Peter Gülke

On 25 August 1726, the tenth Sunday after Trinity, things were quite Old Testament in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig – not only because Bach quotes Jeremiah and the Apostle Paul in the cantata BWV 102 with a passage from the Epistle to the Romans, a massively emphatic “ Tut Busse, denn das Himmelreich ist nahe“, in which the old, wrathfully threatening God speaks more clearly than the dear God of the later evangelists, but also because the music reflects it.

   If proof were needed that Bach knew what statements and contexts he was dealing with, only the aria “Weh der Seele, die den Schaden nicht mehr kennt…“, one of his boldly expansive inventions, would provide it – musical prose, a mesh of two chromatically sinuous voices (alto and solo oboe) bristling with dissonances, cadences, cross-stops, whose leadership strings together old lament formulas as closely as possible. Significantly, he included the aria ten years later, little changed, as “Qui tollis” in the F major Mass BWV 233, thus giving the liturgical text a subjectively sharpened urgency that one rarely encounters in “Qui tollis” settings. Apparently, the aria was intended to clarify what a previously wrathful God and the Augustinian “Logik des Schreckens” (Kurt Flasch) impose on the believer, only lightened in the recitatives by vague references to the loving, forgiving God. Within the cantatas between Trinity Sunday 1726 and Good Friday 1727, which after all include “Ich will den Kreuzstab gern tragen” and “Ich habe genung”, BWV 102 stands as the darkest, most scrupulous cantata. As if the composers – in addition to Bach, a text writer based in Meiningen, whose name is not known – wanted to make it clear that one must make things difficult for oneself with matters of faith, that true, deep faith also includes a background of doubt. In the case of the “Weh” aria, one may think of Kierkegaard’s “Furcht und Zittern”.

   If we understand the following aria (the most unwieldy text apart from the introduction) correctly – the highly competent Alfred Dürr was at a loss – Bach risks even more in it: if he had previously interwoven sounds and words in an enigmatic and sensual way, here he keeps them far apart, seems to be aiming for constant conflict, for not fitting together, for the impression that the music mocks the words, that it speaks of those who do not want to hear Paul’s lecture: To this (Romans II, 4-5) a lively³/₈ -Vivace! Bach also plays confusing games by shifting the four- or six-bar periods that are part of the character of the supposedly simple music. And, as if this was not enough, he emphasises “wrong” (“Verachtest”, “Geduld”), which is particularly striking thanks to rapid tempi; when he penetratingly repeats small phrases in “locket” or “deinem verstockten und unbussfertigen Herzen“, one does not know whether this is to be understood as a mockery of words or not. How much is this, unsuspected in Bach, “negative music”? We have known it in opera for a long time, for example in the boomingly positive triumphant performances of rulers whom we do not wish to see triumphant. Here, however, even more happens – words and music stand against each other, seem to deny each other.

How much do the hardened hearts speak against the rage of the text, in the music? – The notes cannot answer this question on their own; so, we can only think about it as a possibility – and yet we must think about it as a possibility in view of the theological sensitivity that can be felt everywhere in Bach’s work. Did he even want to directly contrast the two kinds of fear that Pascal speaks of? – Great thinkers not only “invent”, but detect or answer what was felt, thought or discussed at the time! “Superstition et concupiscence. Scrupules, désirs mauvais. Crainte mauvaise: crainte, non celle qui vient de ce qu’on croit Dieu, mais celle de ce qu’on doute s’il est ou non. La bonne crainte vient de la foi, la fausse crainte vient du doute. La bonne crainte, jointe à l’espérance, parce qu’elle nâit de la foi, et qu’on espère au Dieu que l’on croit: la mauvaise, jointe au désespoir, parce qu’on craint le Dieu auquel on n’a pont de foi. Les uns craignent de le perdre, les autres craignent de le trouver.”

  Even outside such backgrounds, meaning and word clarifications are found everywhere, ranging from symbolism to the superficially declamatory. The fact that the title phrase «Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben» is repeated six times in different constellations after a 20-bar, splendidly concertante introduction, before the text continues with the rhetorically clarified «Du schlägest sie, du plagest sie», seems programmatic with regard to the eye of God, to which nothing remains hidden. When Bach turns “Du schlägest… “he multiplies the beating gesture, as if the contrapuntal procedure should not thrust themselves in front of those; similarly in the second fugato («Sie haben ein härter Angesicht als ein Fels und wollen sich nicht bekehren»), where the upward tritone (“diabolus in musica”) stands out every time “Fels” is used as the sign of obduracy. The cry for des, on which the oboe and soloist begin in Aria No. 3, draws its affective emphasis essentially from the fact that it seems to fall abruptly, as if from outside, into the music, to which c would also fit more comfortably. “Langmüthigkeit” in the arioso No. 4 appears as a long drawn-out final note; at the beginning of the second part (No. 5), the singer must “startle” five times in jagged figures before he is allowed to continue – how much emphasis qua contrast does this give to the long notes in focal words: “Joch”, “denk”, “Langmuth”, “geht”, “Blei”, “schwerer”! In Recitativo accompagnato No. 6, the threat that there is no time to lose (“Beim Warten ist Gefahr”) is accompanied by the figure of the oboes, which reoccurs 26 times. With “Heut lebst du, heut bekehre dich, / eh morgen kommt, kann’s ändern sich” the final chorale follows on directly from the text.

   Since the contexts of the biblical words were clear to Bach, his librettist and the believers, a hinge, a semantic curve was needed. Paul’s admonitions, flanked by Jeremiah, had originally presupposed the imminence of the Parousia, Christ’s return together with the Last Judgement (“… das Himmelreich ist nah“), and from here derived their “demagogic” urgency. However Paul’s letters were sacred in the meantime, “ein Donner, ein universaler Donner, der durch die ganze Welt hallt” (John Donne) – since the parousia had meanwhile been 17 centuries in coming, the threat seemed only historical. Although included in the cantata’s texts, the former background is nowhere addressed; however, it shines through in the invocation of the older, wrathful God – only the second chorale stanza addresses Jesus directly – and the admonition that there is no time to lose. But this – mors certa, hora incerta – can also refer to dying, and the cantata unmistakably turns to this in Accompagnato No. 6 with “Es bleibt ein Augenblick, / der Zeit und Ewigkeit, der Leib und Seele scheidet“. With the words of stanzas 6 and 7 of the chorale “So wahr ich lebe spricht dein Gott“, the final chorale finally arrives here.

   Previously, however, this had already happened musically with the closing G major of No. 6, logical especially since the G minor of the introductory chorus was taken up again in the “Erschrecke dich” aria opening the second part, with it, by the way, rather in the background of the movement, the Schleifer figure beginning in alternating tones.

   In addition to the opening chorus and the “Weh” aria no. 3, Bach also later used the “Erschrecke dich” aria no. 5 elsewhere – a sign of how much he valued the pieces, which is also why he wanted them to be independent of a context that tied them to a single, at best recurring date every year. The jagged “Erschrecke dich” figure, however, appeared to him to be all too strongly influenced by the literal sense; without intervening in the movement, he rewrote the theme as “Quoniam“. When he adopted the introductory chorus as the Kyrie of the G minor Mass BWV 235, more time pressure may have played a role; despite minor alterations, it is hard to forget the original imprint of the words in both fugue themes, the “beating” behind “Christe eleison”, the “rock” fixed on the tritone in the final syllable in the second “Kyrie eleison“.

   Grosso modo, the outline of the cantatas of that period resembles those of Bach’s cousin Johann Ludwig, 18 of which he included in the performances due every Sunday. Here, in addition to the incomprehensible workload, the prospect of the St. Matthew Passion due the next Good Friday (1727) may also have played a role. How well one can imagine that this also applies to Bach’s experiences in the cantata BWV 102 with the interweaving of theological and dramaturgical aspects, including the changes of position of the music!

This text has been translated with DeepL (www.deepl.com).