Zerfließe, mein Herze, in Fluten der Zähren from the St John Passion BWV 245

While music with anything operatic about it was firmly discouraged in the Leipzig churches where Bach worked, only an uncommonly hard-hearted cleric would have objected to his setting of Zerfließe, mein Herze, in Fluten der Zähren. Coming at a highly emotive point in the story of the Passion according to Saint John – “Your jesus is dead” – the aria is an effusion of tears where the discreet hints of the Italian operatic style in the elaboration of the vocal line are not only appropriate but also expressively essential. There is no danger of sentimentality here, even where the grieving harmonies almost bring the aria to a stop just before the end of the middle section: the regularity of the recurring woodwind obbligato, a particularly melodious example of its kind, conveys a sense of divine inevitability.