Watch! pray! pray! watch!
Bach cantata | |
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Watch! pray! pray! watch! | |
BWV: | 70a / 70 |
Occasion: | 2nd Advent / 26th Sunday after Trinity |
Year of origin: | 1716/1723 |
Place of origin: | Weimar / Leipzig |
Genus: | cantata |
Solo : | SATB |
Choir: | SATB |
Instruments : | Tr Ob Fg 2Vl Va Bc |
AD : | approx. 22 min |
text | |
Salomon Franck , Unknown Christoph Demantius , Christian Keymann |
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List of Bach cantatas |
Watch! pray! pray! watch! ( BWV 70a and 70) is the title of two church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach . He composed a cantata in six movements in Weimar in 1716 for the 2nd Sunday in Advent , and expanded it in Leipzig in 1723 into a two-part cantata for the 26th Sunday after Trinity .
Story and words
Bach wrote the cantata in 1716 shortly before the end of his time as concertmaster at the court of Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar for the 2nd Advent and performed it for the first time on December 6, 1716 in the castle church. The prescribed readings were Rom 15.4-13 LUT and Lk 21.25-36 LUT , the second coming of Christ . The court poet Salomon Franck wrote the text and published it in 1717 in Evangelical Sundays and Feast Day Devotions . He composed a chorus and four arias and ended with the fifth stanza of the chorale My Jesus will not be let by Christian Keimann .
Since the tempus clausum prevailed in Leipzig in Advent and no cantata music was allowed to be performed in the service, Bach rededicated the cantata for the 26th Sunday after Trinity with a similar theme. The prescribed readings for this Sunday were 2 Petr 3,3-13 LUT and Mt 25,31-46 LUT , the last judgment . An unknown poet kept the existing sentences and added recitatives and a chorale at the end of the first part, the last stanza of Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele by Christoph Demantius .
In his first year in Leipzig, Bach performed the extended cantata for the first time on November 21, 1723, and again on November 18, 1731.
Occupation and structure
The cantata is set in Leipzig for four soloists, soprano , alto , tenor and bass , four-part choir, trumpet , oboe , bassoon , two violins , viola and basso continuo . The movement numbers of the early cantata are in brackets.
First part
- Coro: Watch! pray! pray! watch! (1.)
- Recitativo (bass): Terrified, you stubborn sinners
- Aria (old): When the day comes when we move (2.)
- Recitativo (tenor): Also with the heavenly desire
- Aria (soprano): Let the mocker's tongues revile (3.)
- Recitativo (tenor): However, for the naughty sex
- Chorale: Be very happy, O my soul
Second part
- Aria (tenor): Lift up your head (4th)
- Recitativo col accompagnamento (bass, chorale in tromba): Oh, shouldn't this big day
- Aria (bass): Blessed day of refreshment (5th)
- Chorale: Not to the world, not to heaven (6.)
music
The music of the cantata is only available in the BWV 70 version. Bach designed the opening choir in a varied da capo form and built the choir into the concerto of instruments. A characteristic trumpet blows wake-up calls and evokes figurative movement in the other voices. The choir contrasts short calls "Wachet!" with long chords "pray!".
All instruments accompany the first recitative , which successively describes the fear of the sinner, the calm of the elect, the destruction of the universe and the fear of those called to judgment.
The first part is concluded by the last stanza of Be very happy, o my soul, in a four-part sentence.
The recitative in movement 9 begins with a furioso describing the “unheard-of last beat”, while the trumpet quotes the chorale It is Certainly Time , which was understood as a kind of dies irae during the Thirty Years War . The recitative ends in a long melisma to the words “Well, I will end my run with joy”. The following bass aria follows immediately, without the usual ritornello , called molt 'adagio . After the intimate contemplation of the thought “Jesus leads me to silence, to the place where lust is abundant”, the final chorale is richly cast, three independent high string voices give the four-part choir a special shine.
Recordings
LP / CD
- JS Bach: Cantatas BWV 68 & BWV 70. Kurt Thomas , Kantorei der Dreikönigskirche Frankfurt, Collegium Musicum, Ingeborg Reichelt , Sibylla Plate, Helmut Kretschmar , Erich Wenk. L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1952?
- Cantata BWV 70. Karl Richter , Munich Bach Choir , Chamber Orchestra of the Bavarian State Orchestra , Lotte Schädle , Hertha Töpper , Helmut Kretschmar , Kieth Engen . Andromeda, 1957.
- Les Grandes Cantates de JS Bach Vol. 23. Fritz Werner , Heinrich Schütz Choir Heilbronn , Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn , Hedy Graf, Barbara Scherler, Kurt Huber, Jakob Stämpfli . Erato , 1970.
- The Bach Cantata Vol. 15. Helmuth Rilling , Gächinger Kantorei , Bach-Collegium Stuttgart , Arleen Augér , Verena Gohl, Lutz-Michael Harder , Siegmund Nimsgern . Hänssler, 1970/1982.
- JS Bach: The Cantata Work - Sacred Cantatas Vol. 4. Nikolaus Harnoncourt , Tölzer Knabenchor , Concentus Musicus Wien , soloist of the Tölzer Knabenchor, Paul Esswood , Kurt Equiluz , Ruud van der Meer. Teldec 19 ??
- JS Bach: Complete Cantatas Vol. 9. Ton Koopman , Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir , Sibylla Rubens , Bernhard Landauer , Christoph Prégardien , Klaus Mertens . Antoine Marchand, 1998.
- JS Bach: Cantatas Vol. 15 - Cantatas from Leipzig 1723. Masaaki Suzuki , Bach Collegium Japan , Yukari Nonoshita, Robin Blaze , Gerd Türk, Peter Kooij BIS , 2000.
- Bach Cantatas Vol. 13: Cologne / Lüneburg. John Eliot Gardiner , Monteverdi Choir , English Baroque Soloists , Brigitte Geller, Michael Chance , Jan Kobow , Dietrich Henschel . Soli Deo Gloria, 2000.
DVD
- “Watch, pray, pray, watch!”. Cantata BWV 70. Rudolf Lutz , choir and orchestra of the JS Bach Foundation , Gudrun Sidonie Otto (soprano), Margot Oitzinger (alto), Daniel Johannsen (tenor), Wolf Matthias Friedrich (bass). Including an introductory workshop and reflection by Jan Assmann . Gallus Media, 2014.
literature
- Alfred Dürr : Johann Sebastian Bach: The Cantatas. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1476-3 and Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-04431-4 .
- Werner Neumann : Handbook of the cantatas JSBachs . 1947. 5th edition. 1984, ISBN 3-7651-0054-4
- Hans-Joachim Schulze : The Bach Cantatas: Introductions to all of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas . Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-374-02390-8 ; Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-89948-073-2
- Christoph Wolff , Ton Koopman : The world of Bach cantatas . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02127-4
Web links
- Watch! pray! pray! wachet !, BWV 70 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Watch! pray! pray! wachet !, BWV 70a : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- BWV 70a Watch! pray! pray! watch! at Bach Cantatas (English)
- BWV 70a Watch! pray! pray! watch! at Bach Cantatas (English)
- Watch! pray! pray! watch! BWV 70 on the Bach website
- BWV 70 Watch! pray! pray! watch! , BWV 70a Wake up! pray! pray! watch! Text, structure and line-up on Walter F. Bischof's personal homepage at the University of Alberta