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• 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.
   

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  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 2023-09-26T09:34:19+00:00 Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 / BC A 126 11 Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 08/22/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by JO Knauer. plain 2024-04-29T16:05:07+00:00 1723-08-22 BWV 77 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity13 Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 126 Johann Sebastian Bach JO Knauer Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben, BWV 77 / BC A 126" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 392 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, August 22, 1723

  Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 (You shall love God, your Lord) for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity during his first year in office as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig. The beginning of its text refers to the Gospel reading for the Sunday, Jesus’s telling of the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:

  And behold, a scribe stood up, tempted him and spoke: Master, what must I do, that I may inherit eternal life? He however said to him: How is it written in the law? How do you read? He answered and spoke: “You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” He, however, spoke to him: You have answered correctly: Do that, and you will live. He, however, wanted to justify himself and spoke to Jesus: Who then is my neighbor? Then Jesus answered and spoke: There was a man who went from Jerusalem down to Jericho and fell among murderers; they stripped him and beat him and fled, leaving him half dead. It came to pass by chance that a priest came down the same road; and as he saw him, he passed by. A Levite did the same thing; as he came to the place and saw him, he passed by. A Samaritan, however, was traveling and came to the place; and as he saw him he wept for his sake, went to him, bound his wounds and poured oil and wine in them, and lifted him upon his beast and led him to the inn and took care of him. . . . Which, do you think, among these three may have been the neighbor to the one who had fallen among murderers? He spoke: The one who showed mercy upon him. Then Jesus spoke to him: Then go forth and do likewise. (25–34, 36–37)

  
  Scholars have only recently been able to discover the origins of the cantata text.¹ Bach took it from a collection printed in Gotha with the title GOtt-geheiligtes Singen und Spielen des Friedensteinischen Zions, nach allen und jeden Sonn- und Fest-Tages-Evangelien, vor und nach der Predigt angestellet vom Advent 1720 bis dahin 1721. These texts were distributed fairly widely and enjoyed high regard. The author of the annual cycle of texts was Johann Oswald Knauer, born in Schleiz in 1690 and brother-in-law to the court music director at Gotha, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. Bach did not adopt the libretto uncritically. The most obvious difference is that Bach used only the second half of Knauer’s text, which has two sections with many movements. Even there, however, much in Bach’s cantata is rearranged, tightened, or reformulated in comparison to the printed text. 
  
  No change was made to the words of Jesus taken from Luke, which in turn can be traced back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy: “Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben von ganzem Herzen, von ganzer Seele, von allen Kräften und von ganzem Gemüte und deinen Nächsten als dich selbst” (Deuteronomy 10:12; You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your powers and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself). In Knauer this is followed by “Hier hast du den Gesetz, das Gott dir vorgeschrieben: / Du sollst zuförderst Gott, und dann den Nächsten lieben” (Here you have the law, which God has required of you: / You shall love God above all, and then your neighbor). Bach omits this well-intentioned interpolation, meant as a clarification, and avoids Knauer’s interleaving of aria and recitative. He proceeds directly to the recitative and aria, which focus on the love of God. The recitative begins: “So muß es sein! Gott will das Herz vor sich alleine haben” (So it must be! God will have my heart for himself alone). It closes with the lines:

  Als wenn er das Gemüte,
  Durch seinen Geist entzündt
  Weil wir nur seiner Huld und Güte 
  Alsdenn erst recht versichert sind.
  
  Than when he the mind
  Through his spirit enkindles,
  For we, of his favor and goodness,
  Only then are truly assured.

  
  In Knauer it is more concise but also differently accentuated:

  Als wenn er das Gemüte
  Mit seiner Kraft entzünd,
  Weil wir dann seiner Güte
  Erst recht versichert sind.
  
  Than when he the mind
  With his power enkindles,
  For we then of his goodness
  Truly are assured.

  
  The aria continues this train of thought; its text begins: “Mein Gott, ich liebe dich von Herzen, / Mein ganzes Leben hangt dir an” (My God, I love you with all my heart, / My entire life depends on you).
  
  With the pair of movements that follow, the librettist turns his attention to the love of one’s neighbor while keeping the parable of the good Samaritan in view:

  Gib mir dabei, mein Gott, ein Samariterherz,
  Daß ich zugleich den Nächsten liebe
  Und mich bei seinem Schmerz 
  Auch über ihn betrübe.
  
  Grant me besides, my God, a Samaritan’s heart
  That I may at once love my neighbor
  And, in his pain,
  Also be distressed for him.

  
  At the close, the recitative in Bach’s cantata deviates slightly from Knauer’s text: “So wirst du mir dereinst das Freudenleben / Nach meinem Wunsch, jedoch aus Gnaden geben” (Then you will one day grant me the life of joy / According to my wish, yet out of grace). The ensuing remorseful aria strophe shows that the way there is not smooth but remains rocky and thorny: 

  Ach es bleibt in meiner Liebe
  Lauter Unvollkommenheit!
  Hab ich oftmals gleich den Willen,
  Was Gott saget, zu erfüllen,
  Fehlt mir’s doch an Möglichkeit.
  
  Ah, there remains in my love
  Such glaring imperfection!
  Though I often have the desire,
  What God says, to fulfill,
  Yet I lack the possibility.

  
  In the printed libretto, the conclusion is somewhat vague: “Doch das Gute zu erfüllen / Fehlet mir zu jederzeit” (But to fulfill the good / I am unable at any time). The version composed by Bach is, as elsewhere, more powerful and precise. Knauer’s libretto concludes with the last two strophes from Luther’s 1524 chorale Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot (These are the holy Ten Commandments). But remarkably, Bach decided against this plan. His score contains a chorale movement without text as well as the chorale strophe, added by a different hand, “Du stellst, mein Jesu, selber dich / Zum Vorbild wahrer Liebe” (You present yourself, Lord Jesus, / As a model of true love), the eighth strophe from David Denickes’s 1657 hymn Wenn einer alle Ding verstünd (If one understood all things). Long thought to be an unauthorized entry in the score, it has recently been identified as the work of Bach’s second-youngest son, Johann Christoph Friedrich, who may have taken it from the original performance parts.²
  
  More than any other part of Bach’s composition, the opening chorus has inspired analysts and exegetists to ever newer and bolder interpretations.³ These proceed from the fact that the words of Jesus at the beginning, given to the chorus in a dense, motet-like texture, are framed by a canonic cantus firmus, performed by the trumpets in small note values and by the bass in long notes. Musically, this recalls the opening chorus of the cantata Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 (A mighty fortress is our God), in which the four-part, motet-like arrangement is bordered by an instrumental canon between the oboes and the bass. In the cantata Du sollt Gott deinen Herren, lieben, this appears to be motivated in several respects. First, the Luther hymn about the holy Ten Commandments belongs to the de tempore hymns for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity and is called for in Knauer’s libretto; Bach thus had several reasons to compensate for his avoidance of this conclusion for the cantata. Second, a concordant understanding of the Bible in Bach’s era can be assumed,⁴ which means that the Sunday Gospel reading and parallel passages can be understood side by side. In Matthew it reads, regarding the commandments of love of neighbor and God, “In diesen zwei Geboten hanget das ganze Gesetz und die Propheten” (The entire law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments). The two-part canon could thus be understood to symbolize the two commandments, whereby “canon” is understood literally as “law” and “regulation.”
  
  But rash conclusions can set in all too easily here. Philipp Spitta, the unerring nineteenth-century biographer and analyst of Bach, had already recognized that

  a working out in strict canon form between the instrumental bass and trumpet was inadmissible, since, in the first place, neither the value of the notes nor the intervals are the same; and, in the second place, the trumpet repeats the first line after each of the others in order to emphasise very expressly the words “These ten are God’s most holy laws”; finally, the whole melody is repeated once more straight through above an organ point on G. This playing with fragments of the melody, so to speak, rather points to the influence of the Northern school.⁵

  
  There is little to be added: few options were open to Bach other than to repeat the upper voice, moving in short note values, several times in order to even out the lead gained by the cantus firmus bass part, moving in large note values. But he made good use of the leeway he thus gained: a combination of luck and skill allowed the count of repetitions to equal exactly ten, so that the phrase “heilgen zehn Gebot” received symbolic emphasis. It does not follow from this, however, that this integration of number symbolism is natural and immanent in music. Achieving a particular numeric level is normally bound with curtailing purely musical aspects. In any case, this is how Philipp Spitta’s gentle criticism of the first movement’s structure is to be understood.
  
  The remaining cantata movements are easily characterized. The aria for soprano and—perhaps—two oboes is characterized by the constant parallel voice leading in sixths and thirds in the instruments, which, with its absolute rigor, is meant to embody the permanence of God’s love. However, the aria for alto and obbligato slide trumpet, “Ach es bleibt in meiner Liebe / Lauter Unvollkommenheit!” remains ruminative and self-tormenting. The surprising answer is provided by the simple concluding chorale on the melody Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Ah, God, look down from heaven), with its keyword connection: “Du stellst, mein Jesu, selber dich / Zum Vorbild wahrer Liebe” (You present yourself, my Jesus, / As a model of true love).

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  Footnotes

  1. Krausse (1981).↵
  2. Wollny (2001a).↵
  3. Schering (1925); Dadelsen (1983). For criticism, see Schulze (2001), Schulze (2002c).↵
  4. Petzoldt (2004), as well as numerous individual studies by the same author.↵
  5. Spitta (1899, 2:429–31).—Trans.↵