This page is referenced by:

• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:20+00:00 Komm, du süße Todesstunde BWV 161 / BC A 135 15 Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 09/27/1716 at Weimar. Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T15:52:28+00:00 1716-09-27 BWV 161 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 05Trinity16 Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 135 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Komm, du süße Todesstunde, BWV 161 / BC A 135" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 421 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 27, 1716

  Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde BWV 161 (Come, you sweet hour of death) at the age of about thirty for the worship service in the castle chapel at the court of Weimar. The Weimar ducal consistory secretary, Salomon Franck, provided the libretto, published in his collection Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer, which appeared in print in 1715 in Weimar. The composition is for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, in Luke 7, gives the account of Jesus’s raising of the widow’s son at Nain. Salomon Franck’s libretto is based on this Gospel reading only to the extent that the text is suffused with longing for death and the certainty of resurrection. The story itself is not recounted.
  
  In the view of the music historian Arnold Schering, 

  with its strengthening of faith in Jesus, Pietism had fostered a human race that anticipated death with joy and regarded the repose in the little burial chamber as but a brief nap from which Jesus would awaken the Soul to unearthly glory.... What is terrifying and horrible about this process of passing away is indeed not ignored but mitigated and covered by images and feelings that lead directly to consolation and hope. Freely and with poetic power . . . the librettist develops that which will make the moment of death seem happy and attractive to faithful souls. All is dissolved in longing and ardent yearning.¹

  
  Schering’s description applies to the text of our cantata in general and is helpful for understanding most of the verses. Even so, the opening movement, an aria, calls for close consideration. Salomon Franck’s text reads:

  Komm, du süße Todesstunde, 
  Da mein Geist
  Honig speist
  Aus des Löwen Munde. 
  Mache meinen Abschied süße, 
  Säume nicht,
  Letztes Licht,
  Daß ich meinen Heiland küße.
  
  Come, you sweet hour of death, 
  When my spirit
  Dines on honey
  Out of the lion’s mouth. 
  Make my departure sweet, 
  Do not linger,
  Last light,
  That I might kiss my savior.

  Here Franck has drawn a reference to Samson’s battle with the lion, found in Judges 14. With his bare hands, Samson had killed a young lion. After several days, he found honey in the cadaver. At his wedding celebration, he gave the guests a riddle to solve. A late seventeenth-century sermon provides an exegesis of this passage: “When Samson found honey in the lion, he devised this riddle in the Book of Judges Chapter 14 verse 14: ‘Sweetness poured out of the horrible.’ What is more horrible than death when it crushes bones like a lion? . . . Nevertheless, a Christian finds honey in lions and consolation in death.” Apart from this rather remote allusion in the unidentified sermon, Erdmann Neumeister’s influence can be discerned in Franck’s aria text. In Neumeister’s first annual text cycle, prepared in Weissenfels in 1702, the libretto for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (immediately before the Sunday in question) contains the following formulation:

  Komm doch, komm doch, süße Stunde!
  Da mein Geist
  Sich der Eitelkeit entreißt.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  Mich verlangt von Herzens-Grunde.
  Komm doch, komm doch, süße Stunde!
  
  But come, but come, sweet hour! 
  When my spirit
  Wrests itself from vanity.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  I long for you from the bottom of my heart. 
  But come, but come, sweet hour!

  
  The second movement of Franck’s cantata libretto, a recitative, characterizes the transitoriness of existence with opposing concepts:

  Welt, deine Lust ist Last,
  Dein Zucker ist mir als ein Gift verhaßt, 
  Dein Freudenlicht
  Ist mein Komete,
  Und wo man deine Rosen bricht, 
  Sind Dornen ohne Zahl
  Zu meiner Seele Qual.
  
  World, your pleasure is a burden, 
  Your sugar is hateful to me as poison, 
  Your joyful light
  Is my comet.²
  And where one picks your roses, 
  There are thorns without number 
  To the torment of my soul.

  
  Truly poetic expressions stand out effectively from the preceding:

  Der blasse Tod ist meine Morgenröte, 
  Mit solcher geht mir auf die Sonne 
  Der Herrlichkeit und Himmelswonne.
  
  Pale death is my sunrise, 
  With it arises for me the sun
  Of glory and heavenly delight.

  
  The recitative closes with a paraphrase of Philippians 1:23. The biblical passage reads, “Ich habe Lust abzuscheiden, und bei Christo zu sein” (I desire to depart and be with Christ); in Franck’s words:

  Ich habe Lust bei Christo bald zu weiden,
  Ich habe Lust, von dieser Welt zu scheiden 
  
  I desire soon to graze with Christ, 
  I desire to part from this world.

  
  The beginning of the third movement, another aria, continues in this vein almost without change:

  Mein Verlangen
  Ist, den Heiland zu empfangen 
  Und bei Christo bald zu sein.
  
  My longing
  Is to embrace the savior 
  And soon to be with Christ.

  
  The fourth movement, a recitative, proceeds purposefully with this chain of ideas with these expressions:

  Der Schluß ist schon gemacht, 
  Welt, gute Nacht!
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  So brich herein, du froher Todestag,
  So schlage doch, du letzter Stundenschlag.
  
  The decision is already made, 
  World, good night!
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  So break forth, you joyous day of death, 
  So strike, you stroke of the final hour.

  The last aria, whose text begins “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille” (If it is my God’s will), culminates in the exclamation:

  Jesu, komm und nimm mich fort! 
  Dieses sei mein letztes Wort!
  
  Jesus, come and take me away! 
  This shall be my last word!

  
  The fourth strophe from Christoph Knoll’s 1611 hymn Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Sincerely do I long) finishes the cantata text and concludes the chain of ideas with the pertinent “Was schädt mir denn der Tod?” (How then does death harm me?).
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach may have intended to set this text for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity in 1715; the performance would have been due in early October. But a tragic event at court thwarted his plan: at barely nineteen years of age, the extraordinarily musically gifted Prince Johann Ernst died after a long illness at Frankfurt am Main. Shortly afterward, an official period of mourning was decreed in the principality during which even polyphonic music at the court church was silenced for some time.³ Hence the first performance would have taken place the following year, at the end of September 1716, and the work probably was composed at that time. It shows the Weimar concertmaster and court organist at the height of his creative powers. In invention and design, the opening movement presents itself masterfully: urgent and seductive in equal measure, a pair of recorders, playing mostly in parallel thirds and sixths, intensifies the alto’s “Komm, du süße Todesstunde.” Counterpoint is provided by the organ, which performs the melody “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” phrase by phrase in long note values. Since the melody inevitably elicits a textual association, a dual textuality results for the listener comprising Franck’s aria poetry and Christoph Knoll’s chorale strophe. At the same time, the apparently freely composed aria proves to be a wide-ranging chorale arrangement worthy of the art of a court organist.
  
  The ensuing tenor recitative flows into an arioso section, which expressively underscores the “Ich habe lust, von dieser Welt zu scheiden” through stubbornly repeated bass figures. The tenor aria “Mein Verlangen ist, den Heiland zu umfangen” (My desire is to embrace the savior), accompanied by the strings, is also characterized by intensive text declamation, combined with a measured, dancelike stride. The alto recitative, accompanied by all the instruments, “Der Schluß ist schon gemacht,” enters the realm of tone painting. Sinking figuration and sustained tones symbolize sleep, just as ascending passages evoke “awakening”; the pealing sounds of the plucked string instruments and the flutes suggest the “striking of the last hour.” The last freely versified movement, “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille,” was designated an aria by Franck but composed as a chorus or at least a four-part ensemble of soloists by Bach. Its thematic material harks back to the opening movement; judging by its nearly ecstatic longing it is rather filled by an inner joy, expressed by the dancelike, animated meter as well as the playful passagework of the two woodwind instruments. In the concluding chorale setting, the flute and oboe form an obbligato part in high register, rich in syncopations, that expands the texture to five parts and lends it the character of a figurative chorale prelude. The bridge back to the opening movement is created not only by the identity of the chorale melody but also by its compositional procedure, which is similar to several movements from the Orgelbüchlein BWV 599–644, to which it is close chronologically.
  
  By all appearances, the cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde was heard not simply in Weimar in 1716 but also in Bach’s Leipzig period.⁴ In addition to several changes in setting, the Leipzig version is different from the Weimar one in particular because the chorale melody in the opening movement is given to a voice, so that the multitextuality is not simply an associative effect but an actual occurrence. In his last years, the cantor of St. Thomas undertook a final change: he augmented the designation for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity with an assignment to the Feast of the Purification of Mary and thereby converted the longing for death in the cantata text associated with the story of the boy at Nain to the account of the ancient Simeon found in the Gospel of Luke.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Schering (1942, 129–30). The questions of what Pietism is and Bach’s relation
     to it are complex and controversial. A recent overview of these can be found in Leaver
     (2021, 219–47).—Trans.↵
  2. A symbol of calamity.—Trans.↵
  3. Glöckner (1985).↵
  4. Franck’s text for BWV 161 also appears in the annual text cycle Gott-geheiligte Sabbaths-Zehnden, published in Nuremberg in 1728 by Christoph Birkmann, who studied at the University of Leipzig from December 1, 1724, to early September 1727 and during that time frequently heard church music performed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Birkmann’s cycle contains thirty-one cantatas by Bach known to have been performed at Leipzig during Birkmann’s period of study there. Since Franck’s text for BWV 161 is also included in the cycle, it is now believed to have been performed in Leipzig on September 16, 1725. See Blanken (2015b, 70).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen BWV 65 / BC A 27 12 Epiphany. First performed 01/06/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T16:27:31+00:00 1724-01-06 BWV 65 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 14Epiphany Epiphany BC A 27 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, BWV 65 / BC A 27" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 82 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Epiphany, January 6, 1724

  The Feast of Epiphany, also known as High New Year or Three Kings’ Day, is celebrated on January 6. As the feast of the birth and baptism of Christ, it has been among the most popular holidays of the church year since ancient times. The Gospel reading for this feast day, the story of the Wise Men from the East found in the second chapter of Matthew, and the Epistle of the day, from the sixtieth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, have proven to be virtually inexhaustible sources of inspiration for artistic creativity, although certainly with different emphasis. According to Arnold Schering, “The old Italian and Netherlands painters . . . conceived the scenes of the Three Kings’ worship of the child Jesus as a rule as major state affairs. They placed mother and child in the center of the painting, both surrounded, however, with such an abundance of animated humanity and heaps of garments, jewelry, and beasts of burden, so confused that one feels present at a sumptuous homage to royalty rather than at a silent devotion in a Bethlehem manger.”¹
  
  A “silent devotion in a Bethlehem manger” would match the section of the Gospel reading as Johann Sebastian Bach composed it for the sixth cantata of the Christmas Oratorio: “As they saw the star, they became overjoyed and went in the house and found the little child with Mary, his mother, and fell to their knees and prayed to him and brought out their treasures and gave him gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:10–11). By contrast, one indeed encounters a “sumptuous” scenario in Isaiah 60:4–6, which reads:

  Lift up your eyes and look around: these all gathered together come to you. Your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters will be carried in arms. Then you shall see your pleasure, and flow together, and your heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. For the multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; they will from Sheba all come, they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall sing forth the praises of the Lord.

  
  The Sabaean people alluded to here have been known to inhabit southern Arabia at least from the eighth century BCE through the second century CE. Trade routes between India, Ethiopia, and northern lands brought the area great affluence. Its star declined as transport by caravan on land was gradually replaced by ships at sea.
  
  This context becomes significant when one goes about bringing Bach’s score to life. In particular, the instrumental part in the opening movement is as rich as it is attractive; in it, horns, recorders in the upper regions of their range, and hunting oboes—oboi da caccia—appear in pairs. The horns move partly in the harmony-filling “horn range” and partly in the higher clarino register. The oboi da caccia—reed instruments originally in half-round, curved form with a large bell—have a darkly sonorous, distinctively attractive sound in the context of the original instruments of the Bach era. Together with the strings and the recorders in their upper ranges, the hunting horns and oboes produce a multicolored array of sonorities that seem entirely appropriate to the pomp of a royal procession. The 12
  8 meter chosen by Bach also can be seen to fit with this scenario: it can symbolize “completeness,” “church,” or “angels”—but also royalty. An older interpretation of our opening movement ascribed a pastorale coloring and hence had the horns tuned in C, sounding an octave lower than notated. This practice is in no way justified, although it is still stubbornly adhered to. Instead, what is meant is a heraldic symbolism focusing on the kings from Sheba apostrophized in the second movement of the cantata, where the horns must sound in their upper range.
  
  After eight purely instrumental measures, the chorus enters with “Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen,” the incoming throng symbolized by the overlapping, canonic entries of thematic material. Ten measures later, the bass begins a rocking, then lively fugue theme, taken up immediately by tenor, alto, and soprano, at first in permutation procedure and then in stretto. How seriously the composer took his task here can be seen in an extensive set of sketches—a relatively rare case for Johann Sebastian Bach—which were preserved by chance in a cantata score of the same period.² Above all, they show the evolution of the fugue theme from a rather clumsy, uncharacteristic tune with many pitch repetitions, reworked until it received its final, elegant form. Contrary to earlier interpretations, the choice and implementation of fugue do not point to an “anwachsenden und sich vergrößernden Strom” (growing and increasing stream); instead, they point to the general sense of order, dignity, pomp, and high rank, befitting the scenario at the crib at the birth of Christ the king.³ The movement’s close takes up the initial theme again and concludes with, so to speak, the global text line in unison, “Und des Herren Lob verkündigen” (And announce the praise of the Lord). The thematic correspondence with the Prelude in C Major BWV 547 for organ is palpable. Which of the two pieces came first and what hides behind the similarity of course remain unknown at this point.
  
  Following such an overpowering opening, it is difficult for the other movements to assert themselves. The chorale strophe “Die Kön’ge aus Saba kamen dar” (The kings came out of Sheba) connects in meaningful ways with the text of the opening movement. Here we are dealing with a section of the 1545 hymn Ein Kind geborn zu Bethlehem (A child is born in Bethlehem), a German version of the ancient Latin Puer natus in Bethlehem, whose fourth strophe, “Reges de Saba veniunt,” is the source. The chorale has a direct relationship to the liturgy for Epiphany, since the Puer natus hymn was heard at the beginning of the service.
  
  After this simple chorale movement one could imagine a caesura in the cantata’s course, closing the first half before the sermon. If so, the bass recitative that follows would have begun the cantata’s second half. Free poetry appears here for the first time; its author remains unknown. The prophecy of Isaiah is recounted, along with the events in Bethlehem; and gold, frankincense, and myrrh appear as “priceless presents” in the recitative. However, the following lines seem rather wooden and clumsy:

  Mein Jesu, wenn ich itzt an meine Pflicht gedenke, 
  Muß ich auch zu deiner Krippe kehren
  Und gleichfalls dankbar sein,
  Denn dieser Tag ist mir ein Tag der Freuden.
  
  My Jesus, if I now remember my duty, 
  I must also return to your crib
  And likewise be thankful,
  For this day is to me a day of joys.

  If one recalls the fact that the cantata Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen was written for January 6, 1724, it may have been that Bach occasionally encountered problems finding suitable texts, especially in his first year in office.

  No less infelicitous is the text of the ensuing aria, whose didactic tone is not exactly conducive to musical inspiration:

  Gold aus Ophir ist zu schlecht, 
  Weg, nur weg mit eitlen Gaben, 
  Die ihr aus der Erde brecht, 
  Jesus will das Herze haben.
  
  Gold from Ophir is too poor, 
  Away, but away with idle gifts 
  That you break out of the earth. 
  Jesus wants to have your heart.

  Bach helps himself here with a quartet texture—bass voice, basso continuo, two oboi da caccia—in which the rhythm of the opening line, “Gold aus Ophir ist zu schlecht,” persists in every measure. “Ophir” here means a fabulous country that turns up occasionally in the Hebrew Bible, such as in 1 Kings 9:27–28: “And Hiram sent his servants by ship, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon.” This land was thought to be in the Near East or India, in South Africa, or even in distant Peru (although this is difficult to reconcile with navigational capabilities in biblical times). Bach may have meant the exotic sound of the oboi da caccia as an allusion to this far-off, unknown land of gold.
  
  After the recitative and aria for bass, the tenor voice has its say with the same sequence. “Des Glaubens Gold, der Weihrauch des Gebets, die Myrrhen der Geduld sind meine Gaben” (The gold of faith, the frankincense of prayer, the myrrh of patience are my gifts)—these are the “köstliche Geschenke” (precious gifts) in the earlier recitative for bass, now declared to be personal offerings of thanksgiving. Musical development is possible only with difficulty at this point. It succeeds again only in the aria for tenor, “Nimm mich dir zu eigen hin” (Take me unto yourself as your own), whose joyous testament, with its yearning leaps of the sixth at the beginning of the theme, almost has a touch of sentimentality about it, which is hardly moderated by the dancelike 3
  8 meter but instead intensified by the orchestra’s blaze of color. The interchange between the instrumental groups and, above all, the octave doublings between registers recall the brilliant array of timbral juxtapositions in the first movement. And so the progression from the outward display of “Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen” to the turn to the personal in “Nimm mich dir zu eigen hin” seems to be the conceptual core of the cantata text, elucidated and made clear musically.
  
  A simple four-part chorale movement on the melody Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit (What my God wills is for all time) concludes the cantata. It is only by a circuitous path that we know which strophe Bach intended to underlie the melody. An entry in the original score indicates a strophe from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn (I have to God’s heart and mind). According to a recent investigation,⁴ the entry is in the hand of Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, Johann Sebastian’s second-youngest son, and may go back to the missing original parts, and to this extent can claim a significant degree of authority.
   

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Schering (1942, 17).—Trans.↵
  2. Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? BWV 81 / BC A 39.—Trans.↵
  3. Wetzel (1985, 145).↵
  4. Wollny (2001a).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:55+00:00 Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret BWV 31 / BC A 55 8 Easter Sunday. First performed 04/21/1715 at Weimar. Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T16:05:03+00:00 1715-04-21 BWV 31 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 21Easter Easter Sunday BC A 55 Johann Sebastian Bach Salamo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret, BWV 31 / BC A 55" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 177 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Easter Sunday, April 21, 1715

  This cantata belongs to the surprisingly small group of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach for Easter Sunday. The relatively modest corpus of works for this high-ranking feast day suggests that there may have been losses in the transmission of sources, possibly after Bach’s death and in association with the distribution of his musical estate, but possibly during his lifetime as well. (Dilatory borrowers come to mind in this regard.) However, a more plausible theory would seem to be that after 1750 Bach’s feast day cantatas—among them those meant for Easter—went to the oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, who, as music director of the Liebfrauenkirche in Halle at midcentury, had great need of exactly that sort of church music and that they went astray in his later years for various reasons.
  
  And so, at present there are three known cantatas meant for the first day of Easter: the partita per omnes versus Christ lag in Todes Banden BWV 4, presumably a very early work; the composition known as the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4, an arrangement of a secular cantata (Entfliehet, verschwindet, entweichet ihr Sorgen BWV 249.1); and the cantata Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret BWV 31 (Heaven laughs, the earth rejoices). This work (BWV 31.1) originated in 1715, a year after Bach’s promotion to concertmaster at the court of Weimar. It was the first Easter cantata by the newly appointed concertmaster for the congregation at the Weimar castle church. The situation was similar nine years later in Leipzig, when Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret was performed in April 1724 (BWV 31.2); it was the first Easter cantata by Bach in his new position as the cantor of St. Thomas School. A surviving text booklet from that year confirms that, in accordance with the custom in Leipzig, the work was performed in the morning main service in St. Nicholas and in the afternoon at vespers in St. Thomas. The same sequence demonstrably took place again in 1731, and we have documentation of some further performances, while others are hinted at.
  
  Thus our cantata assumed a permanent, immovable place in Bach’s repertoire. But this is in no way obvious, and indeed for reasons regarding the text. Several decades ago, Arnold Schering formulated the problems thusly:

  For ourselves, who since ancient times have associated the concept of Easter with thoughts of triumph, victory, and resurrection, Salomon Franck’s . . . text takes a turn that is difficult to understand insofar as it turns away from the joy of Easter in its course and ultimately leads to thoughts of death. The usual path would have been to take up the deathly horrors of the earlier Passion and gradually transition to the brightness of Easter morning. Instead, poet and musician write pieces for the last two movements that could just as well appear in a funeral cantata.¹

  
  Johann Sebastian Bach found the text in a collection entitled Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer (Protestant Devotional Offering), which he was obliged to use for his cantata compositions after its publication by Salomon Franck, the Weimar ducal consistory secretary, in early 1715. “Triumph, victory, and resurrection” are found particularly at the beginning of Franck’s cantata text for Easter in the aria that Bach composed as a choral movement:

  Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret 
  Und was sie trägt in ihrem Schoß;
  Der Schöpfer lebt! der Höchste triumphieret 
  Und ist von Todesbanden los.
  Der sich das Grab zur Ruh erlesen, 
  Der Heiligste kann nicht verwesen.
  
  The heavens laugh! The earth rejoices 
  And what it carries in its bosom;
  The Creator lives! the Most High triumphs 
  And is from the bonds of death released.
  Who chose the grave for rest, 
  The holiest cannot be decayed.

  
  With the last line, the poet alludes to a verse in Psalm 16 that belongs to the lesson for Easter Monday: “Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht dem Tode lassen und nicht zugeben, daß dein Heiliger verwese” (10; For you will not leave my soul in death and will not allow your holy one to be decayed). If this reference to death seems simply apt, what follows increasingly strengthens the “turning away from the joy of Easter,” as Schering calls it. Instead of the Gospel reading for the Sunday from Matthew 16, the second movement, a recitative, draws on the Revelation of St. John on several occasions, as in these verses from the first chapter: “Fürchte dich nicht! ich bin der Erste und der Letzte und der Lebendige; ich war tot, und siehe, ich bin lebendig von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit und habe die Schlüssel der Hölle und des Todes” (17–18; Fear not! I am the first and the last and the living one; I was dead, and behold, I am living from eternity to eternity and have the keys of hell and of death). The recitative’s conclusion proclaims:

  Der sein Gewand
  Blutrot bespritzt in seinem bittern Leiden,
  Will heute sich mit Schmuck und Ehren kleiden.
  
  He whose clothing
  Was spattered blood red in his bitter suffering 
  Will today be clothed in jewels and honor.

  
  It is also quoting the Revelation of St. John where, in the nineteenth chapter, it says of the appearance of Christ: “Und er war angetan mit einem Kleide, das mit Blut besprengt war; und sein Name heißt ‘Das Wort Gottes’” (13; And he was dressed in a garment that was spattered with blood, and his name was “The Word of God”). “Fürst des Lebens, starker Streiter” (prince of life, powerful champion) begins the text of the aria that follows, rhymed immediately, however, with “des Kreuzes Leiter” (of the ladder of the Cross) and speaking of chains and “Purpurwunden” (purple wounds).
  
  It is not until the closing lines of the ensuing recitative that the Resurrection from the Gospel of St. Mark is taken up, depicting the scene with Mary Magdalene and Mary Jacobi at the grave:

  Ein Christe flieht
  Ganz eilend von dem Grabe! 
  Er läßt den Stein,
  Er läßt das Tuch der Sünden 
  Dahinten
  Und will mit Christo lebend sein.
  
  A Christian flees
  Quite quickly from the grave! 
  He leaves the stone,
  He leaves the cloth of sins 
  Behind
  And wishes to be alive with Christ.

  
  It seems to be symptomatic for the author’s conception of the text that while he indeed pursues the idea of resurrection further in the next aria text, he does so indirectly by way of Adam’s Fall:

  Adam muß in uns verwesen, 
  Soll der neue Mensch genesen, 
  Der nach Gott geschaffen ist.
  
  Adam must decay within us 
  If the new man is to be saved
  Who is created in God’s image.

  
  Dying as a precondition of resurrection is also at the center of the last movement pair, a recitative and the aria that begins “Letzte Stunde, brich herein, / Mir die Augen zuzudrücken” (Last hour, break in, / And close my eyes). Salomon Franck’s cantata libretto closes with the chorale strophe “So fahr ich hin zu Jesu Christ” (Then I go forth to Jesus Christ), which was added as early as 1575 to Nikolaus Herman’s chorale Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist (When my final hour is at hand).
  
  For the composer, this wide-ranging but rather problematic text posed a challenge that he was willing to employ any and all means to overcome. “Employ any and all means” is to be understood as both compositional and technical details of performance. Only rarely did Bach deploy more extensive performance forces than he did here. Five each of strings and woodwinds, as well as trumpets and drums, contest one another in the opening movement alone, a sonorously magnificent sonata featuring unison fanfare motives by the entire orchestra, whose subtle concertizing reflects Bach’s ongoing engagement with the works of his Italian contemporaries. Augmented by a five-part chorus, the choral movement “Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret” begins with the entire magnificent ensemble and indeed with two identical fugue expositions that differ only in the text that underlies them—lines 1 and 2, then lines 3 and 4. The fugal voices are alternately unaccompanied or heralded by unison fanfare motives by the entire orchestra. At times, it seems to anticipate the “et Resurrexit” from the Mass in B Minor BWV 232. At the text line “Der sich das Grab zur Ruh erlesen” the outward splendor turns to quiet inwardness, although after a few adagio measures the quick opening tempo is resumed. The closing section is determined by the line of text “Der Heiligste kann nicht verwesen,” whereby the formal principle of canon becomes symbolic, representing Law, Dogma, the Unshakable.
  
  Canonic constructions with the same significance also characterize the larger part of the bass recitative. Essential to the aria that follows, “Fürst des Lebens, starker Streiter,” are the bass voice as embodiment of power and the angular, marchlike rhythm symbolizing bravery and majesty. In contrast, the recitative and aria for tenor that follow, with their harmony-saturated texture for strings, yield scarcely any hint of the character of their text. Philipp Spitta, writing in the first volume of his Bach biography, published in 1873, called Salomon Franck’s “Adam muß in uns verwesen” “one of those sets of words which express no emotion, but are of purely dogmatic import.”16 The soprano aria probes even deeper, its pensive dialogue between voice and obbligato oboe blending with the sonorous voices of the united string instruments and sounding like a choral movement. The “Letzte Stunde, brich herein” of the contemporary text is connected with a quotation of the melody, whose meaning cannot be in doubt: the first strophe of Nikolaus Herman’s chorale: “Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist, werd ich im Grab nicht bleiben” (When my final hour is at hand, I shall not remain in the grave). The cantata concludes with the last strophe of the same chorale, quite subdued after the brilliance of its beginning. An instrumental voice ascends to celestial heights, so to speak, an eloquent symbol for the lines “So fahr ich hin zu Jesu Christ” and “der wird die Himmelstür auftun, mich für’n zum ew’gen Leben” (Who will open the door of heaven, leading me to eternal life).

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Schering (1942, 47). ↵