The two cantatas for this Sunday are among the best that Bach wrote.
Readings:
Colossians 1:9–14, prayer for the Colossians
Matthew 9:18–26, the story of Jairus' daughter
Cantata Studies:
Bach Cantatas Website | Simon Crouch | Emmanuel Music | Julian Mincham | Wikipedia | Eduard van Hengel (in Dutch) | Bach Companion (Oxford U.P.) | Bach: The Learned Musician (Wolff) | Music in the Castle of Heaven (Gardiner)
[Erweckung (Jairus' daughter) by Albert von Keller, 1886]
Cantatas:
- O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60, 7 November 1723
Aria (alto and tenor): O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort - Herr, ich warte auf dein Heil
Recitative (alto and tenor): O schwerer Gang zum letzten Kampf und Streite! - Mein Beistand ist schon da
Aria (alto and tenor): Mein letztes Lager will mich schrecken - Mich wird des Heilands Hand bedecken
Recitative (alto and bass): Der Tod bleibt doch der menschlichen Natur verhaßt - Selig sind die Toten
Chorale: Es ist genung
("O eternity, you word of thunder")
Text & translation
Scored for three vocal soloists (alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir only in the closing chorale, horn to support the chorale tunes, two oboes d'amore, two violins, viola, and basso continuo.
This cantata has been called a work about the fear of death, a "gripping dramatization of existential angst," and "one of the most intense and neurotic thirteen minutes of music ever written." The cantata is in an unusual way concentrated on two solo voices. In the first three movements it forms a dialogue between Fear (alto) and Hope (tenor), with only a slight link to the readings of the day. But Hope alone cannot overcome Fear; only faith can lead to salvation, is the Lutheran message. Thus they are answered by the bass as Vox Christi in the fourth movement.
There is no opening chorus, the cantata starts immediately with the first duet. In that duet, a chorale fantasia full of tremolos in the strings, the alto (Fear) and the horn perform a chorale melody (likening eternity to a "thunderous word"), while the tenor (Hope) sings a contrasting line with a simple expression of trust.
After a secco recitative, also in duet form, containing an agonizing melisma by the alto on the word "torture," follows another argument between alto and tenor accompanied by oboe d'amore (fear) and violin (hope). With its jagged rhythms, this is a rather unpleasant duet, but Hope has the last word.
In the ensuing recitative/arioso Fear is met by consoling words from the Vox Christi, "Selig sind die Toten." The final chorale, "Es ist genung," starts with a remarkable harmonization (an unstable whole tone scale), although the words offer some comfort. Alban Berg used this chorale in the final movement of his beautiful violin concerto (1935). In fact, this cantata seems to have been a favorite among the fin de siècle intelligentsia in Vienna, as the final chorale also inspired Oskar Kokoshka to a series of drawings based upon the dialogue between Fear and Hope.
Video: J.S. Bach Foundation (St. Gallen) - Workshop (in German) - Contemplation (in German) / Netherlands Bach Society
- Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig, BWV 26, 19 November 1724
Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig (Chorale fantasia)
So schnell ein rauschend Wasser schießt (Tenor aria)
Die Freude wird zur Traurigkeit (Alto recitative)
An irdische Schätze das Herze zu hängen (Bass aria)
Die höchste Herrlichkeit und Pracht (Soprano recitative)
Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig (Chorale)
("Ah, how fleeting, ah how insignificant")
Text & translation
Scored for four vocal soloists, a four-part choir, horn (doubling the soprano in the chorale), flauto traverso, three oboes, two violins, viola, organ and basso continuo.
A choral cantata from Leipzig's second annual cycle, this work is imbued with an atmosphere of late autumnal gloom and loss, using the natural phenomena of the changing seasons as metaphors for life's transience. The libretto's rising mists, gloomy downpours, and fading flowers create a true November cantata of powerful musical imagery.
The cantata is based on a hymn in thirteen verses by Michael Franck (1652), who also wrote the melody, later slightly modified by Johann Crüger. It is a meditation on the transience of human life and all earthly goods, written after the Thirty Years' War. An unknown librettist retained the text of the first and last verses as movements 1 and 6 of the cantata, and reworked the interior verses into an alternating sequence of arias and recitatives. John Eliot Gardiner points out that many of Bach's cantatas for the end of the church year deal with the brevity of human life and the futility of earthly hopes. In this cantata, the fast tempi do not represent gaiety, but impermanence.
The cantata emphasizes the futility of storing treasures on earth, beginning with a magnificent chorale fantasy accompanied by three oboes, flute, and concertante strings. The instruments play concert music, with the sopranos singing the cantus firmus line by line, reinforced by a horn. The lower voices are treated homophonically as a separate group and repeat the text in unison after each line, with the music derived from the chorale line. Bach illustrates the text's images of transience and insubstantiality with short chord strokes interspersed with pauses and hasty scale figures, restlessly chasing up and down, a landscape in which one can see rushing clouds and wisps of mist.
This is followed by a virtuoso aria for tenor, "As quickly as rushing water," accompanied by an attractive solo flute and violin figure, while the cascading semiquavers in the instruments are copied by the voice to evoke the fleeting nature of mortal life, like water running down a valley before disappearing.
In a recitative for alto, "Die Freude wird zur Traurigkeit," images such as flowers speak of transience until the grave. The bass (with bassoon and an interesting oboe trio) next comments on the uselessness of earthly possessions. The rhythm is that of a bourrée, a dance, but instead of merrymaking, this is a veritable dance of death. The soprano recitative that follows hammers home the fact that even the highest powers cannot escape death.
The cantata concludes with a straightforward chorale harmonization of the hymn "Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig".
Video: J.S. Bach-Foundation (St. Gallen) - Workshop (in German) - Contemplation (in German)
Bach Cantata Index