Ich nehme mein Leiden (from Cantata 75 Die Elenden sollen essen)

Table 2

One can identify a pattern going on here, in which the movements in part 2 are set in the relative major/minor of their counterparts in part 1, with the exception of the chorales.

There is another reading of this when the two parts are flipped onto each other, pairing the chorale from part 1 to the sinfonia, the soprano aria to the alto aria and so on:

Table 3

Although this pairing is less exact when comparing the tonalities, it does reveal some other patterns such as the pairing of the arias by the tessitura of the voice types: there is the immediately noticeable grouping of the tenor and bass and the soprano and alto. There is also the drop from soprano to alto and tenor to bass between the two parts, which contrasts with the change from the E minor of the opening chorus up to the G major of the chorale at the end. This use of chiasmus makes reference to the Gospel reading of the day, which told the story of Dives and Lazarus. Dives was a rich man who lived a sumptuous life and Lazarus was a poor man who waited at his doorstep for the breadcrumbs that fell off Dives’s table. After they died, Lazarus was taken up by the Angels (hence the switch to the relative major) but Dives was left to suffer in hell (represented by the drop of tessitura).

Taking Part 2 as a reciprocal of Part 1 also helps explain some anomalies. For example, the pairing of the recitatives and arias in Part 1 is rather unusual, with the recitative and the aria before it being sung by the same voice. Even as early as the cantatas from the Weimar period, the norm was already established to have the recitative and the aria that follows sung by the same voice. There are always exceptions and in BWV 147 none of the recitative-aria pairs are sung by the same voice[2]. When Bach deviates from the norm, chances are that he did it because his priority was somewhere else. In Part 1 of Die Elenden essen sollen, we only need to undo Bach’s preoccupation with the reciprocal, reverse the ordering of the seven movements, then we’ll end up with a more traditional layout. This is exactly what he did for Part 2.

Perhaps the most revealing of all is how this mirror image might explain the otherwise peculiar sinfonia that comes in the form of a chorale prelude. Instrumental canti firmi are not unusual and they often appear in the opening movements[3]. Sometimes the cantus firmus melody is the same as the chorale tune that will be sung at the end of the cantata (e.g. BWV 48) but it can also be from a chorale that has otherwise nothing to do with the cantata on purely musical terms (e.g. BWV 77 and BWV 25). In the case of this sinfonia, the cantus firmus is not only the same as the chorale melody that comes at the end but also the same as the one that came before, which is slightly puzzling. The problem is not to do with the music but with the text. Since the chorales here use verses 5 and 6 of Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan then what does the chorale in the sinfonia represent, given that it comes in between the two? By taking into account Bach’s preoccupation with the mirror image here, one can see this as a by-product of his attempt to portray the seemingly “illogical” nature of God’s will described in the tenor recitative of part 1 – Whoever seeks heaven in the world will be cursed hereafter, but whoever overcomes hell here will be overjoyed hereafter[4] – which is also referred to in Lazarus’s story[5].

Just as the recitative-aria grouping here can be explained by the reciprocal, similar analyses can explain why Bach changed the solo voice in every movements of BWV 147, and also if the relatively imperfect tonal plan of BWV 76 has any allegorical meaning. In BWV 75, the question is to what extent did Bach want Ich nehme mein Leiden to be in A minor. Which one is the by-product here, the A minor in this aria or the E minor in the alto aria? Is there a genuine call for this to be set in the minor? The answers to these questions can be found by looking at the text through Bach’s setting.

Bach’s understanding of the text:

The full text of the movement reads:

Bach set the first line to a ritornello theme with a head motif that has the same melodic contour as the Siciliano from the C minor obligato violin sonata (BWV 1017), the Ich habe genug aria (BWV 82) and Erbarme dich from the Matthew Passion[7]. Ex. 1 from the example sheet below illustrates the similarities and differences between these motifs. The main event that takes place in all of these examples is the ascending leap of the fourth and the difference between them lies in how the leap is elaborated on the surface level and also, how the elaborations articulate the metre. To put it simply, Ich nehme mein Leiden articulates the metre of a minuet. The first note (a¹) of the ascending linear progression of the 3^rd (a.l.p. 3) is lengthened and stressed, which leaves the third note (c²) landing on the second beat of the bar; in Ich habe genug and Erbarme dich, the 3^rd note of the a.l.p. 3 is put on the first beat of the bar and held over the second beat, giving the siciliano rhythm. This difference between the minuet and the siciliano is fascinating[8]. We know that the melodic pattern used here can be very expressive because we have examples like Ich habe genug and Erbarme dich. What Ich nehme mein Leiden shows is that this expressivity depends a lot on the phrase structure as it clearly does not have the same sorrowful qualities of the other two. In the sicilianos, the head motif acts as one large impulse that lasts four dotted crotchet beats but in the minuet, that impulse is interrupted as early as the second dotted crotchet. The longer impulse simulates the letting out of a long breath – a sigh – and lends itself naturally to a lamenting gesture. When the impulse is cut short though, that potent melody is nullified to something indifferent, like someone who has looked past the earthly sufferings knowing that it is a path to Heaven, or someone who has been mistreated to such an extent that they can step away from it and mock the sufferings. This distanced perspective is maintained throughout the movement by the continuo’s consistent figure of two quavers and a rest, always leaving the third beat hanging, like a shrug[9].

For the B section of the text, Bach kept this façade of indifference in the figurations, even though the harmonies plunged into unknown territories at the mention of Wer Lazarus’ Plagen: just before the start of this section, the ritornello has cadenced back onto A minor in m. 74. Then in m. 75 a C-sharp diminished triad with G in the bass is outlined and since we have just heard the A minor chord, it would be natural to fill in the diminished triad with an A to get a four-two dominant 7^th in D minor (Ex. 2), which under normal circumstances should resolve onto a D minor triad in 1^st inversion. Instead, the imaginary A borrowed from the A minor chord rises up to A-sharp, G at the bass goes down to an F-sharp and the E at the top is suspended to give a seventh against the F-sharp. All of a sudden, we find ourselves on the dominant of B minor. The music then cadences in B minor in m. 78 when the soprano sings geduldig ertragen and holds on to the d² for four bars, waiting patiently to resolve down to c² and back to A minor. After that, we are gradually taken up to Heaven by the angels, first with a cadence into F major in m. 90[10], then with a soaring passage of melisma that goes up to the highest note of the movement (a² in m. 102). In the process of this ascent, the torments and sufferings are hidden away by outlining Wer Lazarus’ Plagen in a relatively tensionless harmonic area when it comes for the second time (mm. 95-96)[11] and shoving the angular figuration of the head motif to the bass (mm. 99, 101), thus freeing up the soprano line and allowing it to be as soothing as an angel needs to be.

So it would seem that Bach set this aria in the minor mode specifically to represent that wilful detachment from the sufferings. This may also be why he used the 3/8 as the time signature instead of the usual 3/4 for minuets – by encouraging a faster tempo the sadness can be brushed aside with even more ease. This level of complexity lies well within Bach’s capabilities, but one can still read a lot more into it.

A deeper reading:

To start with, his hypotyposis of Lazarus’s torments (Plagen) in mm. 75-76 is not really to the point, not if Bach intended to portray the torments. Having said that, it is impossible to know what would sound tormenting to the ears of his congregation. For my ears at least, a vivid use of hypotyposis for torments would constitute a sustained period of rapid shifts between harmonic areas that have only a tangential connection. The end of the A-flat major fugue from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier is an excellent example[12]:

w In m. 32, a subject emerges in E-flat minor, the dominant minor, after a minor version of the first episode;

w The music goes up a circle of fifth and m. 35 has a subject entry on the supertonic, which then leads on to the subdominant in m. 37 and gives the impression of an imminent closure;

w In mm. 38-40, that impression is dispelled by a series of chromatic twists that brings the music back to the dominant minor;

w The minor changes to major with the appearance of G natural in m. 41 and at that point, the tenor comes in with a subject in the tonic;

w We have another chromatic labyrinth in m. 44 and in m. 45 the end product came out as B double-flat major – the flat supertonic – in first inversion, i.e. the Neapolitan 6^th.

w Although the Neapolitan 6^th did end up as the dominant 7^th in m. 46, this transformation is as tortuous as any of the passages that went before it, because the music just kept ploughing on as if nothing happened. It is as if the Neapolitan 6^th is the same as the dominant 7^th and that it is completely natural to have such a declamatory prolongation of that mixture from m. 45 through to the silence on the third beat of m. 46. But the Neapolitan 6^th is not the same as the dominant 7^th and one feels being dragged through an ordeal, and it did not end there. Bach felt the need to remind us of this distressing experience by throwing in a C flat in the penultimate bar to imply the presence of the tonic minor.

The essence of a tormenting musical experience lies in the forcefulness of successive harmonic shifts. Quick harmonic shifts are very common in recitatives, but they seldom carry much power.

There is, however, an example in this cantata that stands out and this is at the end of the penultimate movement[13]. After the cadence in B minor (m. 5), the rising bassline in m. 6 implies a turn to the relative major D major (Ex. 3). When the bassline’s ascent is interrupted by the E-flat, the tendency is to hear it as a D-sharp which would have formed a linear progression of a 4^th if it had continued the ascent to E-natural. Of course, this E-natural is only imaginary, so is the E minor chord that would have sat on top of it and implicated a forfeit of the progress of the cantata and a return to the state of wretchedness described in the beginning. To prevent that from happening Bach stamped the E-flat in, didn’t even bother with the G minor that’s implied by the flattened 6^th degree of the scale and dived straight into G major[14]. Yet, he could have easily got from the implied D major in m. 6 to G major without any fuss as suggested in Ex. 3. The fact that he made this unsettling detour to E-flat suggests that either the Christian still has doubts that the suffering will lead to happiness or the Christian has finally cleansed the heart of the materialistic temptations and can truly step away and mock them. Both readings point to one conclusion as far as Ich nehme mein Leiden is concerned: the indifference here is only a façade and the more the Christian keeps up this indifference on the outside, the more he doubts in the inside. The half-hearted hypotyposis on Lazurus’ Plagen is one such case. Bach knows how to write tormenting music when he needs to. It’s obvious that mm. 75-76 ticks the box and took the music to an alien harmonic area. Equally obvious is the lack of conviction in the gesture – once it dipped into F-sharp major and realised it’s just the dominant of the supertonic, all that remains is the formality of progressing from the supertonic to the dominant and back to the tonic. Even the detour in the recitative mentioned above carries more weight than this. In light of this, we can now look at some other aspects of the aria, namely how the oboe’s ritornello combines with the soprano line.

The ritornello:

The ritornello theme takes up the opening 16 measures. The Vordersatz is from mm. 1-4, the Fortspinnung from mm. 9-12 and the Epilog from mm. 13-16. The gap in the middle is the consequent phrase of the Vordersatz (mm. 5-8). Its curious presence is necessary for the minuet to take shape as a 16 measures block, but it is not so important for the ritornello procedure. Structurally it doesn’t have a purposeful function and the ritornello can work with or without it – the soprano’s statement of the Vordersatz in m. 17 went straight on to the Fortspinnung, and it still made musical sense. This is because what the consequent phrase did in mm. 5-8 is to flip the music to the relative major. Such changes are rudimentary and easily corrected because without any change in the number of sharps and flats, any key and its relative major/minor are just two sides of the same coin[15]. Although the structural function of this phrase is insignificant, there is a wealth of extra-musical meaning in it, the most obvious being the reference to a state of content after joyfully accepting the sufferings. The phrase’s cadence into C major also recalls the end of the B section (also in C major), where it is told that whoever endured the sufferings will be taken to Heaven (this one applies only to the da capo).

The absence of the consequent phrase after the soprano’s Vordersatz in mm. 17-20 is as meaningful as its presence. Although the solo voice is not expected to deliver a sizeable portion of the ritornello theme on the first go[16], one would still expect the original form of the ritornello to carry on where the voice left off. By leaving out the consequent phrase, the balance is upset and the poise of the opening 16 measures is lost. To put it in modern terms, the music lost its “cool” and tumbles forward. The soprano line then had another go in m. 29 and made it to a variant of the consequent phrase singing Freuden in melisma (mm. 33-34). The variant stayed close to the original version for the first two measures but was ruined by Bach’s attempt to stack the oboe’s Vordersatz and on top of the soprano line, ending up in A minor (m. 36) rather than the desired C major. Ex. 4 shows how the variant could have ended in C major if the oboe line had not intruded. This disruption left the soprano scrambling desperately for a close in the major resulting in some awkward melodic writing (Ex. 5) and two extra bars for the cadence into C major (mm. 37-38). All of this imbalance and scramble shows that the Christian has not fully accepted the sufferings and beneath the pretence of indifference there is still a lot of struggle going on.

After the cadence in C major, Bach went through the usual processes of segmenting the ritornello and reordering the events. Instead of the Fortspinnung, the variant consequent phrase is followed by the Epilog in C major. Then the soprano comes in with a twisted version of the Fortspinnung where the principal line is passed between the soprano and the oboe (ex. 6). It is difficult to understand the meaning of this gesture as it is not a very effective one. It would have been impossible to notice that the line is split between the two unless one is consciously looking out for it. Instead, the only thing that will come across is the awkwardness of the isolated pairs of quavers played by the oboe (mm. 44 and 46). My suspicion is that it is, like the cantus firmus in the sinfonia, a by-product of a larger plan. This time, it is a plan to assimilate the oboe and the soprano. Everything that the soprano does is made to make sense in relation to the oboe’s ritonello, hence the double entry of the Vordersatz and the varied consequent phrase in m. 33. Even that turn into the dominant of B minor in the B section is eventually normalised when it comes back and is coupled with a slightly varied Epilog in mm. 95-98. Let’s suppose that the oboe and its balanced ritornello theme represent the ideal Christian who has looked past the sufferings and has that an air of dignity about him. The soprano on the other hand represents your everyday commoner who is corrupted by materialistic desires. In face of prolonged suffering, she cowers and panics. The B section portrays her as disillusioned, straying into undesirable places, unable to follow the examples of the Bible that has always accompanied her in the form of the oboe’s ritornello. Even when the two seemed to be in unison (mm. 43-46), the soprano falters and breaks away from it, delivering one last statement of doubt with an interrupted cadence at the end of a six-measure phrase (m. 52). This element of doubt is further amplified by the motion of the bassline from f down to c#. This gesture in leaving the uncomfortable diminished 4^th hanging is similar to the downward leap of a diminished 7^th, which is also left unresolved, in the subject of the A minor fugue from WTC 1 (ex. 7). In both cases, the gesture conjures up a question mark. For the aria, the word is “why”, why do we have to endure the sufferings? As the diminished 4^th is resolved in m. 53, the soprano is released into four measures of demisemiquaver melisma on Freuden, though within this interpretation the passage seems to be of fleeing from the sufferings rather than of joyfully accepting it.

Conclusion:

Throughout my argument I have maintained that the minuet’s uptight figuration conveys an air of indifference. However, this tautness in the rhythm doesn’t automatically imply a distanced approach, just as the minor mode doesn’t always produce a sorrowful atmosphere. Though the pairs of quavers in the continuo can contribute to the sense of removal from earthly things, they can just as easily be referring to one’s sobbing over the loss of these earthly things. There is little limit to how many layers of allegorical references one can extrapolate from the music, as long as these references help in delivering a message. Ultimately, we will be delivering a very different message compared to what Bach had in mind for his congregation, because we live in a much more secular and materialistic world dominated by greed. Maybe most Christians in Bach’s time were able to get close to that ideal model outlined by the oboe’s ritornello and really take in the sufferings with joy, in which case the deeper part of my interpretation will be judged as perverse and forced. For our society though, it is more important to first show the audience/congregation, or let them acknowledge, this impurity in our souls. Then the healing process can take place with the alto and bass arias of Part 2.

The aesthetics of performing cantatas and oratorios is most different from performing secular instrumental works like preludes and fugues. Performing a cantata is like delivering a sermon whereas the instrumental works are for personal and private meditation. Sermons take the fixed Bible readings of the day as a point of departure and then draw connections and references to the current affairs of the world, guiding and keeping the present day congregation on the path to salvation. Similarly, musicians should take the text and the music of a cantata only as a point of departure, then forge a new way of presenting it that will allow the music to resonate with our era. Bach’s music is so incredibly complex it can be looked at from an infinite number of angles, as long as it is not done at random.

May 2012

Bibliography:

Dürr, Alfred The Cantatas of J. S. Bach, trans. Jones, Richard (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)

Little, Meredith and Jenne, Natalie Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach (Indiana, Indiana University Press, 2001)

Bach Cantata Translations

http://www.emmanuelmusic.org/notes_translations/translations_cantata/t_bwv075.htm (Accessed 28 April 2012)

www.bach-cantatas.com (Accessed 13 May 2012)

[1] In other words, this is the first cantata Bach wrote for the Leipzig churches after taking up the post at Thomaskirche.

[2] The movements in BWV 147 (Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben) are as follows:

Part 1: Chorus, Tenor recitative, Alto aria, Bass recitative, Soprano aria, Chorale

Part 2: Tenor aria, Alto recitative, Bass aria, Chorale

Even in here, the choices are clearly not random as in both parts the appearances of the voices are always in this order: tenor, alto, bass and soprano.

[3] It is not unreasonable to treat this sinfonia with the same weight as any other opening movements, since cantatas that come in two parts have somewhat similar to a pair of cantatas composed for one Sunday. Bach demonstrated this in BWV 22 and BWV 23.

[4] Translation taken from Emmanuel Music. This text bears some semblance to that of the opening chorus in BWV 47: he who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

[5] However, although this can explain how the anomaly came about, it still doesn’t make sense of it. To do that, the two chorales will need to be elevated to a different timeframe but at the same time be part of the structure that forms the cantata. What the sinfonia does with the cantus firmus is peeping into this timeframe that transcends the somewhat contrived and worldly, weltliche, scheme of the cantata, just like Dives lifting his eyes up across the great gulf to Abraham and Lazarus.

[6] Translation taken from Emmanuel Music.

[7] Whilst the time of composition of BWV 1017 can only be dated to somewhere before 1725, we know that both Ich habe genug and the Matthew Passion were composed in 1727 and it’s safe to say that these pieces were composed in a close enough time span that the similarity of the melodic gesture has some significance.

[8] Equally fascinating is the fact that the minuet figuration appears in mm. 17 and 19 of BWV 1017.

[9] This is yet another reason why this aria is so different from the sicilianos. Ich habe genug and Erbarme dich used repeated, pulsating quavers in the continuo and BWV 1017 has continuous arpeggios. None of them has this kind of jerky gestures that littered Ich nehme mein Leiden.

[10] This cadence can also serve as a reference for the interrupted cadence that comes again later in the da capo in m. 52, as both cadences land on the F major chord.

[11] m.m. 95-96 outlines the dominant 7^th of the tonic A minor, which turns into a dominant 9^th in m. 97.

[12] mm. 27 to the end of the fugue is given in full in the appendix.

[13] There is another example in the cantata but it is slightly irrelevant to this particular argument. Rather interestingly, this example comes in the second movement of the cantata, which conforms to the mirror image that Bach had set up. This recitative started in B minor, and was settling onto A major with a four-two chord on the 3^rd beat of m. 3. Then completely out of the blue, the music ended up in its relative minor F-sharp minor with a perfect cadence, not an interrupted one. This happened alongside with the words Verschwinden muss, asking the question what use are these luxuries if they will all vanish. This unexpected turn to the relative minor sets the whole cantata up for large scale transformation of the opening chorus’s E minor to its relative major G major in the chorale.

[14] This forced cadence into the relative major forms a chiasmic pairing with the cadence into the opposite direction mentioned in the previous footnote.

[15] The following analogy will help to illustrate my point. Let’s say there’s someone who needs to get from place A to place B and has obtained a set of instructions that will guide him there. He is about to set off but something came up in his mind and he looked back behind him to check something. Now, after checking, all he needs to do is to look forward again and follow the instructions. He doesn’t need a new set of instructions because he stayed in the same place. In music, as long as no sharps or flats are added/removed, then practically it didn’t go anywhere.

[16] The common procedure is to let the voice come in for a short motto-like statement and then come in again with a longer and substantiated argument (e.g. the tenor and alto arias in this cantata, and also the Ich habe genug aria).