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• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:19+00:00 Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut BWV 199 / BC A 120 8 Solo Cantata. Eleventh Sunday After Trinity. First performed 08/12/1714 at Weimar. Text by GC Lehms. plain 2024-04-24T17:19:50+00:00 1714-08-12 BWV 199 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 05Trinity11 Solo Cantata Eleventh Sunday After Trinity BC A 120 Johann Sebastian Bach GC Lehms Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199 / BC A 120" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 374 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 1712–1713

  
  This early work by Johann Sebastian Bach, the cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut BWV 199 (My heart swims in blood), is among those that the composer is known to have performed particularly frequently. The composition originated in Weimar in 1714 at the latest or even perhaps a year or two earlier. Since Bach had only been appointed concertmaster to the court of Weimar in March 1714, at which point he became obligated to write a new cantata every four weeks, one must ask what occasion the cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut may have been meant for if it was written before that decisive change in Bach’s professional responsibilities. Further, the question applies to later performances as well, since not all of them were connected to the original occasion in the church calendar as stipulated in the libretto. This is particularly true of one or more performances that must have taken place in 1720 in Köthen¹ (and perhaps Hamburg as well); in these cases, it is difficult if not impossible to establish any connection to the eleventh Sunday after Trinity.
  
  In fact, it is only the libretto that shows this connection. The text is found in the annual text cycle Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer (Church offering pleasing to God), which was rediscovered in 1970. Printed in 1711 in Darmstadt, it is the work of the court librarian there, Georg Christian Lehms. The text appears beneath the heading “Andacht auf den eilfften Sonntag nach Trinitatis” (Devotion for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity). Bach’s score, on the other hand, mentions nothing of the sort; the composition simply appears beneath the heading “Cantata a voce sola” (Cantata for one voice). Bach may have found justification for such an approach in the text itself, which speaks about sin and remorse, guilt and atonement in only the most general terms and for the most part eludes any particular assignment within the church calendar.
  
  At the same time, the text does not entirely avoid reference to the Gospel reading for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity. This reading, found in Luke 18:9–14, contains Jesus’s parable of the Pharisees and the tax collector:

  He, however, spoke such a parable to several who presumed themselves to be pious and scorned the others: Two people went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself thusly: I thank you, God, that I am not like the other people, robbers, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast two times a week and give a tenth of all that I have. And the tax collector stood at a distance, did not want to lift his eyes up to heaven, but rather struck his breast and spoke: God be gracious to me, a sinner! I say to you: This one went to his home justified rather than the other. For he who exalts himself, he shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

  
  The librettist, Lehms, places the tax collector’s cry “Gott sei mir Sünder gnädig!” (God be gracious to me, a sinner!) in the geometric center, so to speak, of his cantata text. However, there is much to cover before this turning point is reached. An extended recitative at the beginning of the cantata is dedicated to intensifying self-accusation. Its title verse, “Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut,” harks back to a motif of Baroque emblematics used extensively before Lehms by Erdmann Neumeister, a pastor and cantata librettist active in Weissenfels, Sorau, and, later, Hamburg. The text’s first aria speaks of tearful remorse and wordless lament:

  Stumme Seufzer, stille Klagen,
  Ihr mögt meine Schmerzen sagen,
  Weil der Mund geschlossen ist.
  Und ihr nassen Tränenquellen
  Könnt ein sichres Zeugnis stellen,
  Wie mein sündlich Herz gebüßt.
  
  Speechless sighs, silent cries,
  You may speak my sorrows,
  For my mouth is closed.
  And you watery springs of tears
  Could bear certain witness
  How my sinful heart repents.

  
  The ensuing recitative culminates in the scripture “Gott sei mir Sünder gnädig!” and leads to a confession of guilt that is no longer mute but formulated in the language of the soul:

  Tief gebückt und voller Reue
  Lieg ich, liebster Gott, vor dir.
  Ich bekenne meine Schuld,
  Aber habe doch Geduld,
  Habe doch Geduld mit mir.
  
  Deeply bowed and filled with remorse,
  I lie, dearest God, before you.
  I confess my guilt
  But yet have patience.
  Have patience yet with me.

  
  Then a chorale strophe is presented in the manner of an announcement. It is drawn from Johannes Heermann’s chorale Wo soll ich fliehen hin (Whither shall I flee), written in 1630 in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War:

  Ich, dein betrübtes Kind,
  Werf alle meine Sünd,
  So viel ihr in mir stecken
  Und mich so heftig schrecken, 
  In deine tiefe Wunden,
  Da ich stets Heil gefunden.
  
  I, your troubled child,
  Cast all my sins,
  As many as hide within me,
  And so severely frighten me,
  In your deep wounds,
  Where I have always found salvation.

  
  A final recitative apostrophizes the wounds of Jesus as “Felsenstein” (rocky crag) and “Ruhstatt” (resting place) and from there progresses to a “vergnügten” (cheerful) conclusion, one that is contented and joyful:

  Wie freudig ist mein Herz,
  Da Gott versöhnet ist
  Und mir nach Reu und Leid
  Nicht mehr die Seligkeit
  Noch auch sein Herz verschließt.
  
  How joyful is my heart
  As God is reconciled
  And upon my repentance and suffering
  No longer excluded from blessedness
  Nor his heart as well.

  
  The word “Herz” appears twice in this concluding aria and eight times in the entire cantata text; the frequency of its appearance underscores its importance as a metaphor of Christian mysticism for mutual devotion. In the opinion of a recent German literary scholar, this cantata libretto possesses a remarkable “inner dynamism, from the contrition and remorse of the opening movement to the certainty of faith in the last. Moreover, this cantata, which counts among the longest libretti by Lehms, is one of astonishing unity and coherence. All movements, including the chorale, appear in the first person; the recitatives and arias are always closely associated with one another formally and in terms of content.”²
  
  It is possible that Bach may have been fully aware of the merits of this text and for that reason accorded it a privileged position within his repertoire. Further, the rather tenuous connection to any particular occasion in the church calendar will have been a factor, as well as the unproblematic setting for soprano, oboe or solo violin, strings, and basso continuo. Certainly, the soprano part poses considerable challenges; one wonders who in Weimar and later in Leipzig was capable of mastering it: an adult falsettist or a boy who—like Bach himself—still possessed a soprano voice at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Only under exceptional circumstances could Bach have considered enlisting the aid of a female singer, perhaps with the participation of his wife, Anna Magdalena, at a performance in his own home or at the performance in Hamburg in 1720 mentioned earlier. Christoph Graupner, court Kapellmeister at Darmstadt and Bach’s competitor for the Leipzig cantor’s position, may have taken this option: Graupner composed this text in 1712 for soprano solo, in fact; in accordance with the customs of Darmstadt church music, Graupner was able to give the part to an opera singer.
  
  One can see how important the unity and coherence of his composition were to Bach in the exceptional fact that he set all recitatives as accompagnati, adding chordal accompaniment in the strings. The only exceptions are very short textual passages that serve as transitions, which, as it were, “announce” the ensuing movements.
  
  The concept pairs sin/redemption and penance/reconciliation are seen particularly in the opposition between the first and last arias: here, in a somber D minor, an oboe melody laden with expressiveness and suffused with sigh motives, with which the voice is led in a nearly instrumental fashion; there a virtually unleashed jubilation in the dance rhythms of a gigue. Preceding this exhilarated closing aria is a closely worked trio movement in which the soprano’s performance of the chorale melody, Wo soll ich fliehen hin?, is enwreathed by the swirling figuration of a deep string instrument. The broadly conceived F major aria, “Tief gebückt und voller Reue” (Deeply bowed and filled with remorse), is at the musical center of the cantata. The soprano’s noble cantabile enters upon a texture of string instruments; with its blossoming melody and simple harmony it recalls the Italian models that Bach studied with great interest exactly when he composed this cantata in 1713 or 1714.

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  Footnotes

  1. Schabalina (2004).↵
  2. “innere Dynamik, von der Zerknirschung und Reue des Eingangs- bis zur Glaubensgewißheit des Schlußsatzes. Zudem ist diese Kantate, die zu den längsten Textdichtungen von Lehms zählt, von erstaunlicher Einheit und Geschlossenheit. Alle Sätze, einschließlich des Chorals, erscheinen in der Ichform; die Rezitative und Arien sind jeweils inhaltlich und formell eng miteinander verknüpft” (Krausse 1986, 13).—Trans.↵