My dearest Jesus is lost

Bach cantata
My dearest Jesus is lost
BWV:	154
Occasion:	1st Sunday after Epiphany
Year of origin:	1724
Place of origin:	Leipzig
Genus:	cantata
Solo :	ATB
Choir:	SATB
Instruments :	2 Oa; Str; BC
text
	unknown
List of Bach cantatas

My dearest Jesus is lost ( BWV 154) is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach . He composed it in Leipzig in 1724 for the first Sunday after Epiphany .

Story and words

In his first year in Leipzig, Bach performed the cantata on the Sunday after the Epiphany (apparition of the Lord), January 9, 1724. The musicologist Alfred Dürr suspects that it was already written in Weimar , while John Eliot Gardiner supports this view for movements 1, 4 and 7. The prescribed readings were Rom 12.1–6 LUT and Lk 2.41–52 LUT , the twelve year old Jesus in the temple. The unknown lyricist takes the parents' search for their prodigal son as an opportunity to present in the first two sentences the situation of a Christian who has lost his Jesus and is looking for him in vain. The third movement is a chorale ; the second stanza of Martin Jahns Jesu, my soul bliss , in which Jesus is asked to return. Movement four repeats the request in a personal aria. The answer is given by the Vox Christi (voice of Christ) with the words of the Gospel “Do you not know that I have to be in what is my father?” The joy of finding expresses a paraphrase of Hld 2,8 LUT : “There is my friend's voice! See, he comes and hops over the mountains and jumps over the hills. ”The cantata ends with the sixth stanza of Christian Keimann's chorale My Jesus, I will not leave .

Occupation and structure

Like cantatas from the Weimar period, the work is made up of chamber music with three soloists ( alto , tenor and bass ), a four-part choir in the chorales, two oboe d'amore , two violins , viola and basso continuo .

Aria (tenor): My dearest Jesus is lost
Recitativo (tenor): Where do I find my Jesus
Chorale: Jesus, my refuge and Savior
Aria (old): Jesus, let yourself be found
Arioso (bass): Don't you know that I have to be
Recitativo (tenor): This is my friend's voice
Aria (alto, tenor): Good for me, Jesus has been found
Chorale: I will not leave my Jesus

music

In the three arias , Bach depicts extreme affects : desperate grief, longing and delight. The first aria is underlaid with an ostinate bass figure, comparable to the chorus weeping, lamenting, worrying, and fears . First the violin, then the tenor play an expressive melody, which both repeat several times. The contrasting middle section is grounded by string tremolos in bold harmonies. The second aria is accompanied by two oboe d'amore and unison strings, without continuo. Similar to the soprano aria For love my Savior will die from Bach's St. Matthew Passion describes the lack of the foundation of fragility and innocence. The joy of finding is reflected in a duet of alto and tenor in homophonic third and sixth parallels. It is in three parts, whereby the third part is not a da capo of the first, but closes in quick 3/8 time.

The first chorale (No. 3) is a four-part movement of the melody zu Werde munter, mein Gemüte by Johann Schop (1642), which became world famous as an arrangement for the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben with the text line Jesus stays my joy and which Bach parodied as No. 40 in his St. Matthew Passion . The final chorale is a four-part movement from Andreas Hammerschmidt's melody to Meinen Jesum ich nicht (1658), which Bach also arranged in the edging BWV 70 , 157 , but above all in the chorale cantata of the same name BWV 124 .

Recordings

The Bach Cantata Vol. 21 , Helmuth Rilling , Gächinger Kantorei , Bach-Collegium Stuttgart , Ann Murray , Aldo Baldin , Walter Heldwein , Hänssler 1978
JS Bach: Das Kantatenwerk - Sacred Cantatas Vol. 8 , Nikolaus Harnoncourt , Tölzer Knabenchor , Concentus Musicus Wien , Paul Esswood , Kurt Equiluz , Thomas Hampson , Teldec 1985
JS Bach: Complete Cantatas Vol. 9 , Ton Koopman , Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir , Bernhard Landauer , Christoph Prégardien , Klaus Mertens , Antoine Marchand 1998
Bach Cantatas Vol. 18: New York , John Eliot Gardiner , Monteverdi Choir , English Baroque Soloists , Michael Chance , James Gilchrist , Peter Harvey , Soli Deo Gloria 2000
JS Bach: Cantatas Vol. 17 , Masaaki Suzuki , Bach Collegium Japan , Robin Blaze , Gerd Türk , Peter Kooij , BIS 2001
JS Bach: Cantatas for the Complete Liturgical Year Vol. 4 , Sigiswald Kuijken , La Petite Bande , Elisabeth Hermans , Petra Noskaiová , Jan Kobow , Jan van der Crabben , Accent 2006
Desire: JS Bach - Cantates , Marcel Ponseele , Il Gardellino , Caroline Weynants , Patrick Van Goethem , Marcus Ullmann , Lieven Termont , Passacaille 2008

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

My dearest Jesus is lost, BWV 154 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
Cantata BWV 154 My dearest Jesus is lost in Bach Cantatas (English)
BWV 154 My dearest Jesus is lost Text, structure and composition on the personal homepage of Walter F. Bischof at the University of Alberta
My dearest Jesus is lost on the Bach website
Chapter 36 BWV 154 My dearest Jesus is lost , "A listener and student guide by Julian Mincham", 2010 (English)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Alfred Dürr . 1971. "The cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach", Bärenreiter (in German)

↑ John Eliot Gardiner : Cantatas for the First Sunday after Epiphany / Hauptkirche St. Jacobi, Hamburg ( English ) solideogloria.co.uk. 2010. Archived from the original on October 5, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 29, 2010. @1@ 2

[Dürr-1] Alfred Dürr . 1971. "The cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach", Bärenreiter (in German)


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Cantatas not preserved	App. 1 • App. 2 • App. 3 • App. 4 • App. 4a • App. 5 • App. 6 • App. 7 • App. 8 • App. 9 • App. 10 • App. 11 • App. 12 • App. 13 • App. 14 • App. 15 • App. 16 • App. 17 • App. 18 • App. 19
Passions	St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244) • St. John Passion (BWV 245) • St. Luke Passion (BWV 246) (Bach's authorship questioned) • St. Mark Passion (BWV 247)
Oratorios	Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11) • Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) • Easter Oratorio (BWV 249)