz erfindet;
  Ihr Herz nicht eines Sinnes ist, 
  In Gottes Wort gegründet; 
  Der wählet dies, der andre das, 
  Sie trennen uns ohn alle Maß 
  Und gleißen schön von außen.
  
  They teach idle, false cunning, 
  Invented by their own wit; 
  Their heart is not of one mind, 
  Founded in God’s word;
  One chooses this, the other that, 
  They divide us without all measure 
  And gleam beautifully outwardly.

  
  From this, the cantata librettist forms a recitative that clearly refutes any attempt to substitute understanding (here called “Witz” [wit]) and reason for faith. It closes with a powerful comparison to the pair of opposites, “außen schön / innen schlimm” (outwardly beautiful / inwardly evil), choosing the grave to do so; he could have used the same vocabulary to describe the so-called apples of Sodom:¹

  Sie lehren eitel falsche List,
  Was wider Gott und seine Wahrheit ist; 
  Und was der eigen Witz erdenket
  O Jammer! der die Kirche schmerzlich kränket—, 
  Das muß anstatt der Bibel stehn.
  Der eine wählet dies, der andre das, 
  Die töricht Vernunft ist ihr Kompaß. 
  Sie gleichen denen Totengräbern, 
  Die, ob sie zwar von außen schön, 
  Nur Stank und Moder in sich fassen 
  Und lauter Unflat sehen lassen.
  
  They teach idle, false cunning, 
  Which opposes God and his truth 
  And which their own wit invents.
  O misery! That painfully afflicts the church, 
  That must stand in place of the Bible.
  The one chooses this, the other that, 
  Foolish reason is their compass.
  They resemble those graves of the dead,
  Which, though they indeed are outwardly beautiful, 
  Contain only stench and rot
  In which nothing but filth can be seen.

  
  The associated aria is developed from the psalmist’s complaint of hypocrisy, pride, and self-importance by way of Luther’s chorale strophe:

  Tilg, o Gott, die Lehren, 
  So dein Wort verkehren! 
  Wehre doch der Ketzerei 
  Und allen Rottengeistern,
  Denn sie sprechen ohne Scheu: 
  Trotz dem, der uns will meistern!
  
  Erase, O God, the teachings 
  That pervert your word!
  But resist the heresy 
  And all the spirit-rabble,
  For they speak without shame:
  Resist him who wants to master us!

  
  The ensuing recitative is devoted in full to the assurance of God’s assistance; the words of Psalm 12:5, “Weil denn die Elenden verstöret werden und die Armen seufzen” (Because the needy are destroyed and the poor sigh), resound unmistakably in its opening lines:

  Die Armen sind verstört,
  Ihr seufzend Ach, ihr ängstlich Klagen 
  Bei soviel Kreuz und Not,
  Wodurch die Feinde fromme Seelen plagen, 
  Dringt in das Gnadenohr des Allerhöchsten ein. 
  Darum spricht Gott: Ich muß ihr Helfer sein!
  
  The poor are destroyed,
  Their sighing ah, their anxious plaints, 
  At so much cross-bearing and distress, 
  Whereby the enemies plague pious souls,
  Penetrate the ear of grace of the Most High. 
  Therefore, God says: I must be their helper!

  
  The last aria uses Psalm 12:6: “Die Rede des Herrn ist lauter wie durchläutert im irdenen Tiegel, bewähret siebenmal” (The speech of the Lord is purer than refined silver in an earthen crucible, purified seven times), as well as the ideas introduced in Luther’s poem of probation through the cross:

  Durchs Feuer wird das Silber rein,
  Durchs Kreuz das Wort bewährt erfunden. 
  Drum soll ein Christ zu allen Stunden
  Im Kreuz und Not geduldig sein.
  
  Through fire the silver becomes pure, 
  Through the cross the Word is proven. 
  Therefore, a Christian should at all times, 
  In cross-bearing and distress, be patient.

  
  The cantata’s conclusion is provided, as usual, by the unaltered final strophe of the source chorale:

  Das wollst du, Gott, bewahren rein 
  Für diesem arg’n Geschlechte,
  Und laß uns dir befohlen sein, 
  Daß sichs in uns nicht flechte.
  Der gottlos Hauf sich umher findt, 
  Wo solche lose Leute sind
  In deinem Volk erhaben.    
  
  Would you keep it pure, God,
  In the face of this evil generation, 
  And let us be commended to you, 
  That they do not mingle with us. 
  The godless mob is found all around, 
  Where such vile folk are
  Exalted among your people.

  
  What is particularly striking about Bach’s composition is the form of the opening movement. In contrast to the majority of Bach’s chorale cantatas, the instrumentation does not perform an independent structural function. Instead, we have a texture that is purely vocal in its conception; it is a chorale motet, intentionally archaic in design. The chorale melody, whose ancestry lies in the pre-Reformation era, is heard line by line in the alto, while the other three voices prepare the chorale lines with fugal material and then provide counterpoint. Four trombones provide timbral support to the four voices; the three upper voices also have strings, and the alto, the cantus firmus part, has two oboes as well. The basso continuo is the only independent instrumental part. Its function as an autonomous bass foundation is the only deviation from what is otherwise a pure motet principle.
  
  With his decision in favor of this compositional model,² Bach was able to realize several objectives at the same time: he could provide variety with regard to the opening movements in his recently begun cycle of chorale cantatas, and he could arrange the ancient melody of Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein in the tradition of the organ chorale and chorale motet, thereby obviating the otherwise unavoidable obstacle that a modern concerted treatment of the Phrygian melody would have presented.
  
  In the first recitative for tenor and basso continuo, two short sections are highlighted by the shift to an arioso Adagio: here, two verses from Luther’s second chorale strophe are quoted in their original form. A similar emphasis is found in the following aria, roughly at the beginning of the last third of the piece. Otherwise, this aria is characterized by lively competition between the alto and a solo violin, in particular because of the nearly continuous presence of the head motive, which seems to want to bring to mind the entreaty “Tilg, o Gott, die Lehren.”
  
  The second recitative embeds the bass voice in four-part chords in the strings. The assurance of God’s assistance is highlighted; it is sounded as a contoured arioso. In the tenor aria “Durchs Feuer wird das Silber rein,” a four-part accompanimental texture, unusually dense harmonically, is similarly characteristic—although a motive for the ambitious five- and six-part textures remains unclear. In contrast to this, the warning “ein Christ soll zu allen Stunden in Kreuz und Not geduldig sein” is effectively emphasized, as it is performed without the protective sound of the instruments. The simply set closing chorale rounds out a work that attracted considerable attention as early as the eighteenth century. Copies of the entire work are documented in Saxony and Thuringia, as well as copies of the motet-like opening chorus in Berlin and even Vienna. 

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “At the time, a favored vehicle for the comparison between outward appearance and inner condition . . . was the Sodomsapfel (apple of Sodom), the fruit of a shrub living near the Dead Sea.” See the discussion of Wiederstehe doch der Sünde BWV 54/ BC A 51.—Trans.↵
  2. Krummacher (1995).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:20+00:00 Christus, der ist mein Leben BWV 95 / BC A 136 6 Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 09/12/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:13:02+00:00 1723-09-12 BWV 95 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity16 Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 136 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Christus, der ist mein Leben, BWV 95 / BC A 136" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 424 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 12, 1723

  In terms of the number and variety of chorales they include, none of the surviving cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach can compare with Christus, der ist mein Leben BWV 95 (Christ, he is my life). In the course of only seven movements, there are no fewer than four different church hymns from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all with very different melodies. Therefore, this cantata, composed in mid-September 1723, together with its sister works in previous weeks, shows the cantor of St. Thomas experimenting with the possibilities of the chorale.¹
  
  An undertaking of this sort would have been unthinkable without the services of a dedicated librettist. With considerable skill, the unknown author of our cantata text connected strophes from four main chorales from the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity—without, however, including the Gospel reading for the stipulated Sunday at any point. Nevertheless, the account of Jesus raising the boy of Nain, found in Luke 7, is present insofar as its ideas revolve around the longing for death and resurrection. The text begins with the brief opening strophe from a chorale first documented in 1609, mostly in anonymous transmission:

  Christus, der ist mein Leben, 
  Sterben ist mein Gewinn;
  Dem tu ich mich ergeben,
  Mit Freud fahr ich dahin.
  
  Christ, he is my life, 
  To die is my reward,
  To which I surrender myself, 
  With joy I travel there.

  
  The allusion in the last line to the canticle of the ancient Simeon, in Luther’s paraphrase of 1524, is soon verified with the adoption of the first strophe of that hymn:

  Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, 
  Nach Gottes Willen,
  Getrost ist mir mein Herz und Sinn, 
  Sanft und stille.
  Wie Gott mir verheißen hat:
  Mein Tod ist mein Schlaf worden.
  
  With peace and joy I travel there, 
  According to God’s will,
  My heart and mind are comforted, 
  Soft and still.
  As God has promised me:
  My death has become my sleep.

  
  The librettist connects the two strophes with a recitative that at the beginning paraphrases “Mit Fried und Freud fahr ich dahin” and at its end prepares the second strophe with the words “Mein Sterbelied ist schon gemacht, / Ach dürft ichs heute singen!” (My funeral dirge is already arranged, / O that I might sing it today!). A second recitative takes up the Luther strophe and expresses the enticements and temptations of this world using the familiar image of the apple of Sodom, lustrous without but disgusting within, and leads to yet another chorale strophe, the beginning of the chorale written by Valentin Herberger in 1619:

  Valet will ich dir geben, 
  Du arge, falsche Welt, 
  Dein sündlich böses Leben 
  Durchaus mir nicht gefällt.
  Im Himmel ist gut wohnen, 
  Hinauf steht mein Begier. 
  Da wird Gott ewig lohnen 
  Dem, der ihm dient allhier.
  
  I want to bid you adieu,    
  You evil, false world,    
  Your sinfully wicked life 
  Thoroughly displeases me. 
  In heaven it is good to live, 
  Above stands my desire.
  There God will eternally reward 
  Him who serves him here.

  
  The readiness for death formulated in the freely versified text sections and the departure from this world are followed, after the third chorale strophe, by a prayer for a swift and blessed end, at first in a short recitative akin to soliloquy and then in a sigh of relief in the form of an aria:

  Ach schlage doch bald, selge Stunde, 
  Den allerletzten Glockenschlag!
  Komm, komm, ich reiche dir die Hände,
  Komm, mache meiner Not ein Ende, 
  Du längst erseufzter Sterbenstag!
  
  Ah, but strike soon, blessed hour, 
  The final toll of the bell!
  Come, come, I reach my hands out to you. 
  Come, put an end to my misery,
  You long-sighed-for day of death!

  
  A final recitative speaks of the certainty of resurrection:

  Denn ich weiß dies
  Und glaub es ganz gewiß 
  Daß ich aus meinem Grabe
  Ganz einen sichern Zugang zu dem Vater habe. 
  Der Tod ist nur ein Schlaf,
  Dadurch der Leib, der hier von Sorgen abgenommen, 
  Zur Ruhe kommen.
  
  For I know this
  And believe it is quite certain 
  That I, from my grave,
  Have wholly certain access to the Father. 
  Death is but a sleep
  By which the body, here wasted away by care, 
  Will come to rest.

  
  The line of thought concludes with the fourth strophe from Nikolaus Herman’s hymn Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist (When the hour of my death is at hand):

  Weil du vom Tod erstanden bist, 
  Werd ich im Grab nicht bleiben; 
  Dein letztes Wort mein Auffahrt ist, 
  Todsfurcht kannst du vertreiben.
  Denn wo du bist, da komm ich hin, 
  Daß ich stets bei dir leb und bin, 
  Drum fahr ich hin mit Freuden.
  
  Because you from death are risen, 
  I will not remain in the grave; 
  Your last word is my ascension,
  The fear of death you can drive away. 
  For where you are, I will come there,
  That I may always be and live beside you, 
  Therefore with joy I travel there.

  
  Bach’s composition of this libretto, whose structure is decisively shaped by chorale strophes, begins with a complex three-part movement that unmistakably reflects a search for new solutions. In an almost comfortable, rolling triple meter, the chorale melody Christus, der ist mein Leben by Melchior Vulpius is a reserved dialogue between the two oboi d’amore accompanied by the strings, into which the undaunted, ascending scales of the first violin do not quite want to fit. A bitter dissonance in the choral voices on the word “Sterben” and the overall reserved motion seem to want to prepare an untimely end to the idyll. But with the words “ist mein Gewinn” the ideal world, so to speak, is restored. The syncopated motives of the beginning maintain the upper hand; their effects are even heard in the animated tenor recitative in the middle of the movement. A radical reversal takes place after this: the key changes from G major to G minor, an alla breve meter dispels the previous tranquility, and with firm determination and no concern for possible ways out the phrase “Mit Fried und Freud fahr ich dahin” is sounded.
  
  The rest of the cantata is also complex in structure. The soprano recitative moves directly into the strophe set as a chorale trio, “Valet will ich dir geben”, where a rhythmically constant triadic figure in the basso continuo accompanies both the soprano and a melodic figure in the unison oboi d’amore that is at once eloquent, elegantly dancelike, and unified. A bit later, the oboes take on a crucial function in the cantata’s only aria. While the strings continuously maintain a steady pizzicato depicting the “letzter Glockenschlag” (last bell stroke), the two oboi d’amore alternate lamenting parallel fourths and calming thirds. The lamenting intervals flow into calling motives, echo effects that lend a sense of spatial depth yet go unanswered.
  
  With the next to last movement, a bass recitative, a different world is reached that begins with unexpected certainty and ends in animated joy. In the concluding chorale movement, longing for death and certainty of resurrection are not limited to the normal four-part setting: a fifth voice, an obbligato solo violin, climbs high above the chorus to luminous heights above.

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  Footnotes

  1. Krummacher (1995, 49).↵