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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:59+00:00 Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem BWV 159 / BC A 50 13 Estomihi. First performed 02/27/1729 in Leipzig. Cycle IV "Picander Jahrgang" plain 2024-04-24T15:49:30+00:00 1729-02-27 BWV 159 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 18Estomihi Estomihi BC A 50 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander) Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159 / BC A 50" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 162 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig IV

  Estomihi, February 27, 1729

  This cantata probably originated in February 1729.¹ Johann Sebastian Bach drew its text from a collection that the Leipzig postal secretary and gifted poet Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander) had begun to publish in the early summer of 1728. He provided a foreword to the collection that overtly stated the goal of the publication: “In honor of God, in response to the desire of good friends, and to promote much devotion, I have decided to prepare the present cantatas. I have undertaken this plan even more happily, since I may flatter myself that perhaps whatever is lacking in poetic charm will be replaced by the loveliness of the incomparable Herr Music Director Bach and that these songs will resound in the most important churches of devout Leipzig.”² It remains unclear whether Henrici/Picander completed his plan with the agreement of the cantor of St. Thomas, whether Bach promised him compositions for the entire annual cycle, or to what extent Bach was subsequently in a position to fulfill such a promise.³ The texts appeared in four parts from 1728 to 1729 and again later in a different order. At present, Bach scholars are not agreed whether they provided the basis for a fourth annual cycle of cantatas by Bach or whether he was content to set only a selection from Picander’s offering.⁴ If Bach did in fact set Picander’s cycle in its entirety, then this part of his oeuvre must be considered lost, for the most part. At present, we have evidence of barely ten compositions, roughly a sixth of an entire cycle.
  
  In the case of our cantata, then, we are dealing with one of those works that may be all that remain from a much larger set of compositions. The beginning of the text refers to the Gospel reading of Estomihi Sunday: the account in Luke 18 of the journey to Jerusalem that signals the beginning of Passiontide. The other account in the Gospel reading, the healing of the blind man by the wayside, can be only dimly perceived in Picander’s cantata libretto. Otherwise, the text concentrates on the beginning of the suffering of Christ and attempts, wherever possible, to emulate the diction of Passion settings. Since two versions of Bach’s St. John Passion had been heard in Leipzig in 1724 (BWV 245.1) and 1725 (BWV 245.2), and the St. Matthew Passion on Picander’s text had perhaps received its first performance in 1727 (BWV 244.1), with another performance envisioned for 1729, it is in no way odd that Picander would have referred back to such models for his Estomihi cantata.
  
  Picander places a part of the Lord’s word at the beginning, combining it with recitative interpolations of his own invention, as well as a longer closing section. He thereby achieves a dialogue, however unbalanced it might be, that points forward in its last verses to the act of salvation:

       “Sehet!”
  Komm, schaue doch, mein Sinn,
  Wo geht dein Jesus hin?
       “Wir gehn hinauf ” 
  O harter Gang! Hinauf ?
  O ungeheurer Berg, den meine Sünden zeigen! 
  Wie sauer wirst du müßen steigen!
       “Gen Jerusalem!”
  Ach, gehe nicht!
  Dein Kreuz ist dir schon zugericht’,
  Wo du sollst zu Tode bluten;
  Hier sucht man Geißeln vor, dort bindt man Ruten; 
  Die Bande warten dein;
  Ach gehe selber nicht hinein! 
  Doch bliebest du zurücke stehen,
  So müßt ich selbst nicht nach Jerusalem, 
  Ach, leider in die Hölle gehen.
  
       “See!”
  Come, but behold, my soul,
  Where is your Jesus going?
       “We are going up”
  O difficult journey! Up there?
  O monstrous mountain that my sins display! 
  How painfully you will have to climb!
       “To Jerusalem!” 
  O do not go!
  Your cross is ready for you, 
  Where you shall bleed to death;
  Here they seek whips, there they bind rods,
   Bonds await you;
  O do not go there yourself! 
  But were you to stay back,
  Then I myself would have to go not to Jerusalem 
  But unfortunately down to hell.

  
  An even higher degree of verbal artistry is seen in the ensuing aria, in which a strophe from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (O head full of blood and wounds), whose text beginning “Ich will hier bei dir stehen” (I will stand here beside you) is expanded with interleaved, freely versified lines, thereby addressing the “follower” theme from two sides:

       Ich folge dir nach
  Ich will hier bei dir stehen 
  Verachte mich doch nicht!
       Durch Speichel und Schmach;
       Am Kreuz will ich dich noch umfangen, 
  Von dir will ich nicht gehen
  Bis dir dein Herze bricht
       Dich laß ich nicht aus meiner Brust, 
  Wenn dein Haupt wird erblassen
  Im letzten Todesstoß
       Und wenn du endlich scheiden mußt,    
  Alsdenn will ich dich fassen,    
       Sollst du dein Grab in mir erlangen.
  In meinen Arm und Schoß.
  
       I follow after you.
  I will stand beside you here. 
  Do not despise me!
       Through spitting and insult
       On the cross I will still embrace you, 
  From you I will not go
  Until your heart breaks.
       I do not let you leave my breast
  When your head will turn pale
  In the last stroke of death.
       And when you finally must depart, 
  Even then I will embrace you.
       You shall find your grave in me, 
  In my arm and bosom.

  
  The two movements that follow, recitative and aria, are dedicated to the renunciation of the world’s vanities and the assurance of salvation through the martyr’s death of Jesus. The aria in particular anticipates the events of the Passion:

  Es ist vollbracht, 
  Das Leid ist alle,
  Wir sind von unserm Sündenfalle 
  In Gott gerecht gemacht.
  Nun will ich eilen
  Und meinem Jesu Dank erteilen, 
  Welt, gute Nacht!
  Es ist vollbracht.
  
  It is accomplished, 
  The suffering is over.
  From our sinful fall we have been 
  Justified in God.
  Now I will hurry
  And to Jesus thanks to give. 
  World, good night!
  It is accomplished.

  
  In Picander’s libretto there is a recitative that follows this aria, with its clear textual link to Bach’s St. John Passion, that is missing from Bach’s composition—at least in the form passed down to us in copies:

  Herr Jesu, dein verdienstlich Leiden 
  Ist meine Herrlichkeit,
  Mein Trost, mein Ruhm, mein Schmuck und Ehrenkleid. 
  Daran erhalt ich mich, drauf leb ich allezeit,
  Drauf will ich auch dereinst verscheiden.
  
  Lord Jesus, your meritorious suffering 
  Is my glory,
  My consolation, my praise, my jewel, my raiment of honor. 
  By it I am maintained, on it I live forever,
  Upon it I will also one day depart.

  
  Picander’s libretto closes with the next-to-last strophe from Paul Stockmann’s Passion hymn Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod ( Jesus’s suffering, pain, and death).
  
  In Bach’s composition the opening movement is a dialogue between Jesus (represented by the bass, the vox Christi) and the soul (assigned here, atypically, to the alto). The soul’s reflections are set as powerfully expressive, often dramatically pointed recitatives that, however, enjoy, so to speak, the constant protection of the accompanying chords in the strings. By contrast, the “Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem” is executed as a lonely, pain-filled arioso whose only austere support is an arduously rising and falling again motive in the basso continuo. The second movement has a dance character situated somewhere between gigue and pastorale, at least as far as the two freely formed parts, alto and basso continuo, are concerned. As might be expected, these two convert the “follower” theme mentioned in the text into various imitative sequences. In the soprano, supported by an oboe, the ancient melody Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Sincerely do I long) unswervingly traces its course. After a brief tenor recitative, the bass and oboe engage in a stirring dialogue in the aria “Es ist vollbracht” (It is accomplished), whose gravitas is relieved only briefly by the middle section, with figuration depicting the keyword “eilen” (hurry). With the same accumulated gravitas, a four-part chorale movement concludes this work on the threshold of Lent, a period without music.

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  Footnotes

  1. Or more likely 1727, owing to the presence of Henrici’s libretto in a text cycle published by Christoph Birkmann in 1728 that reflects cantatas performed in Leipzig from late 1724 until September 1727. See Blanken (2015b, 42–43n125).↵
  2. “Gott zu Ehren, dem Verlangen guter Freunde zur Folge und vieler Andacht zur Beförderung habe ich entschlossen, gegenwärtige Cantaten zu verfertigen. Ich habe solches Vorhaben desto lieber unternommen, weil ich mir schmeicheln darf, daß vielleicht der Mangel der poetischen Anmuth durch die Lieblichkeit des unvergleichlichen Herrn Capell-Meisters Bachs, dürfte ersetzet, und diese Lieder in den Haupt-Kirchendes andächtigen Leipzigs angestimmet werden.”↵
  3. When this essay was written, the only known exemplar of Henrici’s 1728 annual cycle had vanished in 1945. In 2009 a partially complete first edition print was discovered in St. Petersburg’s Russian National Library; this recently appeared source and other recently discovered prints in St. Petersburg have helped to clarify several questions regarding the so-called Picander Jahrgang (Picander cycle). See Schabalina (2009, 20–30).↵
  4. Häfner (1975); as well as Scheide (1980); Scheide (1983).↵