(), BWV8, is a church cantata for the 16th Sunday after Trinity by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is a chorale cantata, part of Bach's second cantata cycle. Bach performed it for the first time on 24 September 1724 in St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig. The cantata is scored for SATB singers, four wind instruments, strings and continuo.
The text of the cantata is a reflection on death, based on "Liebster Gott, wann werd ich sterben", a Lutheran hymn in five stanzas which Caspar Neumann wrote around 1690. Bach adapted Daniel Vetter's setting of this hymn, composed in the early 1690s and first printed in 1713, in the cantata's first and last movements. The opening movement is a chorale fantasia, an extensive instrumental piece, punctuated by the four-part choir, who sing line by line from the first stanza of Neumann's hymn. The last movement, the closing chorale, is a version of Vetter's 1713 four-part setting Liebster Gott, borrowed and reworked by Bach. The four other movements of the cantata, a succession of arias and recitatives, were composed by Bach for vocal and instrumental soloists. The anonymous libretto for these movements is an expanded paraphrase of the second to fourth stanzas of Neumann's hymn.
Bach revived the cantata in the 1730s, and, after transposing it from E major to D major, in the late 1740s. After Bach's death, the cantata was revived again in Leipzig, in the mid-1750s. The vocal parts of its closing chorale were published in the second half of the 18th century, in Birnstiel's and Breitkopf's collections of four-part chorales by Bach. The Bach Gesellschaft (BG) published the cantata in 1851, in the first volume of their collected edition of Bach's works. John Troutbeck's translation, When will God recall my spirit?, was published in a vocal score a few decades later. Both the E major and D major versions of the cantata were published in the New Bach Edition (NBE) in 1982.
Commentators have agreed in their praise for the cantata: William G. Whittaker wrote that, "Few cantatas are so wholly attractive and so individual as this lovely work"; Alfred Dürr has written that, "The opening chorus presents the listener with a sublime vision of the hour of death"; and Arnold Schering states that, "The opening movement of the cantata must be ranked as one of the most arresting tone-pictures ever penned by Bach." There have been many recordings of the cantata, starting with that by Karl Richter in 1959. In the 1970s there were more recordings of BWV 8 along with all of Bach's cantatas—on modern instruments by Helmuth Rilling and on period instruments by Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Later recordings include those by Joshua Rifkin, Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman and John Eliot Gardiner.
Compositional history
Background All of Bach's cantatas for the Trinity XVI occasion meditate on death, a theme linked to the Gospel reading. In Bach's day, a common interpretation of the Gospel reading was that it prefigured Christ resurrecting the faithful to eternal life, and in this sense the reading inspired a longing for death: an early death meant one would be sooner close to this desired resurrection. Two cantatas for the Trinity XVI occasion, composed by Bach before BWV 8, take this approach on the theme of death: Komm, du süße Todesstunde, BWV 161, first performed in Weimar on 27 September 1716. Christus, der ist mein Leben, BWV 95, composed in Leipzig, a year before BWV 8, and first performed on 12 September 1723.
The second of these two cantatas was composed in Bach's first year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, as part of his first cantata cycle. For the Sundays after Trinity of 1724, around a year after he had moved to Leipzig, Bach started his second cantata cycle. The cantatas of this cycle, the chorale cantata cycle, are each based on a Lutheran hymn and its chorale setting. O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20, a chorale cantata from Bach's second cycle, was first presented in June 1724 and has a funereal theme comparable to that of a Trinity XVI cantata. BWV 8, a meditation on a Christian's death, approaches the death theme differently from Bach's earlier Trinity XVI and BWV 10 cantatas: anxious questions about the hour of death dominate the first half of the BWV 8 cantata, while in its later movements such sorrows are dismissed with references to Christ and God's standfastness.
Compared to the over 50 other chorale cantatas composed by Bach, most of which are based on hymns and chorale melodies that were at least half a century old when Bach adopted them, the BWV 8 cantata is based on relatively recent material, that is, by an author and a composer who lived into the 18th century.
Hymn and melody , BWV 8, is one of Bach's church cantatas for the 16th Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI). The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the Epistle to the Ephesians, praying for the strengthening of faith in the congregation of Ephesus (), and from the Gospel of Luke, the raising from the dead of the young man from Nain ().
Caspar Neumann, a professor of Protestant theology and pastor from Breslau, wrote "Liebster Gott, wann werd ich sterben", a hymn in five stanzas of eight lines, around 1690.
Daniel Vetter, a native of Breslau, set Neumann's hymn in the first half of the 1690s. In 1695, this setting of the hymn was sung at the funeral of cantor Jakob Wilisius in Breslau. In 1713, Vetter published a SATB setting of his hymn tune, Zahn No. 6634, as the concluding piece, Nos 91–92, of the second volume of his (). The two volumes of that publication, totalling 221 four-part settings of Lutheran chorale melodies, were first printed in Leipzig. Aimed at the pious Leipzig merchant class for "spiritual recreation" or "refreshment" through music, the simple four-part organ chorales were paired with spinet or clavichord broken-chord variations, in the style brisé, then in vogue. Like Bach's Orgelbüchlein composed during the same period, Vetter's collection starts with Nun komm der Heiden Heiland. It has one piece per page, except for the final chorale Liebster Gott of the 1713 volume which is annotated on two full pages with four separate staves for cantus, alto, tenor and figured bass:
From Kirsten Beißwenger's 1992 dissertation on Bach's personal Library, Bachs Notenbibliothek (BNB), it is surmised that the Bach family owned a copy of the second volume of Vetter's Musicalische Kirch- und Haus-Ergötzlichkeit.
Vetter became organist at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig in 1679, after succeeding his teacher Werner Fabricius. Vetter's and Bach's paths crossed in 1717: since 1710, Vetter had been supervising the remodelling by of the organ of St. Paul's Church in Leipzig; and in December 1717, in a famous report, Bach examined and evaluated the rebuilt instrument with a discussion of Vetter's and his reimbursement. In January 1718, Vetter referred to Bach's appraisal of Scheibe's organ. Vetter died in Leipzig in 1721.
BWV 8.1 in E major BWV 8.1, the first version of Bach's chorale cantata Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben, was first performed in St. Nicholas Church on 24 September 1724. The sermon was preached by Salomon Deyling. A volume of () containing the librettos of all five chorale cantatas which Bach first performed in September 1724 is extant. The volume was printed by Immanuel Tietze, likely by the time the first of these five cantatas was performed: Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 33, for Trinity XIII, first performed on Sunday 3 September 1724. Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78, for Trinity XIV, first performed on Sunday 10 September 1724. Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, BWV 99, for Trinity XV, first performed on Sunday 17 September 1724. Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben, BWV 8.1, for Trinity XVI, first performed on Sunday 24 September 1724. Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir, BWV 130.1, for St. Michael's Day, first performed on Friday 29 September 1724. The Trinity XVI cantata of Bach's third cantata cycle, Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende? BWV 27, was first performed on 6 October 1726. BWV 8.1, in E major, was revived in the 1730s, with changes to the type of flute.
BWV 8.2 in D major Bach revived the cantata in the late 1740s, with the key transposed down a whole tone from E major to D major. This version of the cantata, BWV 8.2, is also extant, and was likely first performed in September 1747. Some changes to the instrumentation were also implemented: for example, in the first movement the two oboe d'amore parts are given to concertante violins, and in the bass aria, an oboe d'amore plays colla parte with the first violins.
Music and text Text and translations The first and last verses of Neumann's hymn correspond to the first and final movements of the cantata, both of them choral movements. The middle four movements were written by an anonymous librettist, but conformed fairly closely to the spirit of Neumann's other three verses.
Novello published John Troutbeck's translation in the 1870s. A translation by J. Michael Diack was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1931. Jean Lunn's translation was published in 1981. In 2020, Z. Philip Ambrose published a revised edition of his 1980s translation of the cantata's text. Melvin P. Unger published an interlinear translation of the cantata in 1996. Richard D. P. Jones's 2005 translation of Alfred Dürr's 1992 book on Bach's cantatas contains a translation of the cantata's libretto. Pamela Dellal's translation of the libretto can be found on the Emmanuel Music website.
Scoring BWV 8.1 is scored for: SATB soloists and choir horn flute (fl): originally flauto piccolo, a high pitched recorder, later replaced by a transverse flute two oboes d'amore (oba) strings (str): two violin parts and one viola part basso continuo (bc) For BWV 8.2: same vocal forces as BWV 8.1 taille traverso (fl) 2 oba str as in BWV 8.1, with additionally two solo violins (vl) bc
Movements The cantata is in six movements: + Movements of , BWV 8 # Incipit Text Type Time BWV 8.1 BWV 8.2 Key Scoring Key Scoring 1 Neumann Chorus E tutti D tutti 2 after Neumann Aria c T, oba, bc b T, vl, bc 3 after Neumann Recitative g–A A, str, bc f–G A, str, bc 4 after Neumann Aria A B, fl, str, bc G B, fl, oba, str, bc 5 after Neumann Recitative f–g S, bc e–f S, bc 6 Neumann Chorale E tutti D tutti
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The opening chorale fantasia sets the first stanza of Neumann's hymn. The opening chorus is a gapped chorale setting of Vetter's melody. The alto, tenor, and bass voices sing free counterpoint, while the sopranos sing the chorale unadorned. Spitta described the sound of this movement as a "church-yard full of flowers in the springtime". As Dürr comments, the chorus, with instrumental ensemble of high obbligato flute, two oboes d'amore and downward plucked arpeggios, presents "a sublime vision of the hour of death".In the E major version of 1724, the marking for the broken chords in the upper strings is con sordini sempre staccato; in the D major version of 1747, the marking is sempre pizzicato.