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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin BWV 144 / BC A 41 14 Septuagesimae. First performed 02/06/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:46:55+00:00 1724-02-06 BWV 144 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 15Septuagesimae Septuagesimae BC A 41 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin, BWV 144 / BC A 41" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 131 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Septuagesima Sunday

  I still recall with great pleasure a certain fugue by the late Mr. J. S. Bach, on the words: Nimm was dein ist, und gehe hin. (The text was not dramatic; one could thereby imagine a chorus of admonishers.) This fugue evoked a most unusual attentiveness and particular delight even among most of the musically inexperienced listeners, which certainly did not come from the contrapuntal artifices but from the superb declamation which NB. the composer brought to the subject and, by way of a special little play, to the phrase gehe hin. The truthfulness, natural character, and exactly commensurate correctness of the declamation was immediately picked up by everyone’s ears. . . . I admit, however, that it is often difficult, and also not always and continuously possible to pay attention to the declamation in the subjects of a fugue, especially if the subject is to be used for certain contrapuntal artifices. At the same time, many a harmonic artificiality might well be clarified by a correct declamation.¹

  
  This description of the opening movement of the cantata Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin BWV 144 (Take what is yours and go forth) comes from the year 1760 and as such is a quite rare and indeed singular example of the reception history of Bach’s cantatas. The author of the text is the Berlin music theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, highly influential in his time; the quote is from his Kritische Briefen über die Tonkunst (Critical letters on composition), published in installments. 
  
  Marpurg was a vigorous defender of the virtues of Bach’s fugue writing and engaged in much debate in that regard with his rival Johann Philipp Kirnberger, also active in Berlin and also a Bach student. In contrast to Kirnberger, who came from simple circumstances and often complained of his meager general education, Marpurg was a cosmopolitan spirit and gifted writer who by 1740 had already spent quite a bit of time in Paris, the realm of his contemporaries Diderot and d’Alembert.² The vocabulary he chose to characterize the fugues of Bach—“truthfulness, natural character, and exactly commensurate correctness”—sounds rather like the terminology of the age of Enlightenment, leaving the question open as to how much Marpurg’s assessment might have in common with that of Bach.
  
  The quoted scriptural passage, “Nimm, was dein ist,” comes from the Gospel reading for Septuagesima Sunday, the ninth Sunday before Easter or the third Sunday before Lent. The twentieth chapter of Matthew tells the parable of workers in the vineyard: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder, who went out early in the morning to hire laborers in his vineyard. And when he agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard” (1–2). The parable further describes workers who are hired several or even many hours later, however, with the promise “I will give you what is right,” and, finally, the paying of wages when everyone receives the same amount—one penny—at which those who had been hired first were not amused:

  And when they had received it, they grumbled against the householder and said, these last have worked but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, who have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one among them, and said: Friend, I do you no wrong: were you not at one with me for a penny? Take what is yours, and go forth! I will give unto this last, even as unto you. Or do I not have the power to do what I will with my own? Are you envious because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. (Matthew 20:11–16)

  
  “Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin” is one of a total of twenty-four sayings of Christ found among Johann Sebastian Bach’s Leipzig cantatas. The unknown author of the text places it at the beginning of his libretto and follows it with the sequence aria–chorale–recitative–aria–chorale. This six-movement type, with a New Testament passage at the start and two chorales, has fewer than ten examples among Bach’s cantatas from 1724 and 1725. The cantata Nimm, was dein ist is the earliest of these. Perhaps this early origin indicates an initial attempt, a tentative move into a previously unexplored area. For the poet seems not to be particularly inspired by the scenario of the workers in the vineyard and its deeper meaning. His thoughts revolve in a narrow radius around the concepts “sufficiency” (Genügsamkeit) and “pleasure” (Vergnügung), whereby the first means “modesty or lack of pretension” (Sichbescheiden) by today’s understanding, and the last could be translated as “contentment” (Zufriedenheit). However, according to Friedrich Smend, “Not to be understood in the bourgeois fashion of this world, but as ‘restoration of the soul,’ to be at peace in the devotion to God and the surrender to his will.”³ “Murre nicht, lieber Christ, wenn was nicht nach Wunsch geschicht” (Do not grumble, dear Christian, when something goes against your wishes), warns the first aria, taking the “Murre wider dem Hausvater” (grumble against the householder) from the Gospel text and continuing:

  Sondern sei mit dem zufrieden,
  Was dir dein Gott hat beschieden,
  Er weiß, was dir nützlich ist.
  
  Rather, be content with that 
  Which your God has destined for you.
  He knows what is useful for you.

  
  The first part of the cantata text closes with the first strophe from Samuel Rodigast’s hymn of 1674, “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, es bleibt gerecht sein Wille” (Whatever God deals is dealt bountifully; his will remains just). The ensuing recitative juxtaposes “Genügsamkeit” (sufficiency) and “Ungenügsamkeit” (discontentment): if “Genügsamkeit” takes the helm, “da ist der Mensch vergnügt, mit dem, wie es Gott fügt” (then one is content with what God ordains). “Ungenügsamkeit,” however, gives rise to grief, trouble, discontentment of the heart: “Und man gedenket nicht daran: Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan” (And one does not consider: what God deals is dealt bountifully). By recalling the first line of Rodigast’s chorale strophe, the text poet could have concluded a section and at the same time prepared to leave for new shores. Instead, in the aria text that follows, he remains on paths already trodden:

  Genügsamkeit 
  Ist ein Schatz in diesem Leben,
  Welcher kann Vergnügung geben
  In größter Traurigkeit.
  
  Contentment
  Is a treasure in this life
  That can provide pleasure
  Amid the greatest sorrow.

  
  And even with the selection of the closing chorale strophe, he does not leave the familiar territory: this strophe from a hymn by Margrave Albrecht von Brandenburg, “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit, / Sein Will der ist der beste” (What my God wills, let it be for all time, / His will it is the best) of 1547 stands so close in content and word choice to Samuel Rodigast’s strophe of 125 years later that neither tension nor even contrast can be established.
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition of this somewhat problematic libretto originated in early 1724, his first year in Leipzig, and was performed for the first time on February 6 in St. Thomas Church. The place and date are confirmed by a text booklet printed that year that survived by chance to be read by the audience during the performance. Bach composed the opening movement on the saying of Christ (Christuswort) as a choral fugue in the manner of a motet—one of only a few such cases. The seven-word text was too short for a true motet, in which each phrase is assigned its own musical section, and it also did not fit the voice exchange technique preferred by Bach. The remaining possibility was a contrapuntally ambitious vocal fugue. Bach chose the alla breve style, appropriate to the church, in which the half note gets the beat and the eighth note is the smallest rhythmic value. The head of the theme, with two large intervals and a concluding descent to the tonic, recalls the chorale Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (From deep affliction I cry out to you); whether this was intentional remains an open question. Two secondary themes are assigned to the text component “gehe hin,” one with long note values with ties over two and even three measures, and a second in rapid, almost playful declamation on three notes, two short and one longer. This second theme, which appears at one moment as a component of a fugal exposition and, at another, as part of an episode, impressed not only the theorist Marpurg but also the musically inexperienced listeners in his realm. From our perspective today it offers a tutorial for Bach’s economical use of his compositional materials. For nearly sixty measures, this “gehe hin” motive is omnipresent but never appears in parallel motion in more than two voices at the same time. Only in the very last measures does it appear in three and then in all four voices simultaneously, serving the final crescendo as well as the dignified and restful conclusion—very much in the sense of a mild correction, as delivered by the Gospel reading from Matthew. From this standpoint, Marpurg’s interpretation of the “chorus of admonishers” (Chor der Ermahnenden) appears to be a misunderstanding owing to the spirit of his epoch.⁴ 
  
  The aria that follows begins with the urgent advice “Murre nicht, lieber Christ” (Do not grumble, dear Christian), yet this kind of negative statement stands against the musical realization. In accordance with the custom of his era, Bach feels compelled to treat the statement as if it were meant affirmatively. Strings in their deep registers; frequent tone repetitions in the strings and the basso continuo; and the alto voice, almost entirely in its deepest register: all these allow the displeasure of the workers, indicated in the Gospel reading, to emerge vividly—in contrast to the librettist’s text. The rhythmic shape of the salutation “lieber Christ” (dear Christian) could be taken as a reminiscence of the rhythmically identical “gehe hin” of the previous movement. In its meter and simple setting, in particular the frequent unisons between the voice and first violin, the aria is of the minuet dance type, capable, in the view of a Bach contemporary, of expressing “measured merriment” (mäßige Lustigkeit)—in the case of our aria, rather more “measured displeasure” (mäßige Unlust). We leave this realm only with the sunny G major of the chorale movement “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.”
  
  The ensuing recitative, with its praise of “Genügsamkeit,” retraces the course of the first three cantata movements—from B minor to E minor to G major. It soon undergoes a harmonic darkening, however, when the discussion turns to grief, trouble, and discontent as the consequences of “Ungenügsamkeit.” The closing quotation of earlier text, “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan,” recalls only distantly the music of the earlier chorale. Even so, it has a hidden relationship to the aria that follows a fulsome song in praise of “sufficiency.” This aria is a trio that is not dissimilar from Bach’s organ trios: two animated, melodic, and coequal upper parts—here soprano and oboe d’amore—are linked to a bass that, although it has its own profile, is clearly drawn from the two upper voices. The “hidden relationship” is produced by the oboe d’amore in the first six measures. The chorale melody “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan” is hidden in the main notes, although in B minor and transferred to the middle register. When this passage reappears, nearly unchanged, at the end it produces a convincing transition to the concluding chorale movement, “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit.” Originally a secular song, it entered sacred hymnody as early as the sixteenth century.

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  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 363–64 (no. 357).—Trans.↵
  2. Smend (1966).—Trans.↵
  3. Schulze (2004a).↵
  4. In 2011 Schulze revisited his assessment of Marpurg’s parenthetical remark as a criticism of Bach’s choice of fugue to set the brief biblical passage. Drawing upon the writings of Heinrich Bokemeyer, Johann Mattheson, and Christian Gottfried Krause to articulate contemporary views disapproving of fugue to set texts spoken by individuals, Schulze pointed to late eighteenth-century writings by Agricola and Johann Georg Ebeling that found Bach’s fugues to be “fiery and sublime, with much art, full of powerful expression” (Ebeling) and that they contained “much fire and splendor” (Agricola) and concluded that they aimed at a “compromise” with the prevailing views of the age. By the same token, “the . . . ‘chorus of admonishers’ [is] . . . meant to justify the possibility, increasingly questioned by contemporary aesthetics, of choosing a polyphonic movement for the statement of an individual and to defend it against possible attacks by means of a reinterpretation. Thus, upon closer consideration, Marpurg’s remark is revealed to be an alternative to the prevailing views of his age” (Der . . . “Chor der Ermahnungen” . . . will die von der zeitgenössischen Ästhetik zunehmend in Frage gestellte Möglichkeit, für die Aussage eines einzelnen einen mehrstimmigen Satz zu wählen, rechtfertigen und mittels einer Umdeutung gegen mögliche Angriffe in Schutz nehmen. Mithin entpuppet sich Marpurgs Äußerung bei näherem Zusehen als Gegenentwurf zu herrschenden Ansichten seines Zeitalters) (Schulze 2011b, 33).—Trans.↵