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• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:19+00:00 Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir BWV 131 / BC B 25 7 Penance Service. First performed in 1707 in Mühlhausen. . plain 2024-04-24T17:36:47+00:00 BWV 131 Mühlhausen Penance Service BC B 25 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131 / BC B 25" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 622 James A. Brokaw II 1707 Mühlhausen

  Penance Service, 1707

  The cantata Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir BWV 131 (Out of the depths, Lord, I call to you) is a relatively early composition, if not the earliest vocal work by Johann Sebastian Bach available to us at present. Bach composed the work while at Mühlhausen between June 1707 and June 1708, possibly closer to the beginning of this brief period than the end. Evidence for this chronological placement comes from Bach’s autograph score. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was in the possession of the Leipzig publishing house Breitkopf, and after frequent changes of ownership, it today graces a private collection in New York. The precious manuscript displays the finely chiseled text and musical script typical of Bach’s early period. In addition, it displays a watermark characteristic of Mühlhausen: an eagle with wings spread, symbolic of the rank of free imperial city; the mill wheel, the sign of its name and tradition; and the initials of the Mühlhausen paper manufacturer Becker.
  
  As if he wanted to eliminate any doubt beforehand, Bach made another inscription at the close of his manuscript that confirms its Mühlhausen origins with welcome clarity: “At the request of Herr Dr. Georg Christian Eilmar, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Organist at Mühlhausen.”¹ Whether this notation was just meant as a simple statement of fact or as a precaution to defuse any potential disputes cannot be known at present. Since Dr. Christian Eilmar was a clergyman at St. Mary’s Church in Mühlhausen and Bach was employed as organist at St. Blasius Church, it is unlikely that the two had much to do with one another officially. On the basis of several surviving polemics, older scholarship concluded that Bach’s supervisor, the superintendent at St. Blasius, Johann Adolph Frohne, was engaged in long-running, far-reaching, and fundamental disputes with Eilmar. According to this line of thinking, Bach was in a difficult position because of the men’s irreconcilable differences, so to speak, and he left his position as organist at Mühlhausen after only one year. However, more recent studies have shown that while there was indeed a remarkably competitive situation that was hardly free of personal discord, there was no falling out nor any breakdown in diplomatic relations.² Bach’s relationship with Eilmar was indeed better than his relationship with Frohne, his superintendent, as shown by the fact that, half a year after Bach left Mühlhausen, it was Eilmar and not Frohne who served as godfather to Catharina Dorothea, the first child of Bach’s marriage with his cousin Maria Barbara. Contemporaries characterized Eilmar as emotional and in possession of a powerful sense of justice—characteristics that one finds in Bach’s personality as well.
  
  Such documents understandably have little to say about the occasion for commissioning Bach to write a cantata. Thus one must rely on the relatively vague clues provided by the sources of the text. Any search for a librettist would be an exercise in futility. For unexplained reasons but obviously in keeping with local tradition, in 1707 Mühlhausen the fashionably modern operatic forms of recitative and aria were not allowed any role in church music. Nor can what is commonly known as “mixed text form”—consisting of biblical passages, chorales, and free madrigalistic poetry in the form of recitatives and arias—be found in the cantata Aus der Tiefen rufe ich or in any other of Bach’s Mühlhausen cantatas. The biblical passage comprises Psalm 130 in its entirety, a prayer for the forgiveness of sins:

  Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir. Herr, höre meine Stimme, laß deine Ohren merken auf die Stimme meines Flehens! So du willst, Herr, Sünde zurechnen, wer wird bestehen? Denn bei dir ist die Vergebung, daß man dich fürchte. Ich harre des Herrn; meine Seele harret, und ich hoffe auf sein Wort. Meine Seele wartet auf den Herrn von einer Morgenwache bis zu der andern. Israel, hoffe auf den Herrn; denn bei dem Herrn ist die Gnade und viel Erlösung bei ihm, und er wird Israel erlösen aus allen seinen Sünden.
  
  Out of the depths I cry, Lord, to you. Lord, hear my voice, let your ears receive the voice of my pleading! If you would, Lord, mark sins, who will withstand? For with you there is forgiveness, that one might fear you. I await the Lord; my soul awaits, and I hope upon his word. My soul waits for the Lord from one morning watch to the next. Israel, hope upon the Lord; for with the Lord there is grace and much redemption with him, and he will redeem Israel from all of his sins.

  
  In the libretto, this psalm text is combined with two chorale strophes from the hymn Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut (Lord Jesus Christ, you highest good), written by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt in 1588.
  
  According to ancient tradition, Psalm 130 is associated with the eleventh Sunday after Trinity, and its Gospel reading is from Luke 18, the parable of the Pharisees and the customs officers. Thus it is possible that the cantata was performed on September 4, 1707, in Mühlhausen. On the other hand, Psalm 130 belongs to the seven penitential psalms, to be sung on days of penance, fasting, and prayer. Since the hymn just mentioned by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt appears in hymnaries of the period under the rubric “Von der Buße und Beichte” (Of penance and confession), the theory that the cantata is for a penitential service has the most in its favor, pending further investigation. Whether such things were common in Mühlhausen remains to be investigated.
  
  Not only textually but also musically Bach’s cantata looks to the past. In remarkable ways it shows itself to be the descendant of traditions of the seventeenth century. It would be worth investigating whether only elements of personal style are at work here and whether the work reflects the level of Bach’s compositional abilities in 1707 or whether there was a kind of resistance to current trends³ and hence a situation akin to that of the Mühlhausen source texts.
  
  Typical of the style of the seventeenth century and of our cantata as well is the small-segmented approach that follows the text step-by-step, related to the procedure for writing motets. In multifarious gradations of solo and polyphonic vocal textures and the choral alternation between vocal and instrumental parts, new facets continually reveal themselves in a virtually inexhaustible wealth of invention. Large-scale relationships and closed forms, on the other hand, are rather more exceptional. They are found in the two multitextual chorale arrangements: the quartet “So du willst, Herr, Sünde zurechnen” (If you should, Lord, mark sins) with the chorale strophe “Erbarm dich mein in solcher Last” (Have mercy upon me, under such burden) for bass, soprano, obbligato oboe, and basso continuo, as well as in the trio “Meine Seele wartet auf den Herrn” (My soul waits upon the Lord) with the chorale strophe “Und will ich denn in meinem Sinn” (And since I then in my mind) for tenor, alto, and continuo. Both sections of the cantata display an unmistakable affinity to writing for organ and show Bach, the Mühlhausen organist, in his element. The same applies to the elaborately fugal final movement, in which a playful motive of instrumental character for the text “Und er wird Israel erlösen” (And he will redeem Israel) is combined with an ascending linear passage in half steps for the text portion “aus allen seinen Sünden” (from all of his sins). According to more recent studies, this double motive with simultaneous contrast is not an invention of Bach’s but rather a thematic structure that Bach—perhaps by way of his oldest brother—adopted from Johann Pachelbel. Its roots reach far back, at least past Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck into the sixteenth century.

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  Footnotes

  1. “Auff begehren Titulo Herrn Dr. Georg Christian Eilmars in die Music gebrachtvon Johann Sebastian Bach, Organista Molhusino.”—Trans.↵
  2. Petzoldt (1992, 133).↵
  3. Ernst (1987, 76ff.).↵