I long for you, Lord
| Bach cantata | |
|---|---|
| I long for you, Lord | |
| BWV: | 150 |
| Occasion: | unknown, possibly penitential service or 3rd Sunday after Trinity |
| Year of origin: | around 1706 |
| Place of origin: | Arnstadt (uncertain) |
| Genus: | Church cantata |
| Solo : | SATB |
| Choir: | SATB |
| Instruments : | Fg 2Vl Bc |
| text | |
| unknown librettist | |
| List of Bach cantatas | |
After you, Lord, longs for me ( BWV 150) is one of the earliest church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach .
Emergence
This cantata is one of the oldest surviving cantatas by Bach (together with cantatas BWV 131 , 196 , 106 and 4 ); it was probably made around 1706. In his biography of Bach, Christoph Wolff speaks of “probably the earliest extant cantata”. There is no autograph, only a copy from 1753 made by Bach's student Christian Friedrich Penzel . As of origin is Arnstadt suspected.
The text was written by an unknown poet based on Psalm 25 .
Subject
The text consists of the choral movements After you, Lord, ask me ; Guide me in your truth and my eyes always look to the Lord from the words of Psalm 25 (verses 1–2 LUT ; verse 5 LUT and verse 15 LUT ). For the arias and the final chorus, Bach used a psalm paraphrase by the unknown librettist.
Since there is no textual reference to the church year , various liturgical classifications have been proposed. The cantata could have been composed for a confessional service , for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity or for a funeral service .
occupation
- Vocal soloists: soprano , alto , tenor , bass (alto, tenor and bass in Terzetto No. 5 can also be sung by the choir voices)
- Choir: soprano, alto, tenor, bass
- Orchestra: bassoon , violin I / II, basso continuo .
construction
The cantata consists of seven movements:
- Sinfonia: Instrumental piece (bassoon, violin I, violin II, basso continuo), key of B minor, the bassoon is notated as an obbligato solo part , but also plays the basso continuo.
- Choir (soprano, alto, tenor, bass): For you, Lord, I long for you , beginning in B minor, ending in B major; Bassoon, violin I, violin II, basso continuo, the bassoon emerges as a soloist compared to the basso continuo.
- Aria (soprano): But I am and remain happy , B minor, violins in unison and basso continuo.
- Choir: Guide me in your truth , B minor; Bassoon, violin I, violin II, basso continuo, the bassoon melodically follows the basso continuo, but phrasing and pausing independently.
- Terzetto (alto, tenor, bass): Cedars must from the winds , D major, bassoon (solo) and basso continuo. The vocal movement is kept simple and can also be performed by choir singers.
- Choir: My eyes always look to the Lord , beginning in D major, ending in B major; Bassoon (solo), violin I, violin II, basso continuo. Madrigal Grand Chorsatz in 6 / 8 -Stroke
- Choir: Meine Tage in dem Leide , beginning in B minor and ending in B major; Chaconne in the 3 / 2 ¯ clock.
particularities
The early cantata already shows characteristic compositional peculiarities of Bach in the overall structure and in the internal structure of the individual movements.
The introductory sinfonia is kept very short at 19 bars; the choir pieces in the second and last positions are the longest. As early as the first movement, the musical rhetorical lamenting figure is used as a anticipation of the following choral movement , a chromatic downward fourth movement that often occurs in Bach's later cantatas and oratorios.
In the following choir pieces of this cantata the speed changes again and again . In the second part there is the fugal beginning “After you, Lord, longing for me” in Allegro , followed by “My God, I hope in you”, homophonic in Andante . Depending on the textual statement in the verses of the set Psalm 25, this sequence runs through the entire choral movement. “Don't let me be put to shame” becomes “Un poco allegro” and then changes homophonically to Adagio. The following request “that my enemies should not be happy about me” is again labeled “Allegro” and fugitive. A homophonic cadence on the major parallel forms the end , now again in the Adagio.
The following aria by the soprano But I am and will remain happy does not follow the form of the da capo aria that was customary at the time . It does not contain any repetition, but is composed through song-like. The melodic structure is shaped by the Corta figure , a sequence of three notes, one of which is twice as long as the other two. Albert Schweitzer called this figure the "joy motif".
In the fourth part, a choir piece, the opening request “Guide me” is represented by the motif of a two octave scale. Here too, depending on the text, there are changes between the tempo designations: Andante - Allegro - Andante.
The fifth movement Cedern muss von den Winden , a trio of alto, tenor and bass, lyrically reflects the previous psalm verses and musically illustrates both the rustling of the wind in the cedar trees and the "barking" of the enemy that the psalmist has to face. The basso continuo runs largely in sixteenth-note figures, which are only interrupted at transition points by eighth notes and twice by dotted eighth notes. The instruments reproduce the rustling of the wind, while the enemies' “barking” is symbolized in the singing voices by the excited connection of quarters to shorter notes and chromatics.
What is remarkable about the sixth movement, My eyes always look to the Lord first, is the form, because he follows the scheme of prelude and fugue . After all the previous parts of a 
having ¯ clock, this rate is at 6 / 8 ¯ clock. The first part, which would correspond to the prelude, shows a madrigal- like structure, as is the case with some of Bach's preludes for organ. The beginning of the fugue is again marked by a change of tempo to Allegro.
The final chorus, Meine Tage in dem Leide, is written in the form of a chaconne with a four-bar basso continuo theme that is repeated over and over again. The still widespread assumption that he could have been the model for the final movement of the Fourth Symphony by Johannes Brahms is based on an anecdote by the Berlin choir conductor Siegfried Ochs , which must be considered a forgery.
expenditure
- Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1884, printing plate BW XL.
- Bach Society Edition, Volume 40
literature
- Günther Zedler: The preserved church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (Mühlhausen, Weimar, Leipzig I). Meetings in the form of analyzes - explanations - interpretations . Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-83-704401-0 , p. 38 ff.
Web links
- Sources and information on Bach digital
- For you, Lord, I long for, BWV 150 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- BWV 150 After you, Lord, I ask for the text, structure and composition on the personal homepage of Walter F. Bischof at the University of Alberta
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard DP Jones: The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach . Volume 1: 1695-1717, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-816440-1 , p. 99
- ^ Christoph Wolff : Johann Sebastian Bach . 2nd edition, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-10-092584-X , p. 96.
- ↑ M. Rathey: On the dating of some of Bach's vocal works . In: Bach Yearbook 2006, p. 65 ff.
- ^ Dietrich Bartel: Musica Poetica. Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music . University of Nebraska Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-80-323593-9 , p. 234
- ↑ a b c Günther Zedler: The preserved church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (Mühlhausen, Weimar, Leipzig I). Meetings in the form of analyzes - explanations - interpretations . Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-83-704401-0 , p. 39
- ↑ Maarten 't Hart : Bach and me . Piper Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-49-296034-2 .
- ^ Siegfried Ochs : Events, seen. Leipzig / Zurich 1922, p. 299f.
- ↑ Peter Petersen : A case of falsified biography. On the longevity of an anecdote about Brahms' 4th Symphony , in: NZfM 180, 2019, no. 5, pp. 40–41; ders .: The variation finale from Brahms' E minor symphony and the C minor Chaconne by Beethoven (WoO 80) . In: Archives for Musicology. Volume 70. 2013, pp. 105-118 ( online, PDF ).
