Sunday Bach - Lent 4

This week we're back to the usual for Lent - no cantatas written for this Sunday, so we go searching the Bach catalog for unassigned ones. And found this gem - BWV 21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (I had much sorrow, Weimar 1714). Ostensibly, this cantata was assigned to the third Sunday after Trinity, because it uses the Bible readings for that day, but Bach actually wrote it as a farewell to a former pupil who had become gravely ill and was heading to a spa for the cure. It draws from earlier bits of his own work and got its inspiration from a work by Vivaldi, and uses a text by Salomo Franck. It's a glorious piece of music, starting off forlorn and sad and ending in a triumphant trumpet fanfare. Here's the late Craig Smith of Emmanuel Music on this great Bach work:

Several years into his tenure as music director to the court of Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach was instructed to write one cantata a month for the chapel services. Near the beginning of this series Bach wrote what was to be his largest sacred Cantata, "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis," BWV 21.  Not only was this work written to go with the readings for the third Sunday after Trinity, but it served as a farewell to the gravely ill Prince Johann Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar. The young prince, who had been one of Bach's favorite and most talented pupils, was on his way to a spa in Swabia where he later died.  Bach uses the main tune from a movement of Vivaldi's D Minor Concerto, Opus 3 #11, as the theme for the opening chorus.  The concerto had been a favorite of the prince and with its moving text describing a grave illness, the whole movement should be seen as an homage to the young prince. 

The work itself covers many different styles. The second and last choruses probably date from very early in Bach's career.  The opening and the great chorale prelude "Sei nun wieder zufrieden," were written in 1714. Many of the movements were extensively revised for Bach's first Leipzig Cantata cycle in 1723.  Certainly the work has a refinement and finish to it unknown in his early Weimar years.

The cantata opens with a marvelous sinfonia for oboe and strings. It is virtually a duet between the first violins and the oboe. After the complexity and density of the first chorus, the soprano aria with oboe obbligato "Seufzer, Tränen" is spare and startlingly angular. The tenor recitative and aria returns to the richness of the opening music.  These two solo pieces are set to texts of Bach's favorite poet, Salomo Franck. Franck was probably the best contemporary poet that Bach ever set; certainly these intense texts inspired the composer to write some of his greatest music.  The first two choruses are from Psalm texts.  Between the first and second parts of the cantata was a sermon with further commentary on the designated texts for the third Sunday after Trinity.  The second part of the cantata begins with a dialogue between Christ and the Soul. This was a favorite didactic device of Lutheran theology of the period. These dialogues are often associated with the erotic love poetry of the Song of Songs. A popular example are of this genre are the love duets in the cantata "Wachet auf!"  Today's cantata was one of the few Bach pieces in Baron von Swieten's library in Vienna. Clearly Mozart saw this piece there, for the duet is inspiration for both "La ci darem" from Don Giovanni and the third act Susanna-Count duet from Le Nozze di Figaro. 

The gigantic chorale prelude "Sei nun wieder zufrieden" is in a way the most ambitious and advanced piece in the cantata. It is one of the few chorale settings in the cantatas in which the darkness of the chorale text is undercut by the hope of the words sung by the other three voices. The sprightly tenor aria with continuo is a jolly interlude between the two monumental choruses that end the cantata. Trumpets and drums finally make their entrance in the last chorus punctuating the bravura choral writing.  The fugue that ends the cantata is one of the composer's most brilliant creations.

© Craig Smith

This week's performance is from a recording by La Chapelle Royale and the Collegium Vocale Gent under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe. Enjoy!

Photo © 2012 by A. Roy Hilbinger