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• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:19+00:00 Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit BWV 106 / BC B 18 8 Funeral & Memorial Service. First performed June 1707-June 1708 in Mühlhausen. plain 2024-04-24T17:19:23+00:00 BWV 106 Mühlhausen Funeral & Memorial Service BC B 18 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 / BC B 18" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 608 James A. Brokaw II June 1707-June 1708 Mühlhausen

  Memorial Service, ca. 1707–1708

  The cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit BWV 106 (God’s time is the best time of all), also known as the Actus tragicus, has always been among the most beloved of Bach’s vocal works. In his 1908 biography of Bach, Albert Schweitzer even maintained that “there is hardly an admirer of his who has not felt that we would give the two hundred church cantatas for one hundred works in the style of the Actus tragicus.”¹ Schweitzer formulated his opinion in connection with a critical examination of the range of forms in the church cantatas. Recitatives and da capo arias found little favor here; instead, Schweitzer preferred the “animated alternation between solo and chorus” in the style of Bach’s early cantatas.² With this assessment, he was continuing a conversation that had begun soon after the cantata’s appearance in print in 1830. In March 1835 Felix Mendelssohn wrote to his father: “Incidentally there is one peculiar aspect of this music—it must be either very early or very late, for it differs entirely from his usual style of writing in middle age; the first choral movements and the final chorus are of a kind that I would never have thought to be by Sebastian Bach, but rather some other composer of his era, while no other man in the world could have written a single bar of the middle movements.” A bit later, Thomaskantor Moritz Hauptmann, writing to Otto Jahn, praised the “wundervolle Innerlichkeit” (wonderful interiority) of the work, in which “everything and every detail was so precise and appropriate to the musical meaning and its expression.” Hauptmann continued, very much in keeping with his classicizing view of music, “But if one wanted to and could, for a moment, look beyond his feeling for this aspect of beauty and regard the whole as a work of musical architecture, then it is a curious monstrosity of phrases piled on top of one another, grown into one another, just as the text phrases are thrown together without grouping or high points.” Judgments of this sort had no place in the later nineteenth century. At the time it was composed, the pieced-together or supposedly fractured form of the Actus tragicus was a relic of the seventeenth century; but in the era of Richard Wagner, it was regarded as modern, while the closed form of the da capo aria, preferred by Bach from 1714 onward, was seen as conventional and moribund. From today’s standpoint, we regard the Actus tragicus, along with its few sibling works, as the culmination and conclusion of a development that reaches far back into the seventeenth century—but not at all as an underdeveloped precursor to Bach’s later vocal works.
  
  An assessment of this kind presupposes an extensive chronological understanding of Bach’s musical legacy. But this poses several problems. The earliest copy originated in Leipzig and is inscribed with the date 1768; it thus can hardly provide evidence as to chronology. Stylistic criteria suggest that the work originated in the context of the earliest of Bach’s surviving cantatas. Insofar as these can be dated, they all belong to Bach’s Mühlhausen period from June 1707 to June 1708. The rather unusual term Actus for a cantata—or, rather, a sacred concerto—is not to be seen as a clue to other nonsurviving parts of the work; instead, it implies an independent, coherent sequence of events. One finds work titles of this sort now and again, for example, a work by Bach’s second predecessor as cantor of St. Thomas School, Johann Schelle, his Actus musicus auf Weihnachten. Clearly, it is terminology of the seventeenth instead of the eighteenth century.
  
  We could say more about this if we knew more about the occasion for which our cantata was composed. Although it clearly was composed for a memorial service, there is no reliable evidence.³For the most part, this also applies to the text. As recent research has shown, the text follows a “form” that can be seen, for example, in the Christliche Bet-Schule by Johann Olearius, printed in Leipzig in 1668,⁴ beneath the rubric “Tägliche Seuffzer und Gebet üm ein seliges Ende.” Whether several deviations from the printed text reflect Bach’s choices or perhaps were the last wish of the deceased remains unknown. This applies in particular to the beginning, which has not been found elsewhere, except for a formulation in Acts of the Apostles 17:

  Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit.
      In ihm leben, weben und sind wir, solange er will. In ihm sterben wir zur rechten Zeit, wenn er will. (28)
  
  God’s time is the best time of all.
      In him we live, move, and exist, as long as he wills. In him we die at the right time, when he wills.

  
  Moreover, the continuation is singular, with its slightly modified verse from Psalm 90:12: “Ach Herr, lehre uns bedenken, daß wir sterben müssen, auf daß wir klug werden” (Ah Lord, teach us to remember that we must die in order that we become wise). The rest of the text is found in Olearius, in the order given there:

  ISAIAH 38:1
  Bestelle dein Haus; denn du wirst sterben und nicht lebendig bleiben. 
  Set your house in order, for you will die and not remain living.
  
  SIRACH 13:18
  Es ist der alte Bund: Mensch, du mußt sterben. 
  
  It is the ancient covenant: Man, you must die.
  
  REVELATION OF ST. JOHN 22:20
  Ja komm, Herr Jesu! 
  
  Yes come, Lord Jesus!
  
  PSALM 31:5
  In deine Hände befehl ich meinen Geist; du hast mich erlöset, Herr, du getreuer Gott.
  
  Into your hands I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, Lord, you faithful God.
  
  LUKE 23:43
  Heute wirst du mit mir im Paradies sein. 
  Today you will be with me in Paradise.

  
  Cross-references in Johann Olearius’s prayer book point to both of the cho- rale strophes included in our cantata: the opening strophe of Martin Luther’s German version of the Nunc Dimittis, Mit Fried und Freud fahr ich dahin of 1524, as well as the seventh strophe from Adam Reusner’s only slightly more recent hymn In dich hab ich gehoffet, Herr:

  Glorie, Lob, Ehr und Herrlichkeit 
  Sei dir, Gott Vater und Sohn bereit’, 
  Dem Heilgen Geist mit Namen!
  Die göttlich Kraft 
  Mach uns sieghaft
  Durch Jesum Christum, Amen
  
  May glory, praise, honor, and majesty
  Be bestowed upon you, God Father and Son, 
  [And] to the Holy Spirit by name!
  May the divine power Make us victorious
  Through Jesus Christ, Amen.

  This libretto presented the composer with the task of realizing the diversity of the text as far as possible, on the one hand, while not endangering the coherence of the overall work, on the other. Bach’s solution offers a balanced grouping of movements and their parts around a center that is at once musical, spiritual, and theological. In the section beginning with the words “Es ist der alte Bund: Mensch du mußt sterben,” there are several levels layered on top of one another. The three lower voices begin with a choral fugue that soon breaks off and is answered by the soprano’s “Ja komm, Herr Jesu.” Shortly afterward, the chorale melody Ich hab mein Sach Gott heimgestellt (I have left all that I have to God) is heard in instrumental three-part harmony. This sequence of choral fugue, soprano solo, and instrumental chorale appears four times in total at ever shorter intervals, giving the impression of acceleration and compression. In the fourth and final iteration, this impression is intensified by the simultaneous sounding of choral fugue and instrumental chorale, while the soprano trades places with the latter and, in a lonely solo, unaccompanied at the end, brings the “antithesis . . . between the Hebrew Bible fear of death and the New Testament joy in death” to a preliminary culmination.⁵
  
  Even in the opening measures of the instrumental prelude, it is clear that the other movements of the cantata do not recede behind this central complex. As Albert Schweitzer writes, this “stille musique,” a sonatina for two flutes, two violas da gamba, and continuo, “is based on a motive in E-flat, expressive of transfigured grief; this runs through the whole work. To grasp these harmonies is to be transported far from all earthly pain; the words from the Apocalypse come into one’s mind that Bach probably had in his—‘And God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.’”⁶

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  Footnotes

  1. Schweitzer (1966, 2:127).—Trans.↵
  2. Schweitzer (1966, 2:127).—Trans.↵
  3. Possibilities include Bach’s uncle Tobias Lammerhirt (died August 10, 1707)and Adolf Strecker, mayor of Mühlhausen (died September 16, 1708). See Rathey (2006, 79–84); Maul (2022, 70).—Trans.↵
  4. Steiger (1989).↵
  5. Schweitzer (1966, 2:125).—Trans.↵
  6. Schweitzer (1966, 2:126).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:44+00:00 Kommt, eilet und laufet, ihr flüchtigen Füße BWV 249 / BC D 8. 8 Easter. First performed 04/06/1738 at Leipzig. Text by CF Henrici (Picander)?. plain 2024-03-27T14:27:05+00:00 1738-04-06 BWV 249 Leipzig 20Easter Easter BC D 8 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander)? Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Kommt, eilet und laufet, ihr flüchtigen Füße, BWV 249 / BC D 8" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 651 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig

  Easter Sunday, April 6, 1738

  Compared to its well-known sibling work, the Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248.2), the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4/5 is clearly less popular with the public. The reasons for this certainly do not lie with the music and its quality. With its catchy freshness of invention, it lacks nothing in comparison to its younger but much better known sibling. The text, however, poses problems, if only at first glance. It certainly found no favor with the classic Bach biographer of the nineteenth century, Philipp Spitta: “It cannot but surprise us to find that Bach could have been satisfied with such a text,” reads the summary from his rather unsympathetic overview:

  The text, of which the author is unknown . . . begins with a duet between John and Peter, who are informed of Christ’s resurrection by the women, and who run joyfully to the sepulcher to convince themselves ( John 20, 3 and 4). There Mary the mother of James, and Salome, reproach them with not having also purposed to anoint the body of the Lord and thus testifying their love for Him. The men excuse themselves, saying that their anointing has been “with briny tears, and deep despair and longing.” Then the women explain that these, happily, are no longer needed, since the Lord is risen. They gaze into the empty tomb; John asks where the Saviour can be, to which Mary Magdalene replies what the men have long known: “He now has risen from the dead. / To us an angel did appear, / Who told us, lo He is not here.” Peter directs his attention to the “linen cloth,” and this leads him to recall the tears he had shed over his denial of Jesus, a very tasteless episode. The women next express their longing to see Jesus once more; John rejoices that the Lord lives again, and the end is a chorus: “Thanks and praise / be to Thee for ever, Lord! / Satan’s legions now are bound, / his dominion now hath ceased, / let the highest heaven resound / with your songs, ye souls released. / Fly open, ye gates! / Open radiant and glorious! / The Lion of Judah comes riding victorious.”¹

  
  Spitta and others were prevented from issuing a more just assessment of the Easter Oratorio by what they could not know, namely, its origin as a secular cantata, a Tafelmusik (banquet music) of 1725 for Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. This was discovered in about 1940, when Friedrich Smend came across evidence of a relationship between the Easter music and a lost “shepherds’ colloquy” (Schäfergespräch) by Christian Friedrich Henrici. Even so, at first the knowledge of the Easter Oratorio’s secular parentage was hardly useful. The persistent prejudice against anything resulting from what is called “parody procedure”—supplying existing music with a new text— simply opened the libretto to further criticism. It was seen as reflecting a profoundly meaningful event for the church, but without Gospel narratives or chorale strophes, and thus it was reduced to an intermediate text prepared with nonchalance and without sympathy in order to make good use of an elaborate composition that would otherwise have lain idle.
  
  More recently, theological studies have highlighted how the new text, focused on the feast of the Resurrection, draws upon the centuries-old tradition of Easter plays in many ways and perhaps in all of its aspects.² In doing so, it consciously avoids any attempt at a dramatic fiction: neither angels nor the Risen One are included in the action. Even so, the play is at once a dramatic realization and a proclamation of praise. Thus the first vocal movement takes up the race between Peter and John to the grave of Jesus from the book of John; but with its text beginning “Kommt eilet und laufet” (Come, make haste and run) it also functions as an appeal to meditatio, comparable to the opening of the St. Matthew Passion’s opening chorus, “Kommt, ihr Töchter hilft mir klagen” (Come, you daughters, help me lament). The tone of the “mysticism of the bride,” going back to the Song of Songs, is hard to ignore in the recitatives (the first, in particular), as well as in Maria Jacobi’s aria “Seele, deine Spezereien” (Soul, your spices [shall no longer be myrrh]). The connection to medieval traditions is particularly strong in Peter’s aria and its associated recitative, whose meditations include Jesus’s cast-off grave clothes and mention his shroud in particular. The linkage of the stories of the disciples at the grave of Jesus and the awakening of Lazarus in John 11 and 20, respectively, follow ancient tradition. The account of Lazarus was understood as an anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus and the reawakening of the dead and thus symbolizes the hope for a resurrection to eternal life. In this sense, the cast-off grave clothes in Peter’s aria become recognized as a sign of the Resurrection of the Lord and convey the certainty that one’s own death will be but a sleep.
  
  On the whole, the unidentified librettist deserves every recognition for his work to appropriately transform the arias and ensembles of the secular original into the subject matter of Easter with verbal skill and fealty to content.
  
  In 1725 Bach’s efforts were confined to the composition of recitatives and the arrangement of the voices in the arias and ensemble movements. At first probably designated as a cantata for Easter (BWV 249.3), the work was reperformed in 1738 (BWV 249.4) with minor alterations but with the title Oratorio.³ Whether the role designations Maria Jacobi, Maria Magdalena, Petrus, and Johannes were still used at this time cannot be known for certain, but they were certainly omitted in the final performances in 1745 and April 1749 (BWV 249.5).
  
  Significantly, in this late version the original duet for Peter and John was refashioned as a four-part chorus, so that the motif of the disciples’ race recedes even further behind the invitation to contemplation.
  
  Otherwise, there was little change to the core musical substance, which goes back to the Weissenfels Tafelmusik of 1725. The work begins with two instrumental movements: a cheerful concertante Allegro that exploits timbral contrasts between instrumental groups (trumpets and drums, oboes with bassoon, and string instruments), as well as a mournful Adagio with an expressive solo for oboe (flute in a later version). Both movements may go back to an earlier instrumental concerto. This is perhaps also true of the first vocal movement, which seems to have an unusually robust instrumental accompaniment for a duet. The later transformation to a four-part chorus mitigates this discrepancy somewhat. In the soprano aria, voice and flute compete in a vivid representation of love for Jesus. Peter’s slumber aria unfolds in beguiling coloration, with layered timbres of string instruments and recorders in octaves, radiating a heavenly serenity. The alto aria is situated between energetic focus and sensitive encouragement. The work concludes with an ensemble that, by combining a solemn, hovering opening with a brisk fugal ending, follows the model of the Sanctus of 1724 (232.1), later incorporated in the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232.4).
   

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  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:591).--Trans.↵
  2. Steiger and Steiger (1983).↵
  3. Peter Wollny has identified a copyist previously known as Anonymous Vj, who participated in preparing the sources for the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4, as Johann Wilhelm Machts; Wollny (2016, 91) proposes April 6, 1738, as the date of its first performance.—Trans.↵