A heart that knows its Jesus alive
| Bach cantata | |
|---|---|
| A heart that knows its Jesus alive | |
| BWV: | 134 |
| Occasion: | 3rd Easter day |
| Year of origin: | 1724 |
| Place of origin: | Leipzig |
| Genus: | Church cantata |
| Solo : | AT |
| Choir: | SATB |
| Instruments : | Ob I / II; VI I / II;
Va; Bc |
| text | |
| unknown | |
| List of Bach cantatas | |
A heart that knows its Jesus alive ( BWV 134) is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach . It was created for Easter from the secular cantata Die Zeit, which makes days and years (BWV 134a).
Occasion and content
The cantata was the second Easter cantata that Bach composed in Leipzig. On Easter Sunday 1724 he had performed his early choral cantata Christ lay in Todes Banden, BWV 4 , again, and on the second day of Easter he had performed the new cantata Delight your hearts . For the third day of Easter he edited a cantata that he had composed in Koethen for New Year's Day 1719, The Time That Makes Day and Years .
The prescribed readings for the feast day were Acts 13.26–33 LUT and Lk 24.36–49 LUT , the appearance of Jesus to the disciples in Jerusalem after his resurrection . The unknown lyricist edited the secular cantata in the simplest possible way by keeping the order of the movements and only leaving out movements 5 and 6. This resulted in an unusual church cantata, which initially only consists of movements for the alto and tenor soloists and does not end with a chorale, but with a splendid final chorus in which the soloists are still involved. The text refers only very generally to the Gospel with formulations such as “The living Savior gives blessed times”. In the first aria, the poet took over the last two lines of the secular original. The second aria, which, like the original, follows the dactyl as a meter , flows smoothly into a recitative in which the argument with Hell and Satan is discussed. Only the penultimate sentence speaks of death, victory and resurrection. The cantata ends with a song of praise and praise.
construction
The cantata is divided into 6 movements:
- Recitativo (alto, tenor): A heart that knows its Jesus alive
- Aria (tenor): Up, believers! sing the lovely songs
- Recitativo (alto, tenor): Good for you, God has thought of you
- Aria (alto, tenor): We thank and praise your ardent love
- Recitativo (alto, tenor): But let our thanks go into our mouths
- Chorus : Come on, you heavens, rejoice earth
The music of the cantata initially followed the secular original entirely. Your character is happy and "victorious" ( Hans-Joachim Schulze ).
Edits
As mentioned above, the first performance took place without any changes to the composition, but while preparing the cantata for the 3rd Easter Sunday in 1731, Bach doubted the relationship between music and text. Therefore he composed movements 1, 3 and 5 anew. A few years later there was a completely revised score in which further improvements were made.
literature
- Alfred Dürr : Johann Sebastian Bach: The Cantatas. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1476-3 .
- Werner Neumann : Handbook of JS Bach's Cantatas , 1947, 5th edition 1984, ISBN 3-7651-0054-4 .
- Hans-Joachim Schulze : The Bach Cantatas: Introductions to all of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas . Leipzig: Evangelical publishing company; Stuttgart: Carus-Verlag 2006 (Edition Bach-Archiv Leipzig) ISBN 3-374-02390-8 (Evang. Verl.-Anst.), ISBN 3-89948-073-2 (Carus-Verl.).
- Christoph Wolff / Ton Koopman : The world of Bach cantatas . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2006 ISBN 978-3-476-02127-4 .
Web links
- A heart that knows its Jesus alive : sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- A heart that knows its Jesus alive Text on the Bach Cantata Page
- Cantata BWV 134 A heart that knows its Jesus alive on bach-cantatas.com
