Happy to have Jesus - Jesus remains my joy
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I am happy that I have Jesus - Jesus remains my joy are the text opening lines of one of the most famous chorale arrangements by Johann Sebastian Bach . He composed the work for four-part choir, strings, oboes and trumpet in 1723 for his cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben ( BWV 147). With the text Happy Me that I have Jesus it closes the first part, with the text Jesus my joy remains - musically identical - the second. In the English-speaking world, the work, entitled Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring, is also extremely popular.
Text and chorale melody
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I am happy that I have Jesus, |
Jesus remains my joy, |
The two text stanzas are the 6th and 17th stanzas of Martin Janus ' 19- stanza hymn Jesus, my soul bliss , which he wrote in the 1660s. With an abundance of biblical images and allusions Janus expresses the soul's love for Jesus and its longing to unite with him (“ mystical wedding ”). The song is one of the many Lutheran poems inspired by the Jubilus Sancti Bernhardi . In the hymn books it appears partly in the Namen-Jesu songs (the Jesus name is mentioned several times in each of the 19 stanzas, a total of 50 times), partly in the Lord's Supper songs .
The text of Jesus, my soul's delight was sung with different melodies. In Leipzig , Bach's place of activity, the melody Werde munter, mein Gemüte , which Johann Schop had composed in 1642, was used, although it has a slightly different stanza scheme (reverse sequence of male and female rhymes in the swan song ). Bach uses the melody among others in the St. Matthew Passion (No. 48). For cantata 147 he chose a three-bar version.
Bach's treatment
For his first Leipzig cantatas in 1723/1724, Bach mainly created two-part works that framed the sermon . Often he used his own older compositions. Heart and mouth and action and life were created for the feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary on Friday, July 2nd, 1723. This feast was liturgically celebrated in the Lutheran city of Leipzig in the 18th century like a Sunday. To this end, Bach expanded an Advent cantata that he had composed in Weimar in 1716 . He marked the two-part structure by re-composing an identical final chorale for both parts. Good for me that I have Jesus - Jesus remains my joy . The congregation thus joins Mary's hymn of praise , which forms the central theme of the cantata.
Bach composed a four-part homophonic choral setting with trumpet colla parte and embedded it in a lively, quasi-hopping nine-eighth ritornello of strings and oboes. This is developed from the song melody and plays around it; the transitions form arpeggios .
reception
The isolated reception of the piece and its performance at festive occasions such as weddings, including its inclusion in "best-of" collections of all kinds, began in the early 20th century in the Anglo-Saxon world and was only delayed in the German-speaking world. Internet search engines and YouTube give an impression of the countless edits . Most of the time, a solemn effect is created by slowing down.
literature
- Alfred Dürr : The cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach . 5th edition, Volume 2, Munich 1985, pp. 742-748
- Günther Stiller: Johann Sebastian Bach and the Leipzig worship life of his time . Berlin 1970, especially pp. 46–50
