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• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:55+00:00 Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen BWV 145 / BC A 60 10 Third Day of Easter. First performed 04/19/1729 at Leipzig. Cycle IV "Picander Jahrgang" plain 2024-04-24T17:47:42+00:00 1729-04-19 BWV 145 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 21Easter2 Third Day of Easter BC A 60 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander) Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen, BWV 145 / BC A 60" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 191 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig IV

  Easter Tuesday, April 19, 1729

  This cantata probably originated in April 1729. Johann Sebastian Bach took its libretto from an annual cycle of cantata texts that the Leipzig postal secretary and gifted poet Christian Friedrich Henrici had begun to publish in the early summer of 1728 under the title Cantaten auf die Sonn- und Fest-Tage durch das gantze Jahr, verfertiget durch Picandern (Cantatas for Sundays and holidays throughout the entire year prepared by Picander). Henrici provided a foreword 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.” If Bach indeed set Picander’s cycle in its entirety, then this portion of his oeuvre must be considered lost. Today we have evidence of scarcely ten compositions, only about a sixth of the complete cycle.
  
  And so the cantata Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen BWV 145 (I live, my heart, to your delight) should be regarded as one of those works that might be all that remains of what was once a much larger collection. If there are several question marks attached to this broad assumption, then the downright unusual transmission of sources for our cantata gives rise to several additional puzzles. In contrast to the five-movement libretto by Picander, the cantata also survives in an expanded form of seven movements. This version begins with a chorale movement setting of the chorale strophe “Auf, mein Herz, des Herren Tag” (Arise, my heart, the Lord’s day) by Caspar Neumann, dated about 1700, using the melody Jesus, meine Zuversicht (Jesus, my assurance) from the seventeenth century. There follows a choral movement that begins with a duet and closes with a fugue on the words from Romans 10:9: “So du mit deinem Munde bekennest Jesum, daß er der Herr sei” (If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord). This last composition just described is by Georg Philipp Telemann and belongs to a cantata of 1723 for Easter Sunday.
  
  The author/compiler of the seven-movement pasticcio version of our cantata, also prepared for Easter Sunday, remains unknown. At the moment, the earliest available source is a copy that Karl Friedrich Zelter, director of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin (Berlin Singing Academy), received from his colleague Peterson of Frankfurt an der Oder in 1816. When bringing the work to print in 1884, the Bach-Gesamtausgabe had to rely on this not exactly confidence inspiring copy. Shortly afterward, the editors provided an addendum with a correction to a problematic reading in the score. In doing so, they made reference to the cantata Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen without mentioning its origins. Apparently, the owner of a superior source—perhaps Bach’s own manuscript—had made contact, asking, even begging, that he remain anonymous. The whereabouts of the precious treasure remain unknown today. However, the source of the choral movement “Jesus, meine Zuversicht” that serves as the first movement of the pasticcio has been clarified: sources once belonging to the Sing-Akademie show that it is the work of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.¹
  
  Picander’s libretto begins with a duet, as would be appropriate for a dialogue cantata:

  Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen,
  Mein Leben erhebet dein Leben empor.
  Die klagende Handschrift ist völlig zerrissen,
  Der Friede verschaffet ein ruhig Gewissen
  Und öffnet den Sündern das himmlische Tor.
  
  I live, my heart, to your delight,
  My life exalts your life on high.
  The plaintiff document of ordinances is entirely torn up,
  Peace gives one a conscience at ease
  And opens to sinners the heavenly gate.

  
  This is meant for the part of Jesus; the Soul sings a variant of the first two lines:

  Du lebest, mein Jesu, zu meinem Ergötzen,
  Dein Leben erhebet mein Leben empor.
  
  You live, my Jesus, to my delight,
  Your life exalts my life on high.

  
  The allusion to the “klagende Handschrift” (plaintiff document) refers to a place in the letter by the apostle Paul to the Colossians: “[He] has made us a gift of all sins and erased the record that stood against us, which was based on statutes and was opposed to us, and put it aside and lifted it upon the cross” (2:14). Aside from the verse regarding the “klagende Handschrift,” the opening movement proceeds with general formulations. It is tempting to suppose that Picander was able to take an existing work into consideration here. One notices this immediately upon comparing the text of the opening movement with the rich and substantial recitative that follows immediately :

  Nun fordre, Moses, wie du willt, 
  Das dräurende Gesetz zu üben,
  Ich habe meine Quittung hier 
  Mit Jesu Blut und Wunden unterschrieben.
  Dieselbe gilt.
  Ich bin erlöst, ich bin befreit
  Und lebe nun mit Gott in Fried und Einigkeit,
  Der Kläger wird an mir zuschanden,
  Denn Gott ist auferstanden,
  Mein Herz, das merke dir!
  
  Now demand, Moses, as you will,
  That we practice the threatening law.
  I have my receipt here 
  Signed with Jesus’s blood and wounds,
  It is in force.
  I am redeemed, I am freed,
  And live now with God in peace and unity.
  The plaintiff is in me confounded,
  For God is resurrected,
  My heart, mark you that!

  
  The closing line serves as a deft transition to the next aria, which openly exhibits several weaknesses of language or, more to the point, content:

  Merke, mein Herze, beständig nur dies,
  Wenn du alles sonst vergißt,
  Daß dein Heiland lebend ist;
  Lasse dieses deinem Gläuben
  Einen Grund und Feste bleiben,
  Auf solche besteht er gewiß.
  Merke, mein Herze nur dies.
  
  Remember, my heart, ever just this,
  If you forget everything else,
  That your savior is living;
  Let this remain for your faith
  A foundation and fortress,
  On this he certainly insists.
  Remember, my heart, just this.

  
  Here again, one suspects that the poet was laboring under stipulations that hampered the flight of his imagination. In the ensuing recitative, with even greater skill he interlaces the end rhymes as he gives the certainty of salvation to the Soul in following Jesus: 

  Mein Jesus lebt,
  Das soll mir niemand nehmen
  Drum sterb ich sonder Grämen.
  
  My Jesus lives,
  That shall no one take from me.
  Therefore, I shall die without grieving.

  
  And at the end:

  Mein Jesus lebt,
  Ich habe nun genug,
  Mein Herz und Sinn,
  Will heute noch zum Himmel hin,
  Selbst den Erlöser anzuschauen.
  
  My Jesus lives,
  I have now enough.
  My heart and mind,
  Would indeed today go to heaven 
  To see the redeemer himself.

  
  The libretto closes with a strophe from Nikolaus Herman’s Easter hymn Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag:

  Drum wir auch billig fröhlich sein,
  Singen das Hallelujah fein
  Und loben dich, Herr Jesu Christ;
  Zu Trost du uns erstanden bist.
  Hallelujah.
  
  Therefore, we are justly cheerful,
  Sing the Alleluia exquisitely,
  And praise you, Lord Jesus Christ.
  For our consolation you are arisen.
  Hallelujah.

  
  The suspicion, drawn from the uneven qualities of the text of the cantata Ich lebe, mein Herze, that only the two recitatives and the closing chorale are original compositions solidifies upon examining the two aria movements. As Friedrich Smend established in 1950, the duet “Ich lebe, mein Herze” and the bass aria “Merke, mein Herze, beständig nur dies” are quite close to the style of Bach’s secular cantatas from his Köthen period. Both movements have an animated, dance-like character: the duet is loosened up by the playful cheerfulness of the solo violin, and the bass aria is characterized by the skillful, terraced interchanges between the powerful unison effects of the entire ensemble and the concertante emergence of individual string and woodwind instruments. The presence of the oboe d’amore—not found elsewhere in Bach’s Köthen orchestra—may be the result of an arrangement of the work in Leipzig. On the other hand, the unusual assignment of the vox Christi to the tenor in the opening movement may be a relic of a possible Köthen early version.²

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  Footnotes

  1. Schulze (2003, 11).↵
  2. The identification of C. P. E. Bach as the composer of the prepended chorale prompted Peter Wollny (2010, 139–43) to examine stylistic evidence in the setting of the five-movement Picander text, ostensibly by J. S. Bach. Since the closing chorale offered only meager starting points and the recitatives none at all, Wollny focused on the two arias. In spite of their indisputably “Bachian” tone, he found numerous anomalies throughout the duet: frequent stagnant harmonies; the absence of Vokaleinbau; the lack of independent voice leading. He concluded that the long-standing view articulated by Smend was not plausible and that the observable deficiencies in the arias in BWV 145 were much more characteristic of a young, as yet inexperienced, although ambitious composer whose full potential had yet to unfold.—Trans.↵