Cantata No.21 in C minor: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis BWV 21

Part One

Sinfonia: Adagio assai

Chorus: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis

Aria: Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not

Recitative: Wie has du dich, mein Gott

Aria: Bäche von gesalznen Zähren

Chorus: Was betrübst du dich, meine Seele

Part Two

Recitative: Ach Jesu, meine Ruh

Aria (duet): Komm, mein Jesu

Chorus: Sei nun wieder zufrieden and Chorale: Was helfen uns

Aria: Erfreue dich, Seele

Chorus: Das Lamm, das erwürget ist

No one knows exactly how many cantatas Bach wrote. As Cantor of St Thomas’s in Leipzig he was expected to provide one for every Sunday and feast day, adding up to perhaps as many as 60 a year. According to his son Carl Philip Emanuel, he completed enough for five annual cycles. That would amount to 300 cantatas for Leipzig alone – in which case, since less than 200 cantatas actually exist, more than a third of them have been lost. But, taking into account only those that survive, the cantatas represent a prodigious investment of creative energy on the part of a musician whose duties involved much other creative work, often on a large scale, and the supervision of performances.

The earliest documented performance of Cantata No.21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, took place not in Leipzig but in Weimar in 1714. It was given on that occasion, however, in a version later superseded by several revisions. It achieved its final state shortly after Bach took up his appointment in Leipzig and was first performed in this form in St Thomas’s on 13 June 1723. The basic inspiration for the work, originally written in nine sections (probably in 1713), was the Epistle for the third Sunday after Trinity, “Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you.” It has been suggested that it was expanded to its present proportions in 1714 to mark the departure from Weimar of the 17-year-old Prince Johann Ernst, a highly gifted pupil of the composer and fellow Vivaldi enthusiast (who was to die in Frankfurt a year later). Whatever its origins and whatever the course of its development, the work has long been recognised as one of the greatest of its kind.

Cantata No.21 begins with an expressive Sinfonia which could almost be the slow movement of a concerto for oboe, violin and strings, the solo instruments sustaining their melancholy melodic line over a trudging bass. It is an apt introduction to the first chorus – ­or at least the first part of it which, a fugal treatment of the words “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis,” carries the same troubled message over a similar bass line. But then, by way of a harmonic transition on “aber,” there is a distinct change of mood in a lively setting of the second line, “Deine Tröstungen erquicken meine Seele.” The first aria, “Seufzer, Tränen,” a particularly beautiful inspiration for soprano and obbligato oboe, reverts to the sorrowful manner of the opening. The tenor recitative, “Wie hast du dich, mein Gott,” is a an anguished protest and the following aria, “Bäche von gesalznen Zähren,” a tearful lament in the outer sections and a vivid expression of adversity – with a dramatic change of tempo on “Sturm und Wellen mich versehren” – in the middle section.

The transition from despair to hope begins with the chorus “Was betrübst du dich, meine Seele,” a curiously fragmented construction in several different tempi. Beginning thoughtfully with a question put by solo voices and repeated by the chorus, it includes a canon on “und bist so unruhig”and ends with an affirmative fugue. At this point in the Leipzig service there would have been a sermon, which was usually an hour long. Part Two of the cantata would then have begun with the dialogue between the Soul (soprano) and Jesus (bass), first in a recitative exchange and then in an exquisitely written duet in which Jesus offers reassurance to the doubting Soul. Their reconciliation is greeted by the following texturally resourceful chorus, which consists of a setting of words from Psalm 116 (“Sei nun wieder zufrieden”) wound in counterpoint round the firm line of Georg Neumark’s chorale Wer nun den lieben Gott lässt walten. The Psalm is introduced by three solo voices while the chorale is sustained by the tenors and then passes to the chorus as the chorale is taken up by the sopranos.

The original version of the cantata probably ended with that chorale. At a later stage, probably in Weimar in 1714, Bach added two more movements – a jubilant tenor solo, “Erfreue dich, Seele,” and a celebratory chorus, “Das Lamm, das erwürget ist,” which begins as a resplendent proclamation and, incorporating a passage for the four soloists, ends with a brilliantly scored fugue.

Gerald Larner © 2008