See what love the Father has shown us
| Bach cantata | |
|---|---|
| See what love the Father has shown us | |
| BWV: | 64 |
| Occasion: | 3rd Christmas Day |
| Year of origin: | 1723 |
| Place of origin: | Leipzig |
| Genus: | cantata |
| Solo : | SAB |
| Choir: | SATB |
| Instruments : | Cn 3Tb Oa 2Vn Va BC |
| text | |
| unknown | |
| List of Bach cantatas | |
See what love our father has shown us ( BWV 64) is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach . He composed it in Leipzig in 1723 for Christmas Day , which is also the feast day of the Evangelist Johannes , and performed it for the first time on December 27, 1723.
Story and words
Bach wrote the cantata in his first year in Leipzig for Christmas Day, which was celebrated as the feast of the Evangelist Johannes. The prescribed readings were Heb 1,1-14 LUT and Joh 1,1-14 LUT , the prologue of the Gospel of John. The unknown lyricist refers only in a general way to the readings and emphasizes the aspect that the believer, who knows himself to be loved by God as much as Christmas shows, no longer needs to worry about the concerns of the “world”. Three chorales are included in the text, only one of which is a Christmas carol, the seventh stanza of Luther's Praise be to Jesus Christ . Three chorales in a cantata are rare in Bach, but they also appear in the cantata Darzu ist das Sohn Gottes , which was performed the day before as the first cantata that Bach had written for Christmas in Leipzig. It is possible that both texts are from the same author. The opening choir is based on 1 Joh 3,1 LUT . Sentence 4 is the first stanza of Balthasar Kindermann's Was I ask about the world , the final chorale is good night, o beings , the fifth stanza of Johann Franck's Jesu, my joy .
Occupation and structure
The cantata is made up of three soloists, soprano , alto and bass , a brass wind choir made of zinc and three trombones , which reinforce the voices in the opening choir and the chorales, oboe d'amore , two violins , viola and basso continuo .
- Coro: See what love the Father has shown us
- Choral: He did all of that to us
- Recitativo (old): Go, world, keep only yours
- Choral: What do I ask about the world
- Aria (soprano, violin): What the world holds in itself
- Recitativo (bass): Heaven is certain to me
- Aria (Alto, Oboe d'amore): I ask nothing of the world
- Chorale: Good night, o beings
music
The entrance choir is kept in the archaic motet style, reinforced by the timbre of the wind choir. The alto recitative is accompanied by lively movement in the continuo. In the soprano aria, a gavotte , a virtuoso solo violin may illustrate the “world”. The oboe d'amore accompanies the alto aria in lyrical melodies. The final chorale is simply set in four parts.
Recordings
- Bach Cantatas Vol. 1 - Advent and Christmas , Karl Richter , Münchener Bach-Chor , Münchener Bach-Orchester , Edith Mathis , Anna Reynolds , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , archive production 1972
- The Bach Cantata Vol. 63 , Helmuth Rilling , Gächinger Kantorei , Bach-Collegium Stuttgart , Arleen Augér , Ann Murray , Philippe Huttenlocher , Hänssler 1981
- JS Bach: Complete Cantatas Vol. 8 , Ton Koopman , Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir , Dorothea Röschmann , Bogna Bartosz, Klaus Mertens , Antoine Marchand 1998
- JS Bach: Cantatas Vol. 13 , Masaaki Suzuki , Bach Collegium Japan , Yukari Nonoshita, Robin Blaze , Peter Kooij , BIS 1999
- Bach Cantatas Vol. 15: New York , John Eliot Gardiner , Monteverdi Choir , English Baroque Soloists , llian Keith , Robin Tyson, Peter Harvey , Soli Deo Gloria 2000
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 : Manual of the cantatas by JS Bach , 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; Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006 (Edition Bach-Archiv Leipzig), ISBN 3-374-02390-8 (Evang. Verl.-Anst.), ISBN 3-89948-073-2 (Carus-Verlag).
- Christoph Wolff , Ton Koopman : The world of Bach cantatas . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02127-4 .
Web links
- See what love the Father has shown us, BWV 64 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Cantata BWV 64 See what love the Father has shown us in Bach Cantatas (English)
- See what love the father showed us on the Bach website
- BWV 64 See what love our father has shown us Text, structure and composition on the personal homepage of Walter F. Bischof at the University of Alberta
